Dear reader:
This is a major departure from my other fanfics, both in subject matter and in stylistic presentation. Whereas A Rather Wonderous Journey is semi-directionless angsty nihilism and wanderlust with a touch of cosmic horror, this one is going to be horror of a more traditional sort, similar to the genre which in Spanish is called realismo mágico.
In other words, less robots, fewer schadenfreudic jokes where the meaning of life is the punchline, and more attempts at both genuine sadness and conventional spooks. And, as the idea for this was initially developed for the now cancelled 2017 /r/Zootopia Halloween Anthology, this thematic departure seems entirely appropriate. Although an official, complete anthology will probably never see the light of day, I decided to try to finish my part of it anyway, if only because it's a compelling story that I feel demands to be told. It will be happy at times, and heartbreaking at others, so strap in, buckle your seatbelt securely, and please keep all hands and feet inside the car at all times.
Also, this is my first real foray into the first-person literary perspective, so we will see how/if it works out.
The doctor's office, like my day up until now, and the rest of this damned city, was somewhat shitty.
Yet again, My boss at the bug-burga plant chewed me out over some nonsense he'd pulled out of his ass, making me far later for my shift as a result of his lecture than I had ever been as a direct result of my own actions.
Although the first phase of the pawpsicle hustle had gone somewhat well, those jerks with their fucking BMW ran over my tail, again, and after taking a hard fall in Little Rodentia and getting ticketed for it (which was somewhat understandable, as their apartments are literally built from pawpsicle sticks and toothpicks), I found myself in some sketchy-ass doctor's office over semi-severe neck pain.
The armadillo, who seemed ever so slightly smug about the whole affair (though not nearly as much as yours truly), entered the room and heaved an almost comically large metal cylinder onto a shelf. Behind him, in a hardly concealed state of panic, entered his assistant, a ditsy-eyed squirrel whose brain was probably the size of a walnut. Somehow, in spite of the near-omnipresent oppression those bastards saw fit to levy against us, and the visible symbols of that subjugation that we were forced to wear at all times, the very same collars that punished us for even the slightest hint of any emotion, whether or not we acted upon or even displayed it, they were still afraid of us, somehow convinced that we'd rip them apart if we got the chance.
Although considering what those uppity asshats had done to me personally, what they had done to my friends and to my family, I probably would have ripped her a new one, if only to wipe that look off the cud-chewer's face.
So in a way, you could say that her fears may have been ironically justified.
Nevertheless, the irony that surrounded my hatred of her didn't do a thing to stop it. For many of us, a dull, constant animosity was the dominant emotional state of our existence as it was one of the few feelings we could sneak past the collars.
The doctor held an X-ray in his hand, my collar blocking the view of the troubled region just as it had blocked any chance of lasting joy for its victim.
Oh, did I say victim? I meant-
Actually, come to think of it, 'victim' seems to be a perfectly accurate description for the poor schmuck who has to wear the damn thing.
At any rate, the doctor had just entered, and realizing that the collar was obscuring the X-ray, he was forced to do what many considered unthinkable.
"I understand you've injured your neck...we are going to have to temporarily remove your collar for the checkup."
Perhaps today wouldn't be so terrible after all. Terrible or not, it was most certainly the most interesting thing to happen to me all month...It's not everyday you get your collar off...Of course! It all made sense now: The nurse wasn't afraid of me personally, however, she was not only convinced that us preds could go savage at the drop of a hat, but she also knew that the perfect opportunity to do precisely that, without the "TAME" collar in place to stop me, was coming up very soon.
I could almost taste the blood.
The doctor dropped the friendly facade as a rather grim expression clouded his face. Already he was strapping into what seemed to be a hazmat suit. Did he think I was going to mistake him for a fire-hydrant or something? Come on...
Hey, I only did that once, and I was three at the time.
"Have you ever had it off before?"
"No, but I have my pants off, and we're all enjoying that."
Of course, I was lying through my teeth.
Well, actually, I was telling the truth about my macabre enjoyment of not wearing pants (there's a damn good reason I know Yax so well). That part was merely the truth cloaked in sarcasm.
