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Description
Wicker Man, as in the roller coaster itself, was in worse shape than what it’s spirit looked like after his death. It had no shape at all, actually. When The Severing occurred, the second Tenisha died from the flames engulfing her, a rush of energy coursed through each and every wooden beam and plank the ride was made of, causing them to burst like an overinflated balloon. The coaster exploded into billions of shards of burning wood and splinters. The station and maintenance building collapsed from having the exploding track inside them, although luckily, those buildings contained no people. A mist of smoke lingered over the rolling field of embers where the timber structure once stood, thickened by smoke from fires caused by both the explosion and the sacrifice. Eventually, the fires went out and the air cleared up. Today, rain had taken over the park, the future of which was questionable. Some said that the necessary repairs should be made and the park reopened, arguing that the park was important to the theme park community for it’s world first rides and contributions to the industry’s history. Others supported the idea of the park getting permanently shut down, claiming that the park had been the sight of other tragedies and horrific urban legends, plus the park’s attendance would be severely reduced by the incident to the point that it was pointless to try to keep it going.
On the hill where Wicker Man once stood, right below where the highest part of the ride was, the mist returned. Sparks came out of nowhere as the mist spun around itself and collected until it became something more solid.
“Gah! Rain!” A female voice echoed through the wet air. “Woah!” She zoomed down the hill at a speed that should have beyond impossible for her legs, which she could not feel touching the ground, and dived into a building. She did not go in through a door, she did not blast a hole in the wall, she simply barreled towards the wall and was suddenly inside when she should have slammed into it. There was absolutely no light inside. She still couldn’t feel the ground. She did feel tired, and had a headache. She wasn’t sure what exactly was happening to her before she ended up here. There was a forest, and fire, and she was in a lot of pain, and she couldn’t move, and no one else was around… and suddenly, it ended.
“Hello?” she called. No one answered. She was still alone. She noticed that suddenly, there was light… coming from her. Her skin wasn’t just unhealthily pale; it was white as snow. The green shirt she wore was now gray and tattered. She looked around at the contents of the room. There were shelves holding various objects, which were all made with the same style. They were wooden, and decorated with a stick figure in a circle and the name “Wicker Man”. The name scared her, but she didn’t understand why. She felt that whoever the name belonged to was evil, but she wasn’t sure what they did. She just wanted to go to a place she was familiar with.
“I wanna go home, I wanna go home,” she repeated. She closed her eyes. And when she opened them, she was home. Or at least, she somehow knew it was home, even though it had changed. More specifically, burnt. Her bed was now little more than a pile of ashes. The entire room was charred. She stood for a while, shocked… then she looked down and realized that she wasn’t standing. She was floating. Where her legs should have been, her body transitioned into some sort of tail. Despite all the frightening things she was finding, she didn’t scream. She was too tired to scream. She didn’t know why she was so tired. She felt a wall. She was confused. She went through walls before. She thought about going through the wall. Her arm sunk through the darkened drywall. She followed her arm into a bathroom. No lights were on, and there was a blind over the window, but her body still was glowing. The mirror revealed her face to her. Her complexion was as inhumanly pale as the rest of her skin, and her eyes were black with orange irises. The area under her eyes was dark, highlighting her tired feeling. She finally realized why she looked so strange.
“I’m… a ghost,” she said to herself. She floated out to the hallway. She heard voices coming from downstairs. Familiar voices. Her tail grazed the steps as she went downstairs. She was delighted to see her parents in the dining room… but they weren’t exactly pleased to see her.
“AAAAAAH! Honey, what is that thing?!” her mom screamed. Her dad grabbed a cross.
“Mom! Dad! It’s me, Tenisha!” This silenced them, but only for a couple seconds.
“No. You’re not Tenisha. Tenisha was a believer. She’s in Heaven now. Nobody comes back from Heaven. You’re some demon who’s trying to lure us into a trap!” He swung the cross at Tenisha, who responded by accidentally launching a fireball from her hand. It didn’t hit anybody, but it did add to the damage the house had received. After that, she gave up on trying to convince them she was their daughter and let them angrily chase her out of the house. Tearfully, she flew away from her home, across town, to somewhere else she knew. Unfortunately, she found this location was also burnt, and to a worse degree.
At this point, Tenisha’s head was clearing up. She now remembered what happened before she was sent to that fiery prison. Sam’s family had gone missing and there was some sort of attack in his neighborhood. Then Sam appeared upstairs the night her parents were Cloakbroken, with a red cloak and glowing eyes. And when she came up to him, he shoved a rag soaked in some chemical into her face, and she fell asleep. Sam had kidnapped her. And a coaster spirit named Wicker Man was
She noticed that she saw something red behind the line of trees. It looked like a person wearing the same cloak as Sam… either that, or it WAS Sam. Hoping for the later, she flew through the black wreckage of his house and through the trees.
“Sam? Is that you?” she asked. The figure had been crouching down, and they jumped in surprise when she called out to them. They lowered their hood to reveal that they indeed were Sam. Tears were streaming down his face. It didn’t take him long to figure out who she was. Sam never would’ve expected to end up kissing a ghost, but that was exactly what ensued.
“I’m so sorry,” Sam croaked. “Wicker Man took control of me. I was forced to think I was his son, and I obeyed every order he gave me. He even gave me powers that helped me serve him…” he briefly let fire out of his hand. “Everything I did was against my own will. I would never hurt you, Tenisha.”
