The morning sun felt like a warm blanket on his skin and like knives in his eyes. He scratched the itchy collar of the bright green coveralls he got in the mail the week before, having completely neglected his normal habit of washing every new uniform ten times over. You know, to wear it in a little. The rumbling of the bus’s engine jostled him awake long enough to take a prolonged sip of coffee, staving off another jerk-filled nap against the rattling window. Outside, miles of emptiness, plain beige hills and brush rolled on forever and ever under a shining sun and a bright blue sky. A duffel bag belonging to him shifted alongside the overhead luggage of the other passengers, all dressed in the same uniform.

Looking outside as an old radio tower passed by, he thought it weird that he had to come stay for orientation at the new amusement park he got the cleanup job at, but it sure as hell beat the hole in the wall apartment in the city. Maybe here I'll finally get some hot water , he thought, finishing the paper cup of coffee before gently setting it down between his work boots to prevent it from rolling around. The man next to him, a tall, tan fella with a wispy moustache and long hair listening to screechy guitar solos through a set of old headphones, must have noticed that he woke up finally. He took off his headphones and turned to face him, a relaxed smile forming across his face.

“'Sup dude, you were out for a while there, thought you were like, dead,” he laughed, voice thick with languor like the air was thick with the smell of sunscreen. He hummed back groggily. Too early to talk still.

“I've been so bored this whole time,” he continued, flashing the tiny screen of the MP3 player he was listening to, displaying the name of some metal band. “Been through this bad boy like, three times. And it's a long album.”

“Mhm,” he managed a reply, feeling the caffeine slowly start to take effect and the other man's voice start to become bearable.

“So anyways like, you ever been to this place?” he asked.

“What place?”

“Potential Park! Now that's a cool as hell name. ‘Cause it's like, potential energy that like rollercoasters have, y’know? Makes sense cause it's supposed to be like… ALL coasters,” he rambled, using his hands to emulate the motion of a rollercoaster.

“Probably not, didn't it just open?”

“Well like yeah, but maybe you've like seen pictures of it or something.”

“Just a couple in the mail with the uniform. Not sure why it’s all the way out here though.”

“Oh yeah, me too. Guess there’s no room like, in the city.”

He considered rebutting this guy’s optimism with incredulity about how they were all to commute from their city locations to this middle of nowhere theme park, but decided against it. It would probably be another dead-end thing and the place would close after a month because nobody knows where it is and nobody cares. He dreaded the thought of having to put a suit back on and pretend he had data entry experience in front of some stuffy, deathly-pale yuppie only to get rejected in two weeks because the position was already filled by the manager’s son by the time he got there or whatever.

“So where ya from?” the guy next to him asked.

He snapped back from his desolate prediction of the future, the guy next to him still wanted to talk despite his bristly mood.

“Uhh… the city,” he replied, assuming he would be as well.

“Oh you’re actually from here, cool. I’m from Fresno, had to get the hell outta there y’know?” he laughed.

“And come somewhere hotter and more desolate?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. He’d been to Fresno once, didn’t much like it, but here wasn’t much better.

“Pfft, at least it’s not Phoenix,” he held out his hand to him. “I’m Luis.”

“Mateo, Matt’s fine.” He shook his hand, joltingly cold and dry. Luis grinned, happy with having learned his name. Matt turned his head to look out the window while Luis started to talk about the band he was listening to, believing that he was paying attention. Matt watched the hills roll by until he saw it, a twisting nest of multicolored steel settled in a flat spot amongst the empty landscape, Potential Park.

“Aw sweet!” Luis said, interrupting himself from his dissertation on the thrash stylings of Goatskull’s latest LP, leaning over Matt in the seat to get a closer look. The park stuck out from everything else around it: colorful, complex tracks of coasters arcing and weaving apart and together in a delicately choreographed motion. Beyond the fence planted into the dirt around the perimeter, well-manicured gardens and crystal clear water artfully decorated the ground. He imagined the nightmare it must have been to get all that water all the way out here.

“Must be like, a ton of pipes or pumps or whatever,” Luis mused, as if he could read Matt’s mind.

“Or a water tower,” he added.

“Oh yeah! Maybe that too.”

“Looks like this is our stop.”

It was still early in the morning, but the sun was already working on heating the pavement to approximately 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Matt and Luis stood shoulder to shoulder amongst the crowds of new employees, sweat starting to form under their uniform ballcaps.

