Coney Island Adventure

There’s a roller coaster in Coney Island called Thunderbolt, but everyone knows it’s not the real Thunderbolt. The real Thunderbolt, a loopless wooden structure, was destroyed in the 1980’s by a government that sited public safety concerns. I’m kinda like that second Thunderbolt, except I’m named after my grandfather and not an old ride. I’m called Skarroan, but even I don’t think of myself as the _real_ Skarroan. And like the second Thunderbolt, I’m much more daring than the older version. My grandfather would never have dreamt of leaving our ghetto and making his way to Brooklyn just so that he could steal hot dogs from the original Famous Nathan’s and climb on a bunch of amusement rides. No, the real Skarroan lived his life as he was told, keeping out of the human’s sight and thus their minds.

I did go to Brooklyn though, one afternoon in my fifteenth year of life. All it took was an invisibility potion and a subway train. And isn’t that amazing? I didn’t even have to change trains to get from the borders of my limited little world to a land of amazement and hope. Once upon a time, when people would sail into New York harbor on their journey to this country, they saw Coney Island before they saw the Statue of Liberty. Coney Island was where the welcome to America sign belonged.

I wonder sometimes whether the people on those boats were really as welcome as the textbooks would have us believe. Of course, none of them looked anything like me, and maybe that helped. My kind came later, seeping in through cracks in the universe to find ourselves in a world that didn’t even believe we existed. “Go back!” the humans screamed. “We can’t,” my great-grandparents explained. Even if the portals worked both ways, which they don’t, the world my forefathers fled from would have killed them if they’d gone back. The fact that no one has come through in nearly a century backs up the claim that the world they knew was dying, as do the stories of the last people through.

The Merreller couldn’t return from whence we’d came, so the humans reluctantly let us stay. They put a lot of rules into place, cordoned us off our own neighborhoods, and tried to forget we were there. And my ancestors had to go along with it, because what choice did they have? It was that or fight the humans, become the monsters they labeled us. The taking of intelligent life is a sin to my people, the way it apparently isn’t to humans despite their holy books saying otherwise. We’re vegan, for crying out loud; we’re not going to start a war.

Now, the astute amongst you have probably noticed that I claimed both that I’m vegan and that I went to Coney Island in part to steal hot dogs, presumably to eat. And both things are true. I only knew two things about hot dogs going into that day: they get eaten in mass quantities in a widely publicized eating contest, and they aren’t actually made from dogs. It was only once I was at Famous Nathan’s that I realized hot dogs are made from a different animal, a cow. Appalled, I left without taking any, so I still haven’t ever had a hot dog.

Nathan’s was a disappointment, but I still had the rides to look forward to. Except… I didn’t. What I actually had to look forward to where a collection of little signs informing me that the attractions were closed until April. This explained why there were so few humans around, I supposed, but was a bit of a downer.

Coney Island wasn’t living up to my wild expectations, but I still had plenty of time left on my invisibility potion, so I jumped a gate to get onto the subway and rode to Times Square. It was crowded there under the dazzling array of lights and I worried about people bumping into me. But they never did… After a few dozen humans redirected themselves to avoid hitting me, I realized they must have known I was there.

I walked up to a group waiting for the light to change so they could cross the street. “Excuse me,” I said to one of them, a female with a fluffy white coat that reminded me a bit of my Aunt Migardi.

She looked straight at me and as she responded, “Yes?”

“Um… So, you know I’m here?”

Based on the human dramas I watch on TV, her squint meant that she was confused by the question. “Yeah.”

“And you aren’t upset?”

“No. Should I be?”

“Well… My kind… It’s illegal for me to be here.”

She shrugged. “You’re not hurting anyone.” And that’s all she said because the instant the light switched, she joined the herd migration across the street.

I smiled as the human left me, and even though everyone around me saw and undoubtedly noticed the big, pointy teeth that supposedly terrified humans, no one screamed or yelled or acted like they were having a heart attack.

On the way home, I told all of this to a man on the subway. He chuckled. “It’s New York,” he said, as though that explained everything.

Needless to say, that was not my last trip out of the ghetto.

Image prompt is Coney Island Dreams by Subway Doodle. It was offered as a prompt on my MeWe Wording Wednesday group.