Delinquents Turned Fugitives - Ann Denton Page 0,96

gone inside?”

He shook his head. “No. It looks like it’s one of those lame haunted fun house kind of things.” But something about the way he said it made me think he wasn’t as dismissive as he was pretending. He wouldn’t quite let his eyes land on the place. Almost as if he was nervous. Or scared.

“Zavier, do you not like fun houses?” I asked.

He shrugged.

I glanced at the sky. It wasn’t dark out yet. “Okay. We don’t have to go in. But, if you do, I can promise you’ll have a lot of fun in the fun house.”

His eyes widened and he immediately started to drag me toward the silly little ride.

I laughed, briefly wondering if it would be too mean to scare him while we were in the dark.

We pulled open the double doors at the entrance. I lit my hand with a bright floating ball of light so that we could see and then let my door fall shut with a bang. Z jumped.

“Come on and protect me, hot stuff,” I teased, grabbing his hand and taking the lead. I followed the tracks for the ride cars, which went through a black hall before veering to the left.

We rounded the turn and laughed, because as soon as we saw the "scary" murals on the walls, there was nothing else we could do. I swapped the light in my hands for a purple black light and we shone it over the glowing paint, which had a cornfield scene where a demonic scarecrow surrounded by red-eyed crows appeared to be reaching toward us. Only, some vandal had spray painted a dick in his hand.

"Damn, a scarecrow that will rip off your dick! No wonder this place got shut down!" Z exclaims.

"I don't know. Maybe he's just tempting the birds to cum near," I quipped.

Z hugged me into his side and I felt his chest rumble as he chuckled. "This is why you're epic," he declared, placing a kiss on top of my head before he returned to staring at the picture. "It's kind of hard to look at, because that scarecrow looks so damn cocky."

"You think they peck at that pecker?" I asked.

"I want you to peck at my pecker," he replied.

I poked him in the ribs but laughed and we left the naughty scarecrow and continued down the tunnel, skirting around the tracks whenever a car blocked our path. There was a werewolf next, which looked like a taxidermic animal, but when I shone a light over its face, the eyes had red light bulbs instead of the normal marbles. So, the wolf used to flash red eyes at riders and a speaker in the wall behind him indicates that he probably "howled" too.

The next segment of the Wacky House actually did make my stomach drop. Because the norm house of fun had depicted spell writing. Long ribbons of paper dangled on strings from the ceiling and ended in plastic orange flames. Several mannequins were off to one side of the tracks. A hideous-looking witch snarled, her clawed hands extending over an innocent fifties-looking couple who clutched at one another in horror as the man's face melted.

I stopped walking. We stood in silence for a moment, our silly, happy mood broken. "That's what they think of us. Norms actually think that."

Z pulled me in close. "Not all of them."

"More now," I said. Now that I'd unleashed vampires. Now that every newscast was full of ways to protect yourself--both real, and completely imagined.

"It's always going to fluctuate," Z told me.

"There's a garlic shortage in the entire state of New York. People are driving to nearby states to get it."

"Hey, there could be a simultaneous run on pizza that we just haven't heard about," Z chides, pulling me away from the scene. "Or, there could be a garlic eating contest. Or garlic pie could be the new in thing. You've just got a one-track mind with the vampires--"

Of course, the next scene in the tunnel ride was a vampire scene. The walls were splashed with red paint to look like blood. A mannequin child was suspended in midair by wires. Around his stomach wrapped long, sharp vampire claws and behind him stood a headless vampire. It looked like someone had knocked the head off of the vampire mannequin years ago. But instead of taking it like a trophy, they'd pinned it to the wall using a giant metal spike. And so the snarling plastic head with chipped fangs stared directly