“Ok. Hear me out,” Luis began, gesturing to a group of employees closer to the gate. “Blue guys got the hardhats right? Reds and greens don’t, and we know green is cleanup ‘cause like, we’re green.”

“Uh huh,” Matt replied.

“Blue’s gotta be construction worker then.”

“They don’t have those orange vests. You gotta wear those if you’re a construction worker.”

“Ugh, you’re right.”

“I think blue is plumbing. Gotta be with all this water.”

“But like, that’s so specific…”

A hand clapped Matt on the shoulder, making him jump. Whipping around, a gargantuan man in a green jumpsuit grinned from beneath a bushy, rust-colored beard.

“107 and 108! Or as my sheet says… Mateo Vin and Luis Moreno!” he bellowed, gruff voice carrying above the crowd. He stuck out a meaty hand to Matt, almost crushing his digits to dust as he shook the living daylights out of it.

“I’m Ted, your boss. Welcome to orientation weekend!”

“Glad to be here dude!” Luis said, grinning. He seemed to take Ted’s handshake like no problem, unlike Matt, who winced from the lightning sparking through his wrist as he regained feeling in his fingertips.

“Glad to have ya,” Ted replied, “it’s a big place here, needs lotsa folks on the ground. Lucky for you guys though, once you’re all set up at your rooms, today you get to know the place!”

Luis’s face lit up like a city skyline on 4th of July. Matt’s eyebrows raised up as Ted forked over a map and two tickets to him and Luis.

“You got any questions before I turn you fellas loose?”

“Yeah, a couple,” Matt replied. Luis started shifting in his work boots, itching to run off into the park before the other guys got first place in line.

“Shoot.”

“Who are the guys in the other jumpsuits?”

“Oh! They’re other employees, blue is maintenance, red is security. Us in the green,” Ted replied, heartily banging his chest so hard Matt swore he heard it thump like a wooden barrel, “we’re custodians!”

“Gotcha. And we’re staying at the building on the west end?”

“Yup!”

“Sounds good then.”

“See you around fellas!”

Luis grabbed Matt’s shoulder the second Ted walked off, carrying him along as he ran for the entrance.

“C’mon, let’s go get the front seats!” he shouted, lanky legs pulling himself effortlessly across the pavement. Luis neglected to ask if Matt even liked rollercoasters, to Matt’s chagrin of course, because he did not.

Jesus Christ. That was Matt’s only thought while being strapped into a convoluted system of straps and harnesses passing for a “seat” on this metal leviathan he’d been muscled into riding. Why did I let Luis insist on the front seat. Why did I let him do this. Oh Christ. He looked over at the guy he met about an hour ago near vibrating with glee as he put his life and limb in the hands of a carefully designed brush with death. Oh God.

“You excited dude?”

“Yeah,” Matt replied, concealing the terror that permeated every inch of his body, soaking through to his muscles that begged him to tear loose from the restraints and run home.

“Hell yes!” Luis hollered. The blue-jumpsuited attendant cleared the train and it clicked down on the rails, Matt’s heart climbing into his throat. I am going to die, he thought. I am going to die with this weird Californian metalhead who has near-death experiences as a hobby and not painlessly in my sleep like I’d always hoped. The train climbed higher and higher, Luis’s motormouth firing off at a hundred miles an hour.

“You know the front seat is better anyways, at the back you can’t see anything, and like, you’re also at the short end of the whole feeling of momentum, which kinda blows-”

Matt held his breath the entire ride up the lift hill, hoping he’d pass out before the nightmare of the first drop. Reaching the crest of the hill, the train paused. Matt started inventing new swear words under his breath.

“Ooh! This one’s got one of those brakes that hold you before the drop!” Luis craned his head out of the restraints. “That’s preeeetty far down!”

Before he could scream at Luis to shut up and go to hell, his soul was left at the top of the track as his body careened down a near-vertical drop of over 300 feet. The force made Matt feel like the air was being wrung out of his lungs before the train abruptly rocketed skyward, making him let out his first of many expletives as the train banked and flipped and twisted, Luis cackling in pure, adrenaline-filled delight.

Matt sat on a bench by a drinking fountain, too disoriented to move. The benefit to riding a whole bunch of roller coasters in one day, he found out, was that you quickly learn how to step outside your own body at the station and meet back up with it again once it’s all over. This time it was just in time for him to lean into a trash bin and expel the contents of his stomach.

“So what was your favorite?” Luis asked, sitting next to him and offering a sports drink to help his nausea.