“What did he make you do to me? I… am I even dead? If we become ghosts and stay on Earth when we die, wouldn’t there be ghosts everywhere?” she questioned. She revealed her own fire powers. “I think he gave me the power, too.”
“There were other people that he took control of, using me. Together, we built a statue out of wood. After we captured you, we put you inside the statue and set it on fire, burning you to death…” he thought about it for a moment. “The purpose of sacrificing you was to magnify Wicker’s power… I think I get it now. Imagine that the universe is divided into three sections: Earth, Heaven, and Hell. They’re separated, but there’s paths leading to Heaven and Hell. When you died, Wicker Man pulled your soul off the path to Heaven and started drawing power from it. And when he died, you were freed from whatever he used to siphon energy from you, and your soul had been changed by Wicker Man’s influence. Unsure what to do with you at that point, the universe sent you back to Earth. Maybe you could compare it to a glitch in a video game?” Tenisha had a chilling realization.
“If I’m dead, but I’m still on Earth, does that mean… I can’t go to Heaven? I’m stuck here?” Sam stared at her for a second. Then he fell to his knees. The tears were coming back.
“I’m so, so sorry…” It was at that moment that a series of explosions began detonating in his head, blasting away the face of a kindhearted boy who accepted everyone regardless of their background or nature.
Wicker Man was only able to get to him because Lauren Cloakbroke him.
Because Lauren let Wicker Man get to him, millions of lives were ruined, if not unjustly and horribly ended.
Someone was stupid enough to put magic into the hands of people who either wanted to use it for evil or didn’t know how to use it for good.
In nearly every sci-fi and fantasy story, the villain attempted to use the fantastic to harm the mundane in ways and with success that can’t be achieved with normal guns, weapons, and vehicles. Sam stared into blank space, calmly reciting these discoveries to his girlfriend. His hands curled into tight fists and his face scrunched up. Then he inhaled and exhaled. He looked straight into Tenisha’s eyes. “Aren’t you angry?” Her eyebrows slanted downward, and her mouth became a scowl.
“Angry? Angry?! OF COURSE I’M ANGRY!” Her teeth sharpened and her nails grew into claws. She realized she had startled Sam and calmed down. “I haven’t really had time to think about how I feel about all this, but… yeah. I’m angry. Wicker Man forced you to kill me, I can’t go to Heaven even though I believe in God and am stuck as something most people are scared of, and my parents think I’m a demon pretending to be their daughter or something! They literally tried to beat me with a cross and chased me out of the house!”
“All so he could destroy humanity,” Sam growled.
“That was his big goal for all this? To drive us into extinction?”
“Yeah, according to Lauren. He went on a rampage in London and lead an invasion in New York. A massive amount of damage was caused and hundreds of thousands of people have died. It was like 9/11 on steroids.” They were both silent for a moment.
“What do we do now?” the ghost asked.
“Don’t you hate the idea of the supernatural taking over? Spirits and gods and the stuff of comic books mixing into society? Superheroes and villains fighting and tearing up the streets, while those who obey the laws of nature and science have to deal with their messes and will become seen as weak creatures as more and more of them come? Don’t you want things to go back to the way they’re supposed to be?” Tenisha nodded.
“Hell yeah, I do! I want to be alive and human again, and I want my family to accept me, and I wish none of this ever happened! It’s… who can we blame for this? They still don’t know how Lauren got her powers.”
“There’s a lot of people to blame, Tenisha. And I want to wipe them out.” Tenisha was caught off guard by this declaration.
“Wi… wipe them out?” she questioned. Sam took her hands.
“Tenisha, you probably never considered seriously hurting someone. You might have gotten feisty with kids at school for a couple things, but that was it. But now, the supernatural has seriously hurt us. You’ve been killed but kept on Earth, used for horrible things, and given a family that drives people away from you. I’ve had my mind separated from my body and been forced to help in an attempt to destroy the world. Let’s get revenge, shall we? Knock all those entities and freaks down until we’re the only ones left. We can even be hypocrites and use our powers against them, if we have to. If you don’t want to go as far as killing them, that’s fine, I guess. I’m sure there’s some way to imprison them or take away their powers. But if you don’t want to hold back, that’s great.” Tenisha went quiet again. “You’ve been kicked out of your home, my home is destroyed, and I’m pretty sure my parents are gone. We don’t have anything left to lose but each other, do we?” A small smile began to form on her lips. She grabbed Sam by the collar and pulled him into another kiss. Once they drew back, they were both grinning.
“You know what? This could be fun,” Tenisha declared. “Now, I kinda like that cloak you got. It just needs a bit of an upgrade.”

Even though he was often onstage, King Cyclone had never used a microphone before. He had seen people use one, however, so it was no struggle for him to learn how to use it.
“Hello, America. Thank you for tuning in to this speech,” he began. He looked out at a field of cameras, reporters, and citizens. Some of the people held signs that either welcomed the paranormal entities or… had less pleasant things to say about them. “Now I’m sure you all have hundreds of questions about the madness that has unfolded in the past week or so. In all honesty, I am not sure about some of it, but I at least can provide some insight. My main objective here is to explain what me and my kind are and how we are tied to the deadly attacks on Cleveland, London, and New York. To begin, we are called coaster spirits. There are elements to us that may invoke the image of a ghostly being, and- in an unusual deviation from the common depiction of the supernatural, I’ll admit- we are tethered to roller coasters. I suppose you could call us personifications of the rides. I am Coney Island Cyclone, the famed woodie of Luna Park and source of the infamous Red Flash. A coaster spirit develops and begins life the night before my coaster opened. While the Red Flash likely connects to my status as the firstborn of coaster spirits, we still are not sure what exactly it was the people of New York saw that night.” He went on to explain things such as The Cloak and how theming affects a spirit’s identity. After a while, a senator took his place to discuss his developing ideas for integrating coaster spirits into society. Once the press conference was over, Cyclone flew away, especially since some of the protesters were getting rowdy and he didn’t want to get caught up in any violence. His next stop was Lauren’s house.
