Calamityville
by Marc Watkins
Each year there was talk of fixing the rides at the park because of lawsuits, but ever since one of the board members inherited two used bookstores from a whimsical aunt, corporate decided to rebrand the whole place as a literary theme park. The rides remained in a dangerous state of disrepair, but they now existed in Mark Twain Land, so the pending litigation had to be re-filed. The stress from operating one of the rides caused me to grind my teeth in my sleep. I always fretted about ruining a tourist’s perfect day. Being maimed was one thing, but nothing could be worse than a family having a bad time because of me.
Well last month a whole group got stuck underground when the brakes froze on the Atlas Shrugged and the coaster got stuck fifty feet down in Plato’s Cave. We managed to lower a crate of Gideon Bibles as freebies while maintenance fixed the problem, with the hope that folks who took the Bibles would feel bad and think twice before they sued. Then two weeks later a kid broke his arm when the Myth of Sisyphus toboggan ride crashed into a dry mud puddle instead of the plunge pond. No one’s really sure who drained the water. But the kid, a pimply teenager, came away like a king, scoring an illustrated copy of the Kama Sutra and a decade of old Playboys. No word on what the parents got.