No, I was lying about having my collar off, and frankly, under the circumstances, you would've lied about it too. Truth really is stranger than fiction, and when Lovecraft suggested that maybe there are things that we shouldn't know, I dare say, being someone who does know, that he was on to something.
Yes, As a matter of fact, I had taken my collar off once before. Or, more accurately, someone else had taken mine off for a while. I couldn't have been more than 10 at the time, and it was, without a doubt, the single best day of my life, then or now.
It was also by far the single worst day of my life. No contest there. Even now, just thinking about it makes me-
*BZZZZT!*
DID I EVER MENTION HOW MUCH I HATE THESE FUCKING COLLARS?!
LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT JUST HOW MUCH I FUCKING HATE THOSE THINGS!
THERE ARE 387 MILES OF ROADWAYS IN THIS GODDAMN CITY, AND IF THE WORD "HATE" WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANO-ANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR THESE FUCKING THINGS!
Hatred. Pure, unabated, hatred. I hated the city, I hated those buck-toothed, cud-chewing shitheads, and I really, really fucking hated the black demons, the literal fucking embodiment and enforcers of our collective misery!
And as it came off with an anticlimactic click, the agony lifted.
For a brief moment, I was free of the hatred, alone again in a mind that was now well and truly mine, sans the alien metal prods that sought to ruin everything.
And in that freedom I saw, and felt, things that would would make lesser mammals shit gilded bricks. For no longer was I in the city, heavens no!
So where was I, Heaven? No. It was my old happy place, dredged from the depths: the amber waves in the wheatfield, on the trail that cleaved the inland sea to beyond the sunrise, where a great crimson metal basilisk beckoned to me with its twisted, spindling track, glistening in the morning dew. It roared over the hills and spiraled through the air, not a dead thing with wheels but as if it were great creature, the embodiment of all I had lost to the city.
And as the soul-crushing despair of the city once again ensnared me, my hatred returned, stronger than ever. And this hatred began to twist the scattered memories of my happiest day, already having come back so vividly in that office, into something else. Something more.
Recollections were now visions, nostalgia and longing had become a burning ambition: A dream, an obsession, a quest began to coalesce in my mind, one that screamed from the very depths of my soul, demanding realization:
WILD TIMES!
And by god, I'd done it!
The same obsession utterly consuming my mind for weeks at a time, seeping into every last facet of everything that I did, the same dark procession perpetually gnawing at my heart.
I got up in the morning for Wild Times.
I slaved away under that goddamn beaver for Wild Times.
I took out a loan from Kolsov, surely riskier than trying to rip your collar off in the precinct 1 ZPD station, for Wild Times.
My every thought, my every word, every step that I took and every second of every day, haunted by the dark melodies of my best nightmare that wasn't and was.
And as I stood once again before the familiar tombstone, steeling myself for what was to come, it only got louder and louder, rocking my world to its core.
"Well, this is it..."
It had been the hardest 6 months of my life, but I had really done it this time! No bullshit.
"...Everything's ready..."
More all-nighters than I could count, the daily grind in the warehouse, welding this, repainting that, hot-wiring the other thing, the latest item on a list of problems a million miles long.
"...The point of no return..."
But a million miles is still finite, and 6 months nowhere near an eternity. Now I stood at the finish line, having concluded both. I resumed my all too familiar ritual and wrenched myself away from the granite obelisk, continuing my walk to the edge of the city. I didn't have time to grieve. Not that the collar would've let me, anyway.
"...Wild Times is opening tonight..."
Of course, I was about to fix that.
My heartbeat climbing as I neared my clinic, my collar shot all the way to orange as I rounded the corner and laid eyes upon it, as if in protest of what I was about to do.
I told that piece of soulless metal and plastic to go fuck itself.
A dingy, beat-up, abandoned fast food joint sat at the edge of the city, a stone's throw away from a cliffside and the wharf that lay below.
