Juliette Miranda

“You need to stop talking. Now.” 

I’m not normally one to be quite so snippy, especially when talking to my guy. But when gripped with a terror that is so intense I can feel it vibrating in my ears, conversation is the last thing I can handle.

My guy meant well, of course. He likely didn’t expect to have to go on suicide watch when he agreed to our outing. Not that I cared; I was too busy sucking back the world’s most violent panic attack.

“You don’t have to do this. We can get up right now,” my guy said.

I shook my head. Every Halloween I like to mentally vegatize myself in new and torturous ways, and I was determined to see it though.

As soon as we started moving, I knew I had miscalculated my threshold for pain. It wasn’t just the speed, or the rumbling, or the horrid sinking feeling that made me long for a sharp knife to plunge into my chest, it was the thought that for the next 2-ish minutes, everything that happened was completely out of my control. And that’s when I ceased breathing.

Try as I might, I am never going to like roller coasters.

I warned my guy of this before we embarked on our trek to Fright Fest at Six Flags Great America, but I’m not sure he entirely believed me. Admittedly, the outing was my idea. What kind of idiot would want to go to a theme park known exclusively for its roller coasters if they hate thrill rides in general?

Me, actually.

But it was more the haunted houses, freak show and Halloween festivities that lured me to Great America; not the prospect of discovering what a prelude to a heart attack feels like. Still, it being Halloween and all, riding a roller coaster seemed a fitting celebration in seeing just how much I can scare myself.

What I wanted was the same exhilaration I feel when watching horror movies or walking through haunted houses; what I got was a physical nightmare that brought me closer to knowing what demonic possession must feel like than I ever wanted to experience.

My guy, I’m sure, was on the watch for my head to start rotating. If my pale face and dead silence in line wasn’t his first clue that something was amiss in my little world, then the obscenities I started spewing the moment I got buckled in to the ride made my terror all the more vivid.

“What the fuck have I done? Fuck me. This fucking sucks! I want to fucking die!”

And that was before the ride had even started.

My guy tells me that as we climbed the first hill, I started clawing at his leg. I have no recollection of this, though I suspect it was some sort of primal urge to dig myself out of the grave I had deliberately thrown myself into.

As the cart plummeted and banked and turned, my eyes rolled back into my head. I could only liken myself to Linda Blair in The Exorcist, where she’s being flung violently up and down on her bed, body shaking and screaming out for help.

Of course, my terror didn’t end when the ride did. The scariest part of my night was when the ride pulled into the dock and I attempted to bolt from the cart. My seat belt unbuckled easy enough, but the safety bar refused to budge.

“Get me out of this thing!” I wailed, terrified that the ride would somehow take off and I’d be forced to endure it another time.

Pulling, yanking and cursing, I couldn’t get the damn bar to move. The person waiting to take my seat tapped his foot impatiently.

“Let the power of Christ compel you! Let the power of Christ compel you!”

No amount of praying or holy water would move that bar. My guy thankfully stepped in and said, “You have to press it down first, then pull it up.”

Yep, that’s me: the retarded Exorcist.

While I do harbor some amount of pride in surviving the ride and my own demons, I can’t say it’s something I ever want to do again. If anything, it has only affirmed my decision that Disney World is indeed the best possible place to spend Halloween week, both for the atmosphere, and the gentle “short bus” rides.

My guy, who is still prying my fingernails out of his leg, couldn’t agree more.

(Two pictures from the night are below, a before and after. Click thumbnails for larger images.)