He was no Luis, who hadn’t ever met a death machine he didn’t like, but they weren’t all bad. His favorite ended up being a smaller wooden coaster, crammed in an empty lot near the south end of the park. It was loud as hell and Luis decided he’d pull a fun prank on him by pretending to find a loose bolt at the floor of the traincar, but at least it didn’t go upside down.

“Rolling Thunder,” he sighed, chugging the off-orange liquid.

“Oh yeah, that one was good. I was a fan of Breakneck myself, wish I wasn’t so tall though ‘cause it makes the-”

“-ride much more rough,” he completed, recalling that Luis had said this before.

“Yeah! You get it.”

Matt nodded, not having experienced the same issue due to being much shorter. Not a lot of him to jerk around when some of the restrains near swallowed him whole. Through his squinted eyes, Matt angled his head upwards and stared off into the distance to regain his balance. As he did, something strange caught his eye.

“Do you see that?” he asked Luis.

“See what?”

Matt pointed across the empty courtyard of concrete and gardens to a bizarre structure. A small concrete building that housed a public bathroom, a structure that would have been completely normal if it hadn’t been built 20 feet off the ground. Luis squinted, gears turning in his head long enough for Matt to worry it was his own disorientation playing tricks on his vision.

“Whoa, that’s super weird,” Luis said, chuckling.

“Why’s it like that?”

“I dunno,” a gleeful smile spreading across his face. “Can you imagine though? Needing to take a leak real bad and it’s like ‘Nah dude, shoulda brought your climbing harness.’"

Matt couldn’t contain a laugh. The sun dipped low in the sky as they walked back to the rooms they were staying in, and Matt felt his body sway with the motion of the Earth as he drifted into a pleasant, dreamless sleep.

Matt leaned against his push broom, sweat dripping off his face and onto the boiling asphalt as hundreds of guests attempted to occupy the same stretch of pavement at once. Opening day sure didn’t pull any punches, he heard the guests that milled about talk about ride vouchers, half-price tickets, free city-to-park shuttles, and you know what they say when you build it (a massive, all-rollercoaster theme park).

“Everybody and their whole family will come,” Matt completed under his breath, sweeping up the litter that seemed to spawn directly from underneath the sneakers of parkgoers. He glanced up at Luis, who’d been assigned to clean at the courtyard adjacent to his by Ted that morning, happily tossing garbage bags into a rolling cart while listening to music. He noticed Matt was looking at him, and waved with a long, stringy arm. He weakly held up a hand in response, the heat making it hard to even move.

“Hey dude, you look hot,” Luis said, almost teleporting to Matt’s side.

“What?” he wheezed in reply.

“Roll up the sleeves on the jumpsuit! And here-”

Matt yelped as ice cold water crashed down the sides of his head, Luis pouring a sweaty, ice-filled water bottle onto both his ears.

“Old trick I learned at a construction job. Fools you into thinking it isn’t as hot as it is.”

“Thanks,” Matt grimaced as the water seeped into his jumpsuit. Luis was right, he felt remarkably less overheated. Rolling up the sleeves of his jumpsuit, he glanced at the time. Luis seemed to have looked too.

“How about we knock off early for lunch huh?” he said, jokingly elbowing Matt.

“Can we do that?”

“Sure! I don’t see Ted around. Plus, we’ve earned it right? I’m starving.”

Twenty-five dollars and two mediocre burgers later, Matt started to feel human again. The flow of guests was a non-stop onslaught, but at least their uniforms got them a nice discount and front place in line. They walked back to their positions to face the inevitable buildup of trash and the stomach contents of a few unfortunate guests, chatting up a storm with each other, or rather Luis was, with Matt scanning the park while he listened.

“Then the last job I took before this was as an electrician’s assistant, which I’m glad I got fired for not showing up ‘cause the day I didn’t the guy actually got electrocuted and fell 50 feet from a powerline and onto a parked car, and I think that would have super blowed,” Luis mused, taking a long gulp from a cup of half-melted ice and soda.

“Uh-huh.”

“What about you?”

“Huh? Oh. Office job then unemployed for a while. Nothing exciting.”

“Must be a good change of pace then, getting paid again and also working somewhere like, completely different.”

“Yeah,” Matt sighed as they passed under a brief blessing of shade, “I miss air conditioning though.”

“Me too man.”

Passing by the station of a nearby ride, a massive looping behemoth named after some obscure mythical monster, Matt stopped and looked at a guy in a blue suit cranking away at the wheels of a train with his wrench. Hefty and tall, with a big red beard.