“The speech went well, I see,” Nancy said as she let King Cyclone in. The Youngs had been watching the live broadcast of it, along with Misty and Beast.
“Yes, it did. Of course, much more will have to be done to establish a peaceful relationship between coaster spirits and humanity,” the king replied.
“Um, aren’t we supposed to bow to him or something?” Mr. Young questioned. “You… are an actual king, right?”
“Well, it’s more for show than anything,” King Cyclone admitted. “Yes, the spirits do see me as their leader and follow my commands… but we are very casual about it. I don’t really have any laws for them to obey. I don’t feel the need to demonstrate my power over them.” Suddenly, Racer and Bat burst in through the back door, whooping and hollering like a couple of rowdy teenagers.
“Yo, R and B in the house! Oh, snap! The Hurriking is here!” Bat yelled.
“Oh, look, the troublemakers are here. And what brings you two hooligans to the home of Cloakbreaker?” Beast snarked.
“We wanted to see the big hero, that’s all,” Racer said. “Where is she?”
“She’s in her room, with Misty,” Nancy directed.
“Oooh, they’re in the bedroom!” Bat suggestively wisecracked. He and Racer blew up laughing. King Cyclone rolled his eyes and went upstairs. He peeked through a half-open door to see a familiar red bob cut.
“Am I interrupting anything?” he asked.
“No, you can come in,” Lauren responded. “Oh! King Cyclone! Nice of you to show up!”
“Yeah, I just wanted to check up on you. Do you feel like you are ready to make a public statement about your experiences?”
“Eh, yeah, I think so. I needed some time to recover from the fight, but I feel like I can open up about it. I just need to figure out how to go about it. Maybe the government will have me come to a press conference, or maybe I could get interviewed by someone? I’m really not sure.”
“Hey, girls, what’s good?” Bat greeted as he phased through the wall with Racer in tow.
“Hey, Bat, we’ve just been checking out how people are reacting to the revelation of the supernatural online. Most people have only seen the attacks from Wicker and the Screechers, so… a lot of people aren’t too happy about it. But King Cyclone made a statement on live TV and explained the existence of coaster spirits and that most of us mean no harm, so the first step to making things right has been taken,” Misty explained.
“You’ve also been making out, right?” Racer asked. Both girls were struck by a wave of confusion and embarrassment.
“W-what?” Misty questioned.
“Just admit it, will you?” Racer urged. “You spend as much time as you can with her. You obviously are into her.” Lauren sighed.
“Racer, just because someone spends a lot of time with someone else doesn’t mean they like each other that way,” Lauren explained. “Misty, you don’t like me that way, right? Are you even a lesbian?”
“Uh… what’s a lesbian?” Racer and Bat cracked up at this. Lauren remembered that even though she looked and acted like a young adult, Misty wasn’t even two years old. There had to be some parts of life that she didn’t know about yet.
“Leave them alone now, boys. I have a premonition that things may soon get intimate between these two,” King Cyclone requested.
“Oooooooooh!” Racer and Bat sang. They finally flew away to screw around elsewhere.
“Take care, you two,” the monarch said to the girls. He waved the others goodbye as he walked through the living room and left the house. He shifted into Traveler mode, and the world became a blur as he rocketed towards New York. He slowed down once he was near the city. Flames still raged within buildings that the fire department had not gotten to yet, for the streets were clogged with piles of destroyed vehicles and broken concrete. While the destruction was nightmarishly severe in an unfortunately large area around Times Square, it gradually lessened moving away from the epicenter until the damage done was little more than a few craters and missing windows blasted into the facades of a block of buildings. The city had to be evacuated after Wicker Man was killed, as even though the portal was gone and they were freed from his control, the city was still infested with bloodthirsty Screechers. They no longer knew how to shoot fireballs from their hands, but they were still a threat.
King Cyclone sunk into his coaster like a scuba diver into the sea. The guards silently opened the door for him as he approached the entrance. Once he was inside, rather than heading straight to his throne room, he turned left into another hallway. Near the end of this hallway was another door with two guards. He effortlessly passed through this pair of guards, too. Behind the door was a stairway leading down to a dungeon, marked as such by the empty cuffs chained to the wall. Cyclone reached down and touched a brick low on the wall. He dragged his fingertip against the brick in a circular motion, causing a glowing red circle to appear on the stone. A section of the wall pulled back and slid sideways, allowing him to walk down another flight of stairs. This one led to yet another doorway with guards. Behind that was a pit with no visible bottom. Cyclone transformed and flew down the vertical tunnel, turning its stony walls red. He reached the bottom and transformed back. In front of him, a bridge led over a dark chasm, with two red lights at each end. As he walked over the bridge, trio of lumps barely visible from the light gained glowing eyes and rose, growling.
“Pyragotha,” King Cyclone said. “Let me in, please.” Doors slid open behind the creature, revealing a room with metallic walls. “Good Cerberus rip-off,” he snarked as he walked between the beast’s legs. He entered the room and placed his hand on a screen next to another set of doors. The screen scanned his fingerprints.