It had been repainted and rebranded as a walk in clinic, a deceptively minimalistic sign advertising our specialty in neck and lower back pain. Like all good lies, a grain of truth lay at its center (we were technically ridding predators of a pain on their necks), oblivious to the enormity and grandeur of the falsehood now surrounding it:
Only this wasn't one of my cons: it was so much more. My hopes, my dreams, not to mention my entire life for the last 6 months, All pent up within that building, and the warehouse behind it. Soon it would be the best thing to hit this city since sliced bread or underwear. Already a pair of wolves and an otter, equals in inequality, both in physique and in society, were loitering by the entrance, as if they were waiting for opening night to commence. One of the wolves taking a long drag from his cigarette before he spoke to me, in the very same thick accent that I had heard countless times over my checkerboard career.
"E iz vaiting inside."
Ah yes, of course Kolsov would be here for the opening night. It was his money that I'd dumped into this place, and he was as excited as I.
But not for himself. Kolsov, the master of both discipline and vengeance, was the closest a man could get to an unfeeling robot, and certainly one of the most emotionless people in the city...
With two very noteworthy exceptions.
Hell hath no fury like an angered Kolsov. You fuck with his money, he fucks you up bad.
He also had a son, who he loves dearly, more so than all else, and his 6th birthday had come and gone. Try as I might, neither my antics in the clown costume, nor any amount of his money, could do more than dull the pain of that day. His Kolsov, the monolithic godfather of a local mafia, and one of the richest (and most powerful) preds in the city, was every bit as utterly powerless as I to stop the pain, to end the shocks. It was the great equalizer, itself perpetuating the greatest inequality.
In spite of my cleverness, and for all of his money and influence, neither of us alone could set ourselves free, let alone Morris. And yet, for all his hardened shell, the same that struck fear into his enemies, the very man who personally threw people into the ice pit to die: even he couldn't stand to see his son in writhing in agony.
So when I'd pitched my resuscitated dream, he'd listened.
When I'd asked for money, there was no contemplation, no interrogation, none of the usual hoops to jump through.
Just a sack of cash, and sadness as cold as the bear who wore it, that bear and his son now waiting for me.
But if I succeeded (and I had every reason to think so), then that would all end today.
Not forever. Hell no. This would be little more than a patch job on a tire that had been shredded to pieces.
But maybe, for a little while, things could be alright.
Perhaps we could be happy for a change? Wouldn't that be nice?
I stood in the lobby of the office I now owned, only a few feet from the bear who, through the institution of debt, more or less owned me at this point.
Although this place would certainly make the money back by the end of the year. Those old rides had practically been saved from scrap (some in surprisingly good condition), and the abandoned warehouse itself was dirt-cheap. Like it or not, I was still at least partly in it for the profits, and I was reluctant to outright waste someone else's money (especially when that someone else was Kolsov). Besides, this place was going to make a fortune.
Clawhauser emerged from the broom closet, stuffing a doughnut (which he had paid for himself, mind you) into his face, as usual.
"Hey Nick-" he mouthed "We're ready down there."
"Daddy?" Morris piped up. "Is this the surprise?"
"Ush now, Chriistmas com early this year."
I cleared my throat.
"Well, it's time. Follow me."
I lead them past the front desk, currently being manned by Honey of all people, and down the building's lone hallway. As we reached the end, I entered what appeared to be an exam room on the right, both bears following.
In the corner sat a seemingly innocent cardboard box, measuring about a foot in every direction.
Of course, like the rest of this place, its appearance was very deceiving.
"Is that the surprise?"
"No."
The room had a panel of several light switches mounted near the door. After flipping several of them several times in a very specific order (This part had been Honey's idea. Gotta' keep the secret tunnel a proper secret, y'know?), a false wall swung away like an enormous door, revealing a set of unpolished concrete stairs descending into an increasingly dank and semi-unfinished cinderbrick tunnel.
Even without seeing where it lead, Morris was transfixed by this relatively benign secret.
"Is that the surprise?"
"No."
I grabbed the box and flipped another switch, activating a set of Christmas lights that had been strung down the tunnel where the stairs met the walls, illuminating them as if the tunnel were instead a low-budget nightclub.
