The tunnel opens up, and we float through a picnic scene. Two animatronic figures—a young man and woman—sit on a blanket by a large basket filled with food. They’re dressed in fifties attire, which well suits the theming for the area, though the music is more like something out of the eighties. Their heads rock from side to side with the playful beat as a large bipedal rabbit hops into the scene and begins to sing.
Two animatronic birds descend from the ceiling, each of them holding a butcher knife in their scaly feet. They sway to thebeat, then swoop down and slice open the animatronic throats. The robotic heads tip back, and blood jets over us as we jerk back in shock.
“What the fuck kind of love tunnel is this shit?” Quinn says with a laugh. “I fucking love it.”
The boat jerks forward again, and the song continues its refrain behind us, with the happy animals occasionally belting, “At the picnic!” as we depart.
The merry tune gets a bit softer. This time we’re stopped in front of a drive-in theater. We can only see the shadows of two figures in the car, but it’s easy enough to figure out what they’re doing. The car rocks with their efforts as two animatronics—a smiling hot dog and a dancing popcorn bucket—bounce into the fray. The music picks up again, and they begin to sing.
“What the fuck is even happening?” Quinn says with a laugh.
Both the popcorn and the hot dog brandish knives and start stabbing into the windows as they croon the next part with unrestrained glee. More blood sprays out and splatters over our skin, but when I look down, I realize it’s just warm water. The lighting makes it look red.
“I’m going to have this idiotic tune stuck in my brain for eons after this,” I groan.
Quinn gives me jazz hands as the boat lurches forward again. “At the drive-in.”
“Ach, don’t you start.”
The next scene is more of the same, this time featuring a couple getting engaged by the very stream we sail down. Just as the animatronic man gets down on one knee, a pair of sentient garden gnomes appear from the bushes and start singing about how great love is down by the river. Then they pull out machetes and lop off the heads of the man and woman. It shouldn’t be romantic, but somehow, it is.
Just knowing that Quinn and I share this secret sickness the forest creatures sing about is enough to make my heart swell.
The ride floats beneath another purple willow, and we’re back at the station. I exit the swan boat first, then help Quinn onto the platform. We exit the ride and squint into the fading afternoon sun.
“Well, that was an experience,” she says. “It certainly wasn’t what I expected.”
“No, but it was good fun.”
“At the picnic,” she sings, then skips ahead a few steps. As she spins to look at me, I can’t help but pinch myself. She’s a fucking dream.
I don’t know what I’ve done in my sorry life to deserve a gift such as her, but I sure hope I’ve done enough to keep her forever. I want her to get on my last nerve for the rest of my natural life. Maybe the next as well. What a life we’ll have in Scotland if I can only get us there.
“Wait up,” I say as she skips toward the fun house.
She looks over her shoulder with a flirty smile, the trouble with our missing stalker all but forgotten. “Catch me if you can, Scotland Yard.”
And with that, she darts into the building.
I don’t run to catch up with her. The wee thing needs a head start, and I’m going to allow her that. When I catch her, however, I won’t allow much of anything other than whimpers as I make her come. I’ll pin her down and?—
“Looking for someone?”
The hairs on my neck rise as Desmond’s voice reaches my ears. I turn toward him. He’s standing a few feet away beside a drink stand, clutching a lemonade in his hand. With a smirk, he draws the straw into his mouth and sucks some of the tart liquid down his throat. He smacks his lips and smiles at me.
Footsteps pound nearby, and Jim and King round the corner at a sprint. When they spot me standing a few feet from Desmond, they come to a halt. The men look between us, then come closer.
“Desmond, there you are,” King says with a forced smile. “We’ve been wondering where you’d got off to.”
The man runs his hand through his dark hair, and sunshine glints off the gray running through his sideburns. “You caught me. I spotted something on the gondola ride and wanted a closer look. Didn’t mean to raise the alarm.”
“No alarm raised,” Jim says. “I just prefer to keep a constant head count. We lost one of our own at the Sinners Retreat one summer, and I don’t want to go through that headache again.”
Desmond clucks his tongue. “Such a shame. Did you ever catch the bloke who did it?”
Bloke? Since when do American men use the termbloke?
King seems to catch the slip as well, and we share a look as Jim brushes right past it.