“Welcome back, King Cyclone,” a synthetic voice greeted as the doors slid open to reveal a red portal. King Cyclone took a breath and stepped into the portal, unsure where the upcoming conversation would go.

BAM! A bullet flung through the gasless air past it’s intended target and hit a wall. Where it struck, a black dot resembling a bullet hole was added to the object’s texture.
“No!” John groaned as the enemy swung at him with a pick-ax. That bullet was his last, while the other player didn’t need to worry about ammo. He swore as his character fell dead and the game over screen appeared. “Great… welp, better join a new match.” He heard a series of deep taps coming from outside. That meant someone was walking on the front porch. Then he heard the front door open. He figured his mom had come home from shopping early, until he noticed that he didn’t hear her car pulling in. Then John remembered that he had come out to get a package and forgot to lock the door after he came in. His stomach dropped like the first hill of a roller coaster as he realized that he had no idea who entered his house. Nervous, he left his video game and put an ear against his door to listen for whoever it was.
“Hellooo? Anybody home?” A voice asked. They giggled. The intruder sounded like a female, and a cheerful one at that. Being straight and single, John was very slightly comforted by this. But he knew better than to think someone breaking into his house was harmless just because they might be a cute girl.
“Uh… just me,” John said, figuring he couldn’t hide from this stranger forever.
“Well, could you let me in, please?” the intruder requested. He opened the door to find a full view of his visitor. She wore a black shirt with white stripes on the sleeves, an exposed midriff, and “The Smiler” written under a face-like symbol; yellow pants and overalls; and black shoes. Her hair was a messy pixie cut colored dark red with some brown showing through, and her irises were black and yellow swirls that somehow moved.
“Hey, there!” she greeted. “I’m Celia! What’s your name?”
“J-John,” he stuttered. He wasn’t sure whether or not to be freaked out. Celia was a stranger who had let herself into the house without anyone’s permission, and she looked rather odd- especially her eyes, but she seemed more playful than anything. Before John had a chance to keep her in the hallway, Celia slipped into his room and flopped onto his bed. “Woah, what are you doing?!”
“You were the only one at home, right? All alone? Why not fill that void of solitude with a girl in your room?” John’s cheeks went rosy.
“Uh, my parents will probably be home soon. Maybe you should leave before they catch you,” he said.
“Oh, don’t worry about them. They won’t mind if you have some fun with me. I just want to give you my own addition to the joy in your life.” She grabbed his hand and laid it on her belly. “You want to tickle me. Don’t deny it. Accept the urge, Johnny. Embrace your craving for affection.” John was conflicted. Calling Celia bizarre would be putting it lightly, and he didn’t want to get in trouble for playing along with whatever she was doing… but he didn’t want to pass the opportunity to get intimate with someone, especially a girl who managed to be so attractive despite her oddities. Finally, he succumbed to his urges and let his fingers spasm against her tummy. Her smile and laughter was infectious. Not quite able to hold himself back, John started using his lips instead of his fingers.
“You can, hehehe, kiss me up, hahahee, up here if you want to,” Celia offered while pointing at her face.
“Don’t mind if I do,” John responded. He climbed on top of her and she put her arms over his back, and their lips made contact. John felt like he was in a dream, but this was far too vivid to be his imagination, and he was thankful that it was real. He stared into her eyes, too entranced to notice her pulling a phone out of her pocket. A beeping noise escaped from the phone after Celia selected something, bringing it to John’s attention. The screen revealed a face with eyes similar to Celia’s, but with no white areas.
“Hm, yes?” the man greeted.
“Oh, Smiler… I caught someone,” Celia told him in a mischievous tone.
“Perfect,” Smiler responded. The screen went staticky, and John’s vision distorted as his surroundings changed. He and Celia were standing instead of laying down. Celia shoved him down into a chair and trapped him with cuffs.
“WHAT’S GOING ON?!” John screamed. They were in some sort of office, which had the same color scheme as Celia’s outfit. Celia marched over to Smiler, who was sitting behind his desk.
“All of the pamphlets have been distributed and John here has been collected. He likes to kiss me!” she gleefully reported.
“A job well done. Thank you, Celia,” Smiler replied. He got up and walked towards John, sticking his finger in Celia’s belly button along the way. “Love has consumed you, I see. Lucky for you, you’ll be able to spend lots of time with Celia after you’ve been marmalized.”
“Marmalized? Is that why you people kidnapped me? To cover me with marmalade?” John questioned. Smiler and Celia both laughed.
“Marmalization is covering you with marmalade! What a pun! What a silly image!” Smiler chortled. “Now, let’s take him to the correction chamber, shall we?” Celia spun the chair around and wheeled it out of the office, with Smiler closely following her. The hallways and rooms they went through continued the design style; decorated with a chaotic mixture of line-based designs, posters, phrases such as “get corrected” or “join us”, Smiler’s logo, video screens displaying barely coherent graphics, and old fashioned security cameras.
“So… what is Marmalization, then?”
“Good question, budding advocate! Marmalization is a correctional process designed to make you happy forever! You’ll never feel sad or angry or afraid ever again!” Smiler rather vaguely explained.
“Okay… that sounds nice, I guess. How does it do that?” They entered the room they were headed to, and the chair attached to a black track, which ran through a currently closed doorway to something.
“You, young man, are about to find out!” Smiler responded. He reached for a control panel and pressed a button. The doors swung open, and John was carried into a dimly lit hallway full of robotic arms and security cameras. Celia clapped and squealed, happy to have assisted in someone’s marmalization.