"Is that the surprise?"
I glanced upwards to Kolsov, calculating whether or not he'd be furious if I even slightly rebuked Morris. However, he himself seemed slightly annoyed, so I answered for him.
"No, neither this, nor any of that other stuff so far, is or has been the surprise. Trust me, you'll know it when you see it. So please, stop asking."
"Well couldn't you just tell me?"
"But it wouldn't be a surprise if I did, would it? It's more fun this way, and besides, you'll see it soon enough."
I cleared my throat and returned my gaze to Kolsov.
"Right this way, Sir."
Although I had made this decent dozens of times, and knew for a fact that it was less than 60 feet, it still felt like it was taking forever.
"Iz ther no other vay into Wild Times?"
"Well Sir, there are other entrances."
I said as I gestured to the plastic duct mounted on the ceiling. It was a slide installed for smaller customers (it's an awfully long flight of stairs if you're less than 2 feet tall), and was Finnick's favorite entrence.
"But those are all either for staff use only and filled with stuff that Morris has no business touching, or else they're way too small for a mammal of your size. No offense."
"Ah."
"Also, none of them are even remotely as well decorated as this one, though the slide also has a few lights."
Coincidentally, we just so happened to pass the old Katt Monroe poster I'd hung in the tunnel, one of the many art deco relics displayed in an attempt to enhance the otherwise sparse atmosphere. Having been printed well before the collars were even invented (during segregation and all that jazz), Katt's neck was appropriately bare. I'd found it on the site of a former crackhouse one day (and don't ask me what I was doing there. I will never tell!) and I had nothing better to do, either with my time or with it.
We had finally made it to the bottom of the stairs, by far the most boring thing here.
"So thiz is it? No?"
"Why yes sir, it's just through that door."
I swung open a tall, somewhat out-of place spruce door, and we entered a cavernous room that was almost entirely unlit, save for the hazy beams that came in through the door. All of the windows had long ago been painted over (you know, 'cuz it's a secret), and as such, even I had trouble seeing what was inside. I set the box down, and gingerly removed the collar key from the sea of packing peanuts that it had been shipped in, cradling it like it was the Holy Grail or something.
Come to think of it, for us preds, it might as well have been the Holy Grail.
"Here Morris, hold still."
His collar came off with a disquieting click, his feet glued to the floor. For what seemed like an hour, he was petrified, staring at the source of his misery, held in his hands.
His left wrist twitched, the sole crack in his fascade beginning to spread as his eyebrows lowered. His feet shifted, his eyes narrowed, and he screamed, throwing the accursed thing into the shadows.
It was then that Morris' persona did a 180 in a split second. Now Giddy and excitable, almost unable to contain himself, he pranced about, rejoicing in his freedom, while I released Kolsov and myself from the metaphorical mental cages, hanging our collars on a nearby rack.
Morris, who despite being only a cub, was already nearly my size, leapt for his father in what was a proper bearhug, sobbing in joy.
"Oh daddy, this is the best day ever!"
"Well Kolsov, I believe I owe you an apology..."
"For vhat? This is vonderful!"
"For wasting your money..."
Kolsov's demeanor had suddenly shifted. He his was now the look of a tidal wave of anger behind a paper-thin veil. With his collar now off, there was nothing but himself and my punchline to stop those claws from disembowling me right there on the spot.
"...I mean, look at Morris just now. If I had known that the simple act of removing his collar would've made him this happy..."
I made my way (in semi-awkward silence) to a somewhat antiquated breaker-box mounted on the wall, Kolsov's stare only intensifying as I did so.
"...Then I never would've bothered to build all of this other cool stuff!"
With the flip of a switch and the push of a button, all of the lights came on one by one, illuminating Wild times in all of its glory: Rollercoasters, disco-balls, rusty gantries, carnival-thrill-rides, cheesy-ass games (that were probably rigged), popcorn stands, cotton candy stalls, and more gratuitous Christmas lights than you could count, all in plain view.