“Hey Luis.”

“Yeah?”

“Is that-”

“Oh shit, is that Ted?”

He stood up from the floor of the station and gave a thumbs-up to the queue, making them erupt in applause. Their question was answered with a hearty laugh from the man in the blue jumpsuit as he left the station. Ted caught a glimpse of the two of them, and his expression hardened.

“Uh oh,” Matt mumbled.

“We did take our break like, 2 hours early,” Luis said, grabbing Matt’s shoulder.

They sprinted across the pavement back to their positions. Luis had pulled far ahead of Matt, disappearing into the fray of guests. Matt struggled to get past the thick crowds, getting swallowed up in an advancing phalanx of sweaty, oblivious parkgoers. His poorly fit work boots struggled to find stability as he weaved in between their footsteps, suddenly plummeting forwards as he yelped, his ankle rolling at an unnatural angle. He broke his fall with the palms of his hands, feeling them burn from the scrapes and the heat.

“Matt!” he heard Luis call out. He picked himself up and looked at his beat up hands, how the skin had shredded against the rough asphalt.

“How did you get here so fast man?” Luis huffed, having run up to Matt’s side and hunched over to take a breather.

“Wh- I didn’t go ahead of-” Matt paused, looking around. He was right back where he was that morning, a stretch of path covered in trash and puke. Luis shook his shoulder, jarring him out of his bewilderment.

“C’mon, Ted’s probably gonna be here soon and we do not wanna get any more on his bad side than we are right now.”

The park had begun to clear out now, the sun lowering in the sky and all the sunburnt guests heading home for dinner and a whole lot of aloe vera. Luis and Matt tossed the last bag of garbage into the rolling bin by the time Ted came strolling by.

“Great work fellas!” he bellowed to them from across the courtyard. “This place looks fantastic! Go ahead and clock out for the day eh?”

They looked at each other in confusion, expecting him to be furious for taking lunch really early. Ted smiled and left, walking down the sidewalk, adjusting the collar of his green jumpsuit.

“Hey Luis.”

“Yeah Matt?”

“Wasn’t Ted wearing blue earlier?”

“Yeah, he was. Maybe he’s got two jobs?”

“Maybe.”

Matt laid back on the bed in his room, an ache creeping up his back. He felt like he’d been outside for weeks rather than hours, but his body was used to sitting at a desk for work rather than restlessly pacing around in the sun. He turned his head on the pillow, fruitlessly searching for a comfortable angle to rest at. Through the window, spots of light glowed brilliantly against the pitch darkness of the desert. He heard at a knock at the door.

“Who is it?” he groaned.

“Oh, uhh,” the familiar voice replied, “Luis!”

“I think I left the door unlocked.”

Luis tried the handle, Matt was right, unlocked. He strolled in, dressed in an oversized black shirt with an indiscernible band logo on the front.

“How are you doing after that spill you took?”

“Fine,” Matt said, showing off the gauze taped to his palms, “used some of the stuff in the first aid kits to patch up.”

“That’s good, here, I gotcha an ice pack too. Noticed you were limping on that leg a little,” Luis said, gesturing to the ankle Matt had rolled earlier.

“Thanks man,” he replied, holding the ice to it and laying back.

“So whatcha think of the job so far?”

“Honestly…” Matt started, avoiding eye contact with Luis. “I don’t think I can keep doing it. My body’s really taking it hard, I’m probably better off just hitting the office job listings again.”

“That’s fine man,” Luis laughed, “gonna miss having you around though! You’re a fun dude.”

“Thanks.”

“Maybe I’ll catch you around here sometime again!”

“Maybe, depends on if I’ll have the time to head all the way out here.”

“Aw, you can find the time!” he ribbed, nudging Matt with his hand. Matt smiled.

“Alright, alright. I’ll do my best then. Hey, you got an e-mail?”

“Yeah! It’s, well, uh, lemme just write it down actually.”

Last day before this is all over, Matt thought, diligently sweeping the path. Guests poured around him, chatter fusing with music fusing with heat fusing with the dull, gnawing ache in his back. Every time he looked at his watch, less and less time seemed to pass. He paced back and forth along the sidewalk as coasters roared behind him, guests yelled out conversations, tossed empty cans to the ground with a hollow metal clatter. His thought process was like a smear of color and noise and sensory input, brain scrambled like a car radio tuned in between stations.