“No! Not needles!” John screamed just before the doors closed. Smiler watched him through the cameras. John shrieked in pain as his arms were stabbed with syringes of Kelmanium. Despite the total lack of joy John was showing, Smiler’s grin got a little bit bigger. The sight of this boy’s transition to an advocate meant The Smiler was one victim closer to having humanity under his control.

THE END, FOR NOW

Description
Wicker Man, as in the roller coaster itself, was in worse shape than what it’s spirit looked like after his death. It had no shape at all, actually. When The Severing occurred, the second Tenisha died from the flames engulfing her, a rush of energy coursed through each and every wooden beam and plank the ride was made of, causing them to burst like an overinflated balloon. The coaster exploded into billions of shards of burning wood and splinters. The station and maintenance building collapsed from having the exploding track inside them, although luckily, those buildings contained no people. A mist of smoke lingered over the rolling field of embers where the timber structure once stood, thickened by smoke from fires caused by both the explosion and the sacrifice. Eventually, the fires went out and the air cleared up. Today, rain had taken over the park, the future of which was questionable. Some said that the necessary repairs should be made and the park reopened, arguing that the park was important to the theme park community for it’s world first rides and contributions to the industry’s history. Others supported the idea of the park getting permanently shut down, claiming that the park had been the sight of other tragedies and horrific urban legends, plus the park’s attendance would be severely reduced by the incident to the point that it was pointless to try to keep it going.
On the hill where Wicker Man once stood, right below where the highest part of the ride was, the mist returned. Sparks came out of nowhere as the mist spun around itself and collected until it became something more solid.
“Gah! Rain!” A female voice echoed through the wet air. “Woah!” She zoomed down the hill at a speed that should have beyond impossible for her legs, which she could not feel touching the ground, and dived into a building. She did not go in through a door, she did not blast a hole in the wall, she simply barreled towards the wall and was suddenly inside when she should have slammed into it. There was absolutely no light inside. She still couldn’t feel the ground. She did feel tired, and had a headache. She wasn’t sure what exactly was happening to her before she ended up here. There was a forest, and fire, and she was in a lot of pain, and she couldn’t move, and no one else was around… and suddenly, it ended.
“Hello?” she called. No one answered. She was still alone. She noticed that suddenly, there was light… coming from her. Her skin wasn’t just unhealthily pale; it was white as snow. The green shirt she wore was now gray and tattered. She looked around at the contents of the room. There were shelves holding various objects, which were all made with the same style. They were wooden, and decorated with a stick figure in a circle and the name “Wicker Man”. The name scared her, but she didn’t understand why. She felt that whoever the name belonged to was evil, but she wasn’t sure what they did. She just wanted to go to a place she was familiar with.
“I wanna go home, I wanna go home,” she repeated. She closed her eyes. And when she opened them, she was home. Or at least, she somehow knew it was home, even though it had changed. More specifically, burnt. Her bed was now little more than a pile of ashes. The entire room was charred. She stood for a while, shocked… then she looked down and realized that she wasn’t standing. She was floating. Where her legs should have been, her body transitioned into some sort of tail. Despite all the frightening things she was finding, she didn’t scream. She was too tired to scream. She didn’t know why she was so tired. She felt a wall. She was confused. She went through walls before. She thought about going through the wall. Her arm sunk through the darkened drywall. She followed her arm into a bathroom. No lights were on, and there was a blind over the window, but her body still was glowing. The mirror revealed her face to her. Her complexion was as inhumanly pale as the rest of her skin, and her eyes were black with orange irises. The area under her eyes was dark, highlighting her tired feeling. She finally realized why she looked so strange.
“I’m… a ghost,” she said to herself. She floated out to the hallway. She heard voices coming from downstairs. Familiar voices. Her tail grazed the steps as she went downstairs. She was delighted to see her parents in the dining room… but they weren’t exactly pleased to see her.
“AAAAAAH! Honey, what is that thing?!” her mom screamed. Her dad grabbed a cross.
“Mom! Dad! It’s me, Tenisha!” This silenced them, but only for a couple seconds.
“No. You’re not Tenisha. Tenisha was a believer. She’s in Heaven now. Nobody comes back from Heaven. You’re some demon who’s trying to lure us into a trap!” He swung the cross at Tenisha, who responded by accidentally launching a fireball from her hand. It didn’t hit anybody, but it did add to the damage the house had received. After that, she gave up on trying to convince them she was their daughter and let them angrily chase her out of the house. Tearfully, she flew away from her home, across town, to somewhere else she knew. Unfortunately, she found this location was also burnt, and to a worse degree.
At this point, Tenisha’s head was clearing up. She now remembered what happened before she was sent to that fiery prison. Sam’s family had gone missing and there was some sort of attack in his neighborhood. Then Sam appeared upstairs the night her parents were Cloakbroken, with a red cloak and glowing eyes. And when she came up to him, he shoved a rag soaked in some chemical into her face, and she fell asleep. Sam had kidnapped her. And a coaster spirit named Wicker Man was
She noticed that she saw something red behind the line of trees. It looked like a person wearing the same cloak as Sam… either that, or it WAS Sam. Hoping for the later, she flew through the black wreckage of his house and through the trees.
“Sam? Is that you?” she asked. The figure had been crouching down, and they jumped in surprise when she called out to them. They lowered their hood to reveal that they indeed were Sam. Tears were streaming down his face. It didn’t take him long to figure out who she was. Sam never would’ve expected to end up kissing a ghost, but that was exactly what ensued.