I reached for my walkie talkie as an earsplitting whine echoed through the room; the Wild Times speaker system coming online at long last. Expensive as hell? Yes. Totally worth it? Absolutely.
"YO FINNICK! HIT IT!"
"ALL ABOARD! HAHAHAHAHAH!"
Of course Finnick would play Crazy Train over those things. It was his favorite song, and, as listening to it usually triggered a fit of shocks, it was also entirely appropriate to play here. And as we had tried to sound-proof the place, we were free to blast it till the sub-woofers broke.
"Hey Morris?"
Morris' jaw was practically on the floor.
"This is the surprise."
Morris snapped out of it and ran off, screaming in some sort of elation as the guitar riffs soared through the place.
"Oh, vait...you vere joking 'bout part where you vaste my money!"
"Of course I was, I'm not that stupid."
"XA! That vas good joke...Do not do it again."
"...Yes, sir."
At last, his composure broke.
"DAH! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh I had you fooled good Mr. Vilde! *FOOLED!*"
Considering the usual punchline of his jokes (icing), I dare say I might just be the first mammal in the city to both pull a fast one on and subsequently get duped by Kolsov without dying in the process."
"As you said, there's a time and a place for that. But right now, I've got a show to run, and the crowds will show up any second now, because we're open!"
It had been an especially long day at work for Mr. Manchas.
Now, he was sitting behind a long line of cars at a red light on the way back to his apartment, where he'd probably rub one out on the couch before crashing for the night, only to get up and repeat the same old cycle the next day.
His phone, which he kept in the cupholder of his beat-up sedan, went off. Surprisingly, for a man who drove a high-class limousine (and for the mob, no less) for a living, Mr. Machas' car was about as shitty as a car could be and still function.
Checking the light and seeing that it was still red, he grabbed his phone and read the text. It was from one of his friends, a polecat he'd known since middle school:
HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT IT'S REAL
Mr. Manchas stared in disbelief. No, it can't be!
But it was. His phone went off again, receiving an image. He gazed upon the enticing thumbnail, only becoming more and more impossible as it grew to fill the whole screen: The polecat, grinning like a crazy person, barenecked and in front of some...technicolor rollercoaster?
Mr. Manchas was dragged back to reality by an impatient goat in an old red truck, blaring on the horn.
"LET'S GO, ASSHOLE!"
Almost without warning, surprising even himself, he put his car into gear, and made a rather abrupt 2-point u-turn, speeding off to Wild Times.
His misery tomorrow would have to wait.
SEVERAL HOURS LATER:
We had opened at sundown on this fine October night.
It was now 12:30 AM, and the party was only now beginning to slow. Perhaps we'd close for the night at 2? I'd never really put a lot of thought into this particular question, and I was in no mood to stop now. Hell, if it hadn't been for all the people I'd leave behind, I would've kept on partying here 'till I dropped dead! As awful as life can be for us chompers, that ain't a bad way to go.
Partying oneself to death.
At any rate, we'd reached the point where the number of guests entering had been overtaken by the number leaving, those poor souls once again taking the shackles of this world, and re-entering the hell that was Zootopia. In a way, having been truly, unabashedly happy for the first time in decades, they were now sadder than ever, and yet I'd wager that if given the choice, not one of them would say they regretted their decision to come here, most of them probably counting the days till they could return.
Was it really moral to do this? To sell freedom, the most addictive drug there is? As I of all people should know, if you get so much as one taste of it, you're hooked. In my obsession for my own release, this issue had never once even occurred to me, but now that I had done it, I began to realize that I'd probably created at least 300 addicts tonight.
Some things you simply cannot foresee.
Speaking of which: A few of my patrons had passed out, from exhaustion or excitement, nobody knew. A lion who I could swear I had seen on TV one time had ironically blacked out on the Roar-A-Coaster, requiring a team of three mammals to get him out of the car. There was also the occasional pile of piece of trash, and one or two puddles of vomit. But hey, that's the price of running a theme park! There'd been a few minor hangups, but as far as I was concerned, the opening night had so far gone off without a hitch, my now uncollared mind at ease amidst the equally unconstrained laughter of the children.