Glancing up into the sky, he leaned back and watched the clouds overhead, the sun fixed solidly at its zenith. They stayed still, bordered in his vision by the arcs of bright colored metal and structural trusses. He picked out the colors of each one, blue, green, red, purple, black, pink- Wait. He angled his head downwards. Was there always a pink one? It didn’t look familiar to him as he examined it. It twisted through the other tracks like it had been built as an afterthought, turns and bends at sharp angles to avoid colliding with other tracks. He winced as he watched one car hit a turn and a guest’s head violently whip to the side. Matt looked at his watch, still over an hour until his first break.

“Hey Luis!” he called over to the other courtyard where he saw his friend picking up trash from the ground. The headphones over his ears indicated that he definitely couldn’t hear him. Matt walked over and tapped his shoulder.

“Oh, ‘sup Matt? Breaktime already?” Luis said, smiling and taking off his headphones, the same screechy guitar solos from day one blaring through.

“No, still an hour off.”

“We probably shouldn’t knock off early again, plus I’m not hungry or anything so-”

“I’m just bored is all, my sidewalk’s been clean for a while.”

“Well I can chat, just be ready to run back when we see Ted,” Luis laughed.

“Do you remember that pink coaster being here?” Matt asked, pointing to the track as it arced through another loop of green and black track.

“Uhhh…” Luis hummed, thinking hard. “No? But maybe we just didn’t remember it,” he looked at Matt and grinned. “You did spend all your time on every coaster with your eyes shut!”

“Haha,” Matt replied, unamused.

“I think you made brand new combinations of swears that the universe hasn’t ever seen before dude.”

“No, seriously! I don’t remember that one.”

“Okay, okay, I know how to solve this.”

Luis produced a map of the park from his pocket, flipping it open. They scanned the page together, searching for the pink coaster that gave you whiplash and sped through every other ride in the park, to no avail. Matt grew uneasy, he swore up and down it wasn’t there before.

“Okay, okay, maybe the map is old,” Luis theorized, the two of them having moved to the fence behind the bathroom where it was more quiet. “They could have printed them before they installed it, it’s no big deal.”

“Doesn’t it take a long time to build a rollercoaster? We got these last week!”

“Maybe but like… I dunno man. Maybe they’re still building it?”

“We both saw it with a train full of guests on it though.”

“You’re right it’s just… really weird man.” Luis started shifting around on the concrete, eyes locked on the pink track arcing overhead. A train roared by, taking a 90 degree turn to avoid another coaster’s supports. A poor passenger on the rear of the train yelled as he was jerked into the wall of the car abruptly.

“Ok. We’re probably overheated right, maybe we’re just misremembering something. It should be lunchtime now-” Matt stopped, looking at his watch. The date was wrong.

“What is it?” Luis asked, his hands gently fidgeting with his rolled up sleeve.

“What day was it when we came?”

“The… the thirteenth?”

“Of July, right?”

“Yeah.”

Matt’s stomach dropped like it did on the first hill of Breakneck. The date read the 15th… of August. He checked and checked again, but it still said 8/15 on his watch. There’s no way. They’d only been there a weekend, the shift only started a few hours ago.

“What...” Luis said, voice wavering slightly as he looked at his watch. “Are you messing with me man?”

“No! Why would I do that?”

“I don’t know! Getting me back for the Rolling Thunder prank maybe.”

“Luis, seriously. Something’s wrong.”

“I- Maybe there’s something we’re missing, I-”

“Luis, how many times have you been through that album?” Matt said, pointing to the mp3 player strapped to his side.

“Two… wait no, three, four...” Luis trailed off, concern growing across his face as he realized he’d completely lost track. He frantically ripped it from his belt and tapped a few buttons. His eyes widened and he drew in a shallow, horrified breath. 1,046 plays on an album barely 45 minutes long.

“I- I downloaded this just before the bus ride,” Luis’s hands began to shake. “What the fuck.”

“Luis,” Matt grabbed his shoulders, “we need to leave.”

He didn’t reply, only staring at the mp3 player in shock. Matt took him by the hand and led him to their rooms through an employee sidewalk. They frantically stuffed their bags with everything in the rooms before ducking into the hallway. Two men in red jumpsuits stood at the end, chatting with one another before freezing and slowly turning their heads towards Luis and Matt. Matt pulled Luis down the other end of the hallway, down through a fire escape, right in time for them to hear the men in red speak into a garbled radio. Emerging from air conditioned paradise into the terrible heat, they slunk through the crowds with their duffel bags towards the southern entrance of the park.

“Hey Matt?”