“I’m so sorry,” Sam croaked. “Wicker Man took control of me. I was forced to think I was his son, and I obeyed every order he gave me. He even gave me powers that helped me serve him…” he briefly let fire out of his hand. “Everything I did was against my own will. I would never hurt you, Tenisha.”
“What did he make you do to me? I… am I even dead? If we become ghosts and stay on Earth when we die, wouldn’t there be ghosts everywhere?” she questioned. She revealed her own fire powers. “I think he gave me the power, too.”
“There were other people that he took control of, using me. Together, we built a statue out of wood. After we captured you, we put you inside the statue and set it on fire, burning you to death…” he thought about it for a moment. “The purpose of sacrificing you was to magnify Wicker’s power… I think I get it now. Imagine that the universe is divided into three sections: Earth, Heaven, and Hell. They’re separated, but there’s paths leading to Heaven and Hell. When you died, Wicker Man pulled your soul off the path to Heaven and started drawing power from it. And when he died, you were freed from whatever he used to siphon energy from you, and your soul had been changed by Wicker Man’s influence. Unsure what to do with you at that point, the universe sent you back to Earth. Maybe you could compare it to a glitch in a video game?” Tenisha had a chilling realization.
“If I’m dead, but I’m still on Earth, does that mean… I can’t go to Heaven? I’m stuck here?” Sam stared at her for a second. Then he fell to his knees. The tears were coming back.
“I’m so, so sorry…” It was at that moment that a series of explosions began detonating in his head, blasting away the face of a kindhearted boy who accepted everyone regardless of their background or nature.
Wicker Man was only able to get to him because Lauren Cloakbroke him.
Because Lauren let Wicker Man get to him, millions of lives were ruined, if not unjustly and horribly ended.
Someone was stupid enough to put magic into the hands of people who either wanted to use it for evil or didn’t know how to use it for good.
In nearly every sci-fi and fantasy story, the villain attempted to use the fantastic to harm the mundane in ways and with success that can’t be achieved with normal guns, weapons, and vehicles. Sam stared into blank space, calmly reciting these discoveries to his girlfriend. His hands curled into tight fists and his face scrunched up. Then he inhaled and exhaled. He looked straight into Tenisha’s eyes. “Aren’t you angry?” Her eyebrows slanted downward, and her mouth became a scowl.
“Angry? Angry?! OF COURSE I’M ANGRY!” Her teeth sharpened and her nails grew into claws. She realized she had startled Sam and calmed down. “I haven’t really had time to think about how I feel about all this, but… yeah. I’m angry. Wicker Man forced you to kill me, I can’t go to Heaven even though I believe in God and am stuck as something most people are scared of, and my parents think I’m a demon pretending to be their daughter or something! They literally tried to beat me with a cross and chased me out of the house!”
“All so he could destroy humanity,” Sam growled.
“That was his big goal for all this? To drive us into extinction?”
“Yeah, according to Lauren. He went on a rampage in London and lead an invasion in New York. A massive amount of damage was caused and hundreds of thousands of people have died. It was like 9/11 on steroids.” They were both silent for a moment.
“What do we do now?” the ghost asked.
“Don’t you hate the idea of the supernatural taking over? Spirits and gods and the stuff of comic books mixing into society? Superheroes and villains fighting and tearing up the streets, while those who obey the laws of nature and science have to deal with their messes and will become seen as weak creatures as more and more of them come? Don’t you want things to go back to the way they’re supposed to be?” Tenisha nodded.
“Hell yeah, I do! I want to be alive and human again, and I want my family to accept me, and I wish none of this ever happened! It’s… who can we blame for this? They still don’t know how Lauren got her powers.”
“There’s a lot of people to blame, Tenisha. And I want to wipe them out.” Tenisha was caught off guard by this declaration.
“Wi… wipe them out?” she questioned. Sam took her hands.
“Tenisha, you probably never considered seriously hurting someone. You might have gotten feisty with kids at school for a couple things, but that was it. But now, the supernatural has seriously hurt us. You’ve been killed but kept on Earth, used for horrible things, and given a family that drives people away from you. I’ve had my mind separated from my body and been forced to help in an attempt to destroy the world. Let’s get revenge, shall we? Knock all those entities and freaks down until we’re the only ones left. We can even be hypocrites and use our powers against them, if we have to. If you don’t want to go as far as killing them, that’s fine, I guess. I’m sure there’s some way to imprison them or take away their powers. But if you don’t want to hold back, that’s great.” Tenisha went quiet again. “You’ve been kicked out of your home, my home is destroyed, and I’m pretty sure my parents are gone. We don’t have anything left to lose but each other, do we?” A small smile began to form on her lips. She grabbed Sam by the collar and pulled him into another kiss. Once they drew back, they were both grinning.
“You know what? This could be fun,” Tenisha declared. “Now, I kinda like that cloak you got. It just needs a bit of an upgrade.”

Even though he was often onstage, King Cyclone had never used a microphone before. He had seen people use one, however, so it was no struggle for him to learn how to use it.
