Previous installment: The Wheel: Part 2, The Wheel
Start at the beginning: The Wheel: Part 1, Jack Colby
Where we left off: Jack and the family returned for a Ferris Wheel ride, and it went horribly wrong. After envisioning multiple horrific scenes, Jack watched as one of them came true, and a gondola broke loose, plummeting his wife and daughter to their deaths and leaving him helpless to do anything to prevent their fate.
Voiceover narration: Andrew Thomas
Art: Jenelle Thomas https://alovelygiraffe.com
Content Warning: This section of the story contains graphic content that could be upsetting to some. If more details would be beneficial for you and you aren’t concerned with spoilers, click this footnote1
Return to a New Earth
Jack began to scream. His bellows were animalistic, guttural, devoid of the spark of intelligence. They seared his throat in waves and unknowable patterns, but slowly his bleating began to take some sort of recognizable shape as his raw emotions coalesced into triple-distilled anger.
“GET ME OFF THIS FUCKING FERRIS WHEEL YOU ASSHOLES!!” This and many more creative obscenities poured from him like the notes of a frantic saxophone solo.
Below, the crowd was writhing like a massive tentacled beast. Parents fled while covering the eyes of their screaming children. One woman, glowing with the warmth of youthful motherhood, crashed her stroller into a curb, launching her infant son unceremoniously to the ground like a leftover paper cone that had once held a pink cloud of cotton candy. The resulting closed head injury snuffed out the baby’s potential just as it would snuff out his mother’s life eight months later.
Those who weren’t concerned with the mental scarring of children screamed themselves. Some retched up Gibby’s Fries and deep-fried Oreos, some ran, and still others remained in a sort of ghastly viewing gallery that had formed a half-circle around the scene. Several carnies shut down the surrounding rides and raced towards the wheel. One of them was reluctantly tasked with calling 911. Another weathered woman had the sense to try and shoo the crowd away.
It didn’t work.
In the moments when Jack’s screaming sobs went silent, the other riders could be heard. Some cried themselves, others shouted demands and ultimatums to be let down. Eventually, the reality of the situation sank in with most of them. The ride, if you could still call it that, wouldn’t resume anytime soon.
At a festival of this size, cops were always present, and a few rushed on foot to the scene even as emergency calls were being made. Police cruisers rolled up urgently not long after, weaving through the dispersing crowd. From his vantage point above the city, Jack saw the first ambulance lights as they careened down the Parkway. The sight rekindled his rage even as a new, unasked-for, sense of finality began to creep in. He began to yell again and insist to be let off, but the despair that threatened to overtake his anger twisted his calls into pathetic, mewling begging.
Moments later, the ambulance arrived, and Jack realized what this meant: the horrific mess that was once his wife and daughter would be shoveled into the ambulance and carted away long before his feet would meet the ground. He leaned further over the edge, swinging the gondola perilously. Justin cried out behind him.
“Let me down,” Jack pleaded, his voice now hoarse and trembling with tears, “No, don’t take them away!”
As the paramedics climbed out and gathered around the two corpses, Jack sat back into the hard seat, dropped his face into his hands, and cried harder than he had known was possible. The gondola seemed to vibrate with his emotion.
Through his tears, Jack peered over the edge of their enclosure again, just in time to see his daughter’s legs disappear into the ambulance. He began to scream again as it drove away, but his throat and lungs couldn’t keep up the deluge any longer. His voice took on a new, high-pitched quality that sounded so alien that, if asked, even he would have trouble identifying it as his own.
Soon, his vocal cords betrayed him and refused to give voice to his wind. His last cry hung on the air with nothing more around it than the oppressive humidity, and that was when he heard Justin behind him. His son was no longer just crying but half-yelling in terror. Jack turned and saw he was still curled on the seat like a defenseless fetus, each outburst coming in a halting, staccato cadence lacking any real pattern. He had never heard Justin sound so frightened in his life—not when he woke up from nightmares, not when brake lights from a car across the street reflected off something in his closet, creating a pair of floating red eyes. Jack moved to him and pulled an unwilling hand away from Justin’s face. Justin recoiled, eyes wide with fear. He tried to back away, but there was nowhere to go.
Jack watched this terrible reaction with a sense of horror barely eclipsed by what he had witnessed mere minutes prior. The eyes that stared back at him were not seeing a father. They beheld a demon; a jagged shard of a broken mind that had, in its flailing, mutilated the strands that bound father to son until only one bloody, unbreakable, adamantium cord remained: the cold fact that Justin was a product of Jack Colby’s body.
“Oh my god Justin, I’m so…” He reached for his retreating son and pulled him close, trying to offer as much comfort as his fractured thoughts would allow. Justin remained curled up and stiff for long moments and then slowly, so painfully slowly, began to relax within his father’s grasp. His fear subsided and turned into simple tears.
When the wheel smoothly began to move nearly half an hour later, Justin blinked as he wavered between the waking world and that of emotionally exhausted sleep. The side of Jack’s chest was sweaty where Justin’s head lay, but he didn’t notice that or the forward motion. He simply stared at the bay and the slowly ambering sunlight that illuminated the scattered clouds above it.
Jack and Justin reached the top of the circle, what would normally be considered the best part of the ride, with the town spread out around them and the bay reaching out of sight. The festival continued to bustle north of the Parkway, but the road, and everything south of it, had been cleared and blocked off by the police.