Was it an addiction? Absolutely. There was no way in hell these people could just go back, yet I couldn't ignore their laughter.
Yes, an addiction. A liberating addiction. A profitable addiction.
One that was beginning to go to my head.
For the second time, I grieved, peering into the musty photo on my desk.
For the second time, I rejoiced, once again taking in the sights and sounds of what I had done.
And when that got old, I emerged from my office and returned to the arduous task of micromanaging the super secret preds-only homemade underground theme park that was only barely legal by a little-known technicality at the best of times.
No, wait, scratch that. I emerged from my office and returned to the arduous task of micromanaging MY super secret preds-only homemade underground theme park that was only barely legal by a little-known technicality at the best of times.
Yes, it was mine, entirely mine.
My memories that had become this place.
My friends and I who'd built the rides.
My vision to set us free.
Our obsession to reanimate my happiest day.
My sanity teetering on the line if it failed.
My ass in the pound if we get caught.
Finnick, who was currently manning the decollaring booth in an outfit that was little more than a cheeky nurse costume, had found himself fiddling with his zippo, the key tucked away in a drawer beneath the counter as he waited for what was now the trickle of newcomers to bring forth the next mammal.
"Hey Finn, how's it hanging 'round here?"
"Same old, same old. Leodore Lionheart came through here about 2 hours back."
"So that's who he was!"
"Excuse me?"
"Oh, some lion fainted on the Roar-A-Coaster. No big deal."
Finnick's face shifted from mild amusement to one of disspassionate concern, he leaned around me, as if to check something.
"Hey kid, what'cha doing over there?"
Finnick reached down to retrieve the key. Despite the fact that if any of the cops got this far, we were all well and truly fucked, and the fact that there was no way they could get that far (I don't call it a secret park for nothing!), he still kept it hidden when it wasn't in use, as if that would save him.
"Why don't you just come on over, and I'll-"
At this moment, Finnick realized that something was wrong. He'd spent the last 5 and a half hours in a sea of bare necks, and had already gotten used to seeing preds without the familiar green light. It had therefore taken him several seconds to notice that the kid's collar was broken, its indicator light dead black, flashing red once every few seconds.
"Yo Nick, that kid's got a broken collar!"
I turned, and saw nobody.
"Finnick, what the hell are you talking about?"
Honestly, this wasn't funny. If someone's collar broke, than they'd have to get it replaced. And when someone got their collar replaced, they had to explain why their old one broke, as a broken collar is no better than no collar at all.
And if it had broken within the park...Then somebody might start putting 2 and 2 together...Of course, they do sometimes just break, no reason or rhyme to it.
Not that the cud-chewers care.
"I swear, Nick! There was a fox kit with a non functioning collar right there."
He pointed to a dimly lit spot in the corner, roughly 40 feet from the booth. Sure enough, nobody was there.
I got up, embarking on my next chore, now ever so slightly worried.
"Well if you see 'em again, let me know."
2:37 AM
So I'd been to see Honey, told her to get the soldering iron
And he hadn't shown.
Then I'd toured the park, keeping tabs on my rides.
And I never saw him once.
Now I was in my office, counting our money and calculating park finances. We'd closed 10 minutes ago, having sent every last guest trudging up the stairs. All the collars, perhaps excepting those of my staff, who had yet to realize that they too would have to put them on, were off the rack and once again on the poor necks of their victims, this mystery kid nowhere to be seen.
Finnick, Ricky, Honey, Trevor, Clawhauser, Mr. Lehey, Randy, and myself were now the only occupants within the our cavernous realm of fun, now silenced and dark. The lights had been shut off, the speaker system muted, and the others were busy tidying up the place before we left for the night.