“Hello, America. Thank you for tuning in to this speech,” he began. He looked out at a field of cameras, reporters, and citizens. Some of the people held signs that either welcomed the paranormal entities or… had less pleasant things to say about them. “Now I’m sure you all have hundreds of questions about the madness that has unfolded in the past week or so. In all honesty, I am not sure about some of it, but I at least can provide some insight. My main objective here is to explain what me and my kind are and how we are tied to the deadly attacks on Cleveland, London, and New York. To begin, we are called coaster spirits. There are elements to us that may invoke the image of a ghostly being, and- in an unusual deviation from the common depiction of the supernatural, I’ll admit- we are tethered to roller coasters. I suppose you could call us personifications of the rides. I am Coney Island Cyclone, the famed woodie of Luna Park and source of the infamous Red Flash. A coaster spirit develops and begins life the night before my coaster opened. While the Red Flash likely connects to my status as the firstborn of coaster spirits, we still are not sure what exactly it was the people of New York saw that night.” He went on to explain things such as The Cloak and how theming affects a spirit’s identity. After a while, a senator took his place to discuss his developing ideas for integrating coaster spirits into society. Once the press conference was over, Cyclone flew away, especially since some of the protesters were getting rowdy and he didn’t want to get caught up in any violence. His next stop was Lauren’s house.
“The speech went well, I see,” Nancy said as she let King Cyclone in. The Youngs had been watching the live broadcast of it, along with Misty and Beast.
“Yes, it did. Of course, much more will have to be done to establish a peaceful relationship between coaster spirits and humanity,” the king replied.
“Um, aren’t we supposed to bow to him or something?” Mr. Young questioned. “You… are an actual king, right?”
“Well, it’s more for show than anything,” King Cyclone admitted. “Yes, the spirits do see me as their leader and follow my commands… but we are very casual about it. I don’t really have any laws for them to obey. I don’t feel the need to demonstrate my power over them.” Suddenly, Racer and Bat burst in through the back door, whooping and hollering like a couple of rowdy teenagers.
“Yo, R and B in the house! Oh, snap! The Hurriking is here!” Bat yelled.
“Oh, look, the troublemakers are here. And what brings you two hooligans to the home of Cloakbreaker?” Beast snarked.
“We wanted to see the big hero, that’s all,” Racer said. “Where is she?”
“She’s in her room, with Misty,” Nancy directed.
“Oooh, they’re in the bedroom!” Bat suggestively wisecracked. He and Racer blew up laughing. King Cyclone rolled his eyes and went upstairs. He peeked through a half-open door to see a familiar red bob cut.
“Am I interrupting anything?” he asked.
“No, you can come in,” Lauren responded. “Oh! King Cyclone! Nice of you to show up!”
“Yeah, I just wanted to check up on you. Do you feel like you are ready to make a public statement about your experiences?”
“Eh, yeah, I think so. I needed some time to recover from the fight, but I feel like I can open up about it. I just need to figure out how to go about it. Maybe the government will have me come to a press conference, or maybe I could get interviewed by someone? I’m really not sure.”
“Hey, girls, what’s good?” Bat greeted as he phased through the wall with Racer in tow.
“Hey, Bat, we’ve just been checking out how people are reacting to the revelation of the supernatural online. Most people have only seen the attacks from Wicker and the Screechers, so… a lot of people aren’t too happy about it. But King Cyclone made a statement on live TV and explained the existence of coaster spirits and that most of us mean no harm, so the first step to making things right has been taken,” Misty explained.
“You’ve also been making out, right?” Racer asked. Both girls were struck by a wave of confusion and embarrassment.
“W-what?” Misty questioned.
“Just admit it, will you?” Racer urged. “You spend as much time as you can with her. You obviously are into her.” Lauren sighed.
“Racer, just because someone spends a lot of time with someone else doesn’t mean they like each other that way,” Lauren explained. “Misty, you don’t like me that way, right? Are you even a lesbian?”
“Uh… what’s a lesbian?” Racer and Bat cracked up at this. Lauren remembered that even though she looked and acted like a young adult, Misty wasn’t even two years old. There had to be some parts of life that she didn’t know about yet.
“Leave them alone now, boys. I have a premonition that things may soon get intimate between these two,” King Cyclone requested.
“Oooooooooh!” Racer and Bat sang. They finally flew away to screw around elsewhere.
“Take care, you two,” the monarch said to the girls. He waved the others goodbye as he walked through the living room and left the house. He shifted into Traveler mode, and the world became a blur as he rocketed towards New York. He slowed down once he was near the city. Flames still raged within buildings that the fire department had not gotten to yet, for the streets were clogged with piles of destroyed vehicles and broken concrete. While the destruction was nightmarishly severe in an unfortunately large area around Times Square, it gradually lessened moving away from the epicenter until the damage done was little more than a few craters and missing windows blasted into the facades of a block of buildings. The city had to be evacuated after Wicker Man was killed, as even though the portal was gone and they were freed from his control, the city was still infested with bloodthirsty Screechers. They no longer knew how to shoot fireballs from their hands, but they were still a threat.
King Cyclone sunk into his coaster like a scuba diver into the sea. The guards silently opened the door for him as he approached the entrance. Once he was inside, rather than heading straight to his throne room, he turned left into another hallway. Near the end of this hallway was another door with two guards. He effortlessly passed through this pair of guards, too. Behind the door was a stairway leading down to a dungeon, marked as such by the empty cuffs chained to the wall. Cyclone reached down and touched a brick low on the wall. He dragged his fingertip against the brick in a circular motion, causing a glowing red circle to appear on the stone. A section of the wall pulled back and slid sideways, allowing him to walk down another flight of stairs. This one led to yet another doorway with guards. Behind that was a pit with no visible bottom. Cyclone transformed and flew down the vertical tunnel, turning its stony walls red. He reached the bottom and transformed back. In front of him, a bridge led over a dark chasm, with two red lights at each end. As he walked over the bridge, trio of lumps barely visible from the light gained glowing eyes and rose, growling.