Little by little and in slow increments, the Ferris wheel rotated, letting passengers off as it was safe to do so. All eyes and ears were on the dangling gondola that once held Sheila and Megan as it groaned and creaked with each turn. Suddenly, the ride shook and its riders screamed all over again as it finally came free and crashed into the one below it before tumbling off with a clang and smashing into the deserted Parkway. Jack’s left eye started twitching, but otherwise, neither he nor Justin moved. They sat silently—Jack with his arm around Justin, Justin with his head resting on Jack’s chest—waiting for their turn. Each crank of the wheel brought them closer to their new, unasked-for reality.
When it was finally time for them to get off, they slowly descended the metal ramp as if in a daze. Jack’s feet hit the pavement, and he felt every last ounce of hope seep through his sandals. He stood now on the crust of an Earth where his wife and daughter did not exist. Like an automaton, he took Justin’s hand and began to walk, wholly unaware of the nearby Police officers trying to get his attention.
“Sir…sir!”
Jack continued walking, not in defiance but in shocked ignorance. There was no reason this man should need to talk to him. One of the more zealous cops reached out and grabbed his arm, finally breaking the spell.
“Sir, were you related to…”
The officer paused as Jack turned and made eye contact with him.
“…to the woman and girl who fell?”
Jack blinked at him, as if he had been asked to spell an archaic word, but he couldn’t decide if the word was real or not.
The officer continued, “This gentleman,” he pointed with his thumb over his right shoulder, “said you were together in line, is that right?”
Jack followed the gesture and saw a short, fat man in a red shirt. His hair was black, and his wiry mustache matched it. Years of sun exposure had left his skin looking like a recently oiled leather boot. Jack had seen that face before in what felt like another life.
“You.” Jack pointed at the carny. “This is your fault.” He began to quiver, dropped Justin’s hand, and took a step forward. “If you hadn’t split us up, this wouldn’t have happened!” In his rage, Jack didn’t consider the fact that all four of them would have boarded the faulty gondola had they been allowed. “This is your fault!!” he screamed.
The man quailed before Jack. He shook his head in denial, and tears jiggled upon his eyelids.
“NO! You are not allowed to cry! This is your fault!!” Jack’s rage was white hot.
He began to advance, and strong arms grabbed his right shoulder.
“Let me go!”
Jack tried to shake the cop off, but another grabbed him from the left.
“Sir, this was an accident, a terrible accident.”
“I don’t care, I just want…” Jack began but trailed off.
He didn’t know what he was about to say he wanted, but that wasn’t what stopped him. To his left, another cop was beginning to shout, “Son. Son! Come here!”
Jack turned and saw Justin walking cautiously toward the base of the wheel. Beyond him, there was a generator partially obscuring a man who was spraying the ground with a hose.
“Oh my God…” Jack turned, and this time the cops holding him let go. “Justin! Come here!”
Justin continued to walk, oblivious. Jack leaped into action, his anger temporarily forgotten. He took five long strides and grabbed his son by the shoulder. Justin didn’t resist; he simply stopped.
“Justin, no. Let’s go.”
“Dad, where are Mom and Megan?” He never took his eyes off the carny with the hose.
Jack nearly choked on the glut of emotion that came vomiting up from his gut. Fresh tears sprang to his eyes, almost as quickly as the hand that rushed to cover his mouth. He squeezed his eyes shut, forcing the tears to run down his face. Justin didn’t have much of a concept for what had happened, not really. He had covered his eyes and retreated into himself as Jack raged and grieved and despaired.
“Um, they are…” Jack cleared his throat forcefully. “I think they’re at the hospital, bud.”
“What is that man spraying? Aren’t they over there?”
“No, he’s just cleaning—”
“I want to see if they are over there.”
“Justin, no!”
“I want to see what he’s spraying!”
“I said no, now let’s go—“
“WHAT IS HE SPRAYING?” Justin began to run wildly and stumble as he went. His feet slammed into the pavement and rattled his body with each footfall. It looked as if they weren’t landing quite where he wanted them to, but he barreled on, oblivious to everything but the man with the hose. He had closed half the distance to the base of the wheel when Jack suddenly realized he needed to act fast. He sprinted like he hadn’t since high school and grasped Justin’s shoulder, jerking his body harshly to the right. Justin struggled and tried to break free, but Jack was now holding the flailing boy with both hands.
Unable to get away, Justin spun around and yelled, “I WANT TO SEE MOM!!”
Jack had never seen his son so angry. His corrective, fatherly instinct—so near to the surface at all times—quickly fell to shambles as Justin screamed with all his might, and he saw himself reflected in miniature form. He dropped to his knees, wincing as a small pebble dug into his kneecap, laid his hands on Justin’s shoulders, and met his son’s seething gaze.
“I do too, bud, but she’s not over there. She’s…she’s gone.”
Justin glared at him. He looked so angry that he could spit. He blinked several times, and it looked like he was trying to squeeze his own tears back into whence they came. This tore Jack apart, and he began to sob quietly, but hard.
All at once, Justin’s furious determination seemed to rush out of his body, and his strength went with it. He slumped forward into Jack’s arms and buried his face. Emotion shook his small body, and Jack cried with him until they could cry no more.
Content Warning: This scene depicts accidental death/harm to children and allusions to self-harm.
…I wondered if it was a dream or he imagined it 😭powerful chapter, poor Jack and Justin
"shoveled into the ambulance"
Damn. What a line