There had been roughly 500 guest tickets purchased, and over the course of the night, we'd sold out our popcorn supply, and somewhere around 350 sodas, plus few other minor things. Altogether we'd taken in $10,875.65 in revenue from our opening night alone. Granted, our profit margin right now was less than 5%, leaving a mere $60 for each of us, with another $60 set aside for the mafia beancounters. I still wasn't exactly the richest mammal in Zootopia, but even on opening night, I was already pulling minimum wage from this place, and I began to seriously contemplate the logistics of going full-time, although that would depend on how well the park did in the long run.
Maybe people would get bored of it and move on.
Maybe they would come back and bring their friends.
Only time will tell...
Having finished my math (the one thing I was good at in school), I set my pencil down and sighed, turning to the now all-too-familiar spot on the shelf where it lay. It was a musty old photograph in an equally unimpressive frame, each and every scratch in the paint having long ago been memorized. In the photo stood a fox kit, his emerald eyes already jaded by both the world in which he had lived and by the march of time since then, fading the once brilliant picture. The photograph had been shot in front of the door of my childhood home, the fox wearing his toothy grin in spite of the atrocity that glared from his neck, the lens flare from the collar tarnishing the otherwise happy memory.
"Well, we did it. All these years and it's finally here. No pretend..." At those final words, holding the closest thing I had to a motive, I lost my composure, my head collapsing on the desk as I sobbed.
"Yo Nick, who you talking to?"
Somehow, caught in my own theatrics, I hadn't noticed Finnick's entry. Perhaps he'd heard me.
"Nobody." I set the photo down.
"Didn't sound like nobody to me. You alright, man?"
"Finnick, I'm fine."
"No Nick, you ain't fine. Not even close."
"Well then I guess you've got me there."
"Come on, Nick. No secrets."
I sighed.
"But Finn, this one's different."
"Nick, we pinkie-swore to tell the truth! Don't you remember?"
"Yeah but this one...I don't wanna' tell!"
"Well then fine!" In hindsight, his anger was understandable. We'd been besties for years, and as kids, we'd sworn to honesty. You can't keep secrets from the man you're running a con with, or else your plans get fucked up and you go to the slammer.
But this wasn't no ordinary secret.
Finnick peered around me, glaring at the picture frame. "Then I'll just have to ask about that damn photo of yours."
"What about it?"
"Why the hell do you keep it there?"
"Well Finnick, I gotta' have something on my desk."
"No, why that specific photo?" As usual, he saw right through my attempt to dodge the question.
"As far as a snapshot of childhood innocence is concerned, that ain't it, on account of that fuckin' collar! Seriously, you've got that crazy grin of yours seemingly plastered on every square inch of this place-" (for the record, this was a mostly accurate statement) "yet here you are staring at this one musty old photo. Why? What makes that picture of you so damn special?"
He had me cornered.
"Because...because it ain't me, Finn."
"Then who is it?"
"...Inspiration."
"Inspiration?"
"Well that's about all I can tell you without keeping us here 'till 5 AM."
"I don't have any plans tomorrow. Just tell me everything, OK?"
"Then you best pull up a chair, because we're going to be here for a while. You remember when I first pitched the idea for this place to you guys?"
"Yeah, and we all thought it was the biggest load we'd ever seen! But you showed us, didn't you?"
"Well Finnick, I did do that."
"So what about your sales pitch?"
"Well, do you remember the part where I said I'd had the idea during that trip to the doctor, when he said the thing..."
"Richest mammal in Zootopia?"
"Yes! That's it! Well Finnick, to tell you the truth, I was lying. In reality, I'd had that idea kicking around in the back of my head for a damn long time, and that doctor had almost nothing to do with it."
"So how did you get the idea?"
"Well Finnick, that is where he comes in."
I once again gestured to the photo on my desk, surely one of the most precious things I owned, aside from the park itself.
"Now before I go any further, I must ask you for a favor: Nothing I am about to tell you is to leave this room. Not. A. Word. Is that understood?"
He sighed.
"Yeah, I guess even besties have secrets."
"And As you are about to find out, I had a damn good reason to lie through my teeth on this one. Quite frankly, I was hoping to take it to the grave...so, where do I begin?"
"Well, who's the kid in the photo?"
Happy belated Halloween!