“Yeah Luis?”

Luis pointed through the crowd they hid in at a golf cart parked at the edge of the sidewalk. In it sat Ted, dressed in a bright red jumpsuit and wraparound shades.

“Oh god,” Matt muttered.

Almost as if he could hear them, Ted angled his head toward the two of them, and a snarl formed underneath his wiry beard. He leaned into the walkie-talkie on his shoulder and covered his mouth as he spoke. Matt and Luis didn’t need another warning signal, they ducked into the well-maintained gardens and skirted into the southern corner of the park. We’ll just make it to Rolling Thunder, Matt thought, use the supports to sneak away, and- his train of thought was cut off as they entered a large swath of dirt and concrete where Rolling Thunder was two days ago.

“Shit.”

From the sidewalk running along the empty lot, a set of golf carts sat, large men in red jumpsuits standing around, Ted among them. Matt and Luis slinked behind a beautifully maintained topiary.

“Luis, are you good at running?”

“Yeah. Did Track ‘n Field in high school.”

“Cool. I didn’t.”

“You don’t have to beat me, you have to beat Ted.”

Matt gulped. He was 5’5” with a back aching from a month’s worth of work in three days and Ted was built like a grizzly bear, which to Matt’s knowledge can reach a top speed of 35 miles per hour. He considered what it might be like to dig his way out though the dirt.

“Ok, we just turn around then.”

“Maybe not,” Luis replied, gingerly pointing to a line of men clad in red starting to march through the garden. They didn’t have much of an option left.

“Hey Matt?”

“Yeah Luis?”

“I have an idea that’s kind of stupid.”

“I’ll take it.”

Luis shoved both bags in Matt’s hands, put on his headphones, and scooped him up so he was sitting on his shoulders.

“Ted’ll just have to outrun me then.”

As Luis straightened up, security took notice. He hollered over the sound of the thrash metal playing in his headphones and sprinted for the chain-link fence across the concrete lot like it was the last 500 meters of the 5k and he was gunning for top three.

Matt then realized that every roller coaster he’d ever been on was a tame, safe, borderline boring experience compared to whatever the hell this was. He tilted the bags to compensate for Luis’s wildly shifting center of gravity, tucking his head in as the fence came closer and closer. He dared not look back, but could hear the pounding footsteps of security behind them.

“Throw! Throw!! THROW!!!” Luis screamed as the fence approached at lightning speed. Matt strained his burning muscles and tossed the bags forward, watching in slow motion as they arced through the air. Luis’s cleared it, his caught the top and tore, sending the contents spilling forth like cloth guts. They collided with the fence, Matt slumping over the top, wire stabbing into his stomach. He fell over on the other side, seeing Luis still trapped on the other end, with Ted gaining fast.

Luis scrambled up the chain link fence, Matt matching him, grabbing Luis’s hands at the top, freezing cold from the blood in his body surely having more important things to do than warm up his hands at the moment. Ted grabbed Luis’s legs in turn, attempting to pull him from the fence. Matt strained and pulled, fighting the grip of Ted, face as red as his beard and uniform as he growled. He grabbed for Luis’s chest, but before he could get a secure grip, Luis sloughed off the top half of the jumpsuit, having wiggled his arms through the sleeves. Matt felt a muscle in his back tear as he pulled Luis over the fence. Ted, still gripping Luis’s jumpsuit, flipped backwards as Luis cleared the top of the fence and kicked him in the nose. The two of them slammed into the ground, groaning in pain. Matt shook off the dust and pulled his torn up bag from the foot of the fence, Luis doing the same before they ran into the empty expanse of desert.

They ran and ran and ran, collapsing at the crest of a hill overlooking the park, beside an empty, dust-covered road. Luis groaned and laid on the ground, orange dirt staining the white tank top that was once underneath the jumpsuit. Matt turned around, watching the sun set over the Gordian Knot of rollercoasters. He pulled the map of the park from his ruined bag, looking at the picture of it, then the real deal. New tracks of roller coaster had manifested, grown into the dirt like the roots of a tree, encroaching beyond the surrounding fence. Matt squinted, watching distant red specks struggle against the chain link fence. He turned his head back to the road, seeing a bus amble down the asphalt, kicking up clouds of dirt and dust. Matt stuck out his thumb and Luis leaned up from the ground, smiling.

“I think that counts as putting in my two weeks right?”

“Maybe,” Matt said, smiling back. “Let’s wait ‘til we’re home for sure.”

“Nothing like knocking off early.”