“Pyragotha,” King Cyclone said. “Let me in, please.” Doors slid open behind the creature, revealing a room with metallic walls. “Good Cerberus rip-off,” he snarked as he walked between the beast’s legs. He entered the room and placed his hand on a screen next to another set of doors. The screen scanned his fingerprints.
“Welcome back, King Cyclone,” a synthetic voice greeted as the doors slid open to reveal a red portal. King Cyclone took a breath and stepped into the portal, unsure where the upcoming conversation would go.

BAM! A bullet flung through the gasless air past it’s intended target and hit a wall. Where it struck, a black dot resembling a bullet hole was added to the object’s texture.
“No!” John groaned as the enemy swung at him with a pick-ax. That bullet was his last, while the other player didn’t need to worry about ammo. He swore as his character fell dead and the game over screen appeared. “Great… welp, better join a new match.” He heard a series of deep taps coming from outside. That meant someone was walking on the front porch. Then he heard the front door open. He figured his mom had come home from shopping early, until he noticed that he didn’t hear her car pulling in. Then John remembered that he had come out to get a package and forgot to lock the door after he came in. His stomach dropped like the first hill of a roller coaster as he realized that he had no idea who entered his house. Nervous, he left his video game and put an ear against his door to listen for whoever it was.
“Hellooo? Anybody home?” A voice asked. They giggled. The intruder sounded like a female, and a cheerful one at that. Being straight and single, John was very slightly comforted by this. But he knew better than to think someone breaking into his house was harmless just because they might be a cute girl.
“Uh… just me,” John said, figuring he couldn’t hide from this stranger forever.
“Well, could you let me in, please?” the intruder requested. He opened the door to find a full view of his visitor. She wore a black shirt with white stripes on the sleeves, an exposed midriff, and “The Smiler” written under a face-like symbol; yellow pants and overalls; and black shoes. Her hair was a messy pixie cut colored dark red with some brown showing through, and her irises were black and yellow swirls that somehow moved.
“Hey, there!” she greeted. “I’m Celia! What’s your name?”
“J-John,” he stuttered. He wasn’t sure whether or not to be freaked out. Celia was a stranger who had let herself into the house without anyone’s permission, and she looked rather odd- especially her eyes, but she seemed more playful than anything. Before John had a chance to keep her in the hallway, Celia slipped into his room and flopped onto his bed. “Woah, what are you doing?!”
“You were the only one at home, right? All alone? Why not fill that void of solitude with a girl in your room?” John’s cheeks went rosy.
“Uh, my parents will probably be home soon. Maybe you should leave before they catch you,” he said.
“Oh, don’t worry about them. They won’t mind if you have some fun with me. I just want to give you my own addition to the joy in your life.” She grabbed his hand and laid it on her belly. “You want to tickle me. Don’t deny it. Accept the urge, Johnny. Embrace your craving for affection.” John was conflicted. Calling Celia bizarre would be putting it lightly, and he didn’t want to get in trouble for playing along with whatever she was doing… but he didn’t want to pass the opportunity to get intimate with someone, especially a girl who managed to be so attractive despite her oddities. Finally, he succumbed to his urges and let his fingers spasm against her tummy. Her smile and laughter was infectious. Not quite able to hold himself back, John started using his lips instead of his fingers.
“You can, hehehe, kiss me up, hahahee, up here if you want to,” Celia offered while pointing at her face.
“Don’t mind if I do,” John responded. He climbed on top of her and she put her arms over his back, and their lips made contact. John felt like he was in a dream, but this was far too vivid to be his imagination, and he was thankful that it was real. He stared into her eyes, too entranced to notice her pulling a phone out of her pocket. A beeping noise escaped from the phone after Celia selected something, bringing it to John’s attention. The screen revealed a face with eyes similar to Celia’s, but with no white areas.
“Hm, yes?” the man greeted.
“Oh, Smiler… I caught someone,” Celia told him in a mischievous tone.
“Perfect,” Smiler responded. The screen went staticky, and John’s vision distorted as his surroundings changed. He and Celia were standing instead of laying down. Celia shoved him down into a chair and trapped him with cuffs.
“WHAT’S GOING ON?!” John screamed. They were in some sort of office, which had the same color scheme as Celia’s outfit. Celia marched over to Smiler, who was sitting behind his desk.
“All of the pamphlets have been distributed and John here has been collected. He likes to kiss me!” she gleefully reported.
“A job well done. Thank you, Celia,” Smiler replied. He got up and walked towards John, sticking his finger in Celia’s belly button along the way. “Love has consumed you, I see. Lucky for you, you’ll be able to spend lots of time with Celia after you’ve been marmalized.”
“Marmalized? Is that why you people kidnapped me? To cover me with marmalade?” John questioned. Smiler and Celia both laughed.
“Marmalization is covering you with marmalade! What a pun! What a silly image!” Smiler chortled. “Now, let’s take him to the correction chamber, shall we?” Celia spun the chair around and wheeled it out of the office, with Smiler closely following her. The hallways and rooms they went through continued the design style; decorated with a chaotic mixture of line-based designs, posters, phrases such as “get corrected” or “join us”, Smiler’s logo, video screens displaying barely coherent graphics, and old fashioned security cameras.
“So… what is Marmalization, then?”
“Good question, budding advocate! