Chapter 7: The Theme Park Trap

Chapter 7: The Theme Park Trap

The noise was the first lie. A cacophony of manufactured joy—the tinny, looping music of a carousel, the delighted shrieks from a distant roller coaster, the rhythmic thump-thump of a carnival game—all of it conspiring to create an atmosphere of frantic happiness that felt obscene. The air, thick with the cloying sweetness of spun sugar and the sharp, salty tang of the sea, was a second lie. It was all a cheerful, brightly colored facade, stretched thin over the gaping silence between Sara and her mother.

She was here because of a memory that wasn't hers. A phantom suggestion, planted in the chaotic reshuffling of her mind during Milton’s “favor.” Take her somewhere happy, a voice that sounded like his had whispered in the jumble of her thoughts. Seaside Heights. The pier. She always loved the pier. She couldn't place when he'd said it, but the idea had taken root in her fractured consciousness, blooming into a desperate, last-ditch plan.

And so, here they were, two weeks after her father’s death in the original timeline, wandering through a paradise for people who weren’t broken. Her mother was a ghost in the vibrant crowd, a pale, monochrome figure drifting through a world of saturated color. Her eyes were distant, her steps slow and shuffling. She wasn't seeing the flashing lights or the laughing families; she was staring into the void her husband had left behind.

“How about the Ferris wheel, Mom?” Sara asked, her voice painfully bright. “We can see the whole ocean from the top. Remember how you and Dad used to ride it every summer?”

Her mother blinked slowly, as if surfacing from a great depth. “Your father was afraid of heights,” she murmured, her voice a dry rustle of leaves. “He only went on it for me.” The statement wasn't a fond reminiscence; it was just a fact, another small, sharp piece of her loss.

Still, she didn’t resist as Sara guided her towards the towering, slow-turning wheel. The plan, as insane as it was, felt like it was teetering on the edge of working. As their carriage climbed, lifting them above the noise and the crowds, a fragile peace settled between them. The setting sun painted the horizon in strokes of orange and violet, and the ocean was a vast, glittering expanse.

“It’s beautiful,” her mother whispered, and for the first time in weeks, her gaze seemed to focus on something other than her own grief.

“Yeah,” Sara said, her throat tight. “It is.”

They sat in silence for a moment, the sea breeze cool on their faces. Then, her mother reached out, her hand resting over Sara’s on the safety bar. Her touch was light, her skin papery and cool. “Thank you for this, sweetie,” she said, and when Sara turned to look at her, she saw it: a smile. It wasn't her old, full-throated smile, but a small, watery, fragile thing. A flicker of light in the crushing darkness. It was a single, perfect blade of grass pushing its way through cracked concrete.

Hope, fierce and painful, surged through Sara. Maybe this could work. Maybe she could anchor her mother to this world, stitch her back into the fabric of life, one small, stolen moment at a time. As the wheel began its descent, Sara unconsciously pressed her other hand against her stomach, her fingers tracing the three numb lines beneath her shirt. A reminder of the price. A price that, in this single, hopeful moment, almost felt worth it.

They stepped off the ride and back into the throng. The temporary peace was shattered by the press of bodies and the wall of sound. Sara kept a firm hold on her mother’s arm, navigating them towards a vendor selling popcorn. The plan was simple: keep moving, keep distracting, keep building on that fragile smile.

“Sara!”

The voice cut through the din like a shard of glass. It was sharp, breathless, and utterly, horribly familiar.

Sara froze, her blood turning to ice water in her veins. It couldn’t be. He was in her present, a triumphant, monstrous figure who had already played his part. He couldn’t be here, in the past.

She turned slowly, a dreadful, mechanical certainty guiding her movements. Her mother looked at her, confused by her sudden halt. Sara’s eyes scanned the crowd, the sea of unfamiliar, laughing faces.

“Sara! Thank God, I found you!”

There. Leaning against the railing of a ring-toss game, gasping for breath. It was Mr. Milton. But it was the wrong Mr. Milton.

This wasn't the energized, victorious man from the car park. This was the man from the support group, the one she’d met ten months from now. He was paunchy and pathetic, his cheap shirt buttoned to the neck, sweat beading on his pale forehead. His glasses were askew, and his eyes—those cold, obsessive eyes—were wide with a desperate, frantic panic. He looked utterly lost and completely terrified. A man who shouldn’t exist for another ten months was standing twenty feet away from her, and he knew her name.

“How…” she breathed, the single word stolen by the sudden roaring in her ears, a sound like roaring static. “How do you know my name?”

He pushed himself off the railing, stumbling through the crowd towards her, his movements clumsy with desperation. People sidestepped him, annoyance flashing on their faces.

“I didn't think it would work,” he panted as he reached her, his voice a ragged whisper. He grabbed her arm, his gloved fingers digging into her bicep. His hand was trembling violently. “He was just there, in my apartment. For a second. He looked… he looked like me, but older. Shinier. He told me to come here. To this exact spot, at this exact time.”

Sara’s mind struggled to assemble the pieces, but they were the components of a machine she couldn’t comprehend. He was just there. Her Milton. The one from the future. He hadn’t just gone back to see his wife. He had gone back to see himself.

“He told me…” the past-Milton rasped, his eyes dropping to her coat pocket, the pocket where the cold, heavy weight of the boomerang rested. His gaze was no longer just desperate; it was filled with a feverish, ravenous hunger. “…he told me you’d have it.”

Before she could process the implication, before she could scream or pull away, his free hand shot out. It was the same shockingly fast movement from the car park, but this time it wasn’t practiced—it was raw, primal need. His fingers latched onto her pocket, ripping the fabric as he plunged his hand inside.

He wrenched the metallic pebble free, holding it up between them.

The world tilted on its axis. The cheerful music of the pier warped, bending into a low, dissonant groan. The laughing faces in the crowd smeared into terrified blurs.

She looked from the pebble in his trembling hand to the horrifying, dawning understanding in his eyes, and then to her mother, whose fragile smile had been replaced by a mask of pure confusion and fear.

It was never a favor. It was never a simple trip to see his wife. It was a bootstrap paradox. A self-fulfilling prophecy. He had used her—a living, breathing time machine—to come back and give himself the weapon that would start it all.

The trap she never knew she was in, the one that had been set before she’d even met him, had just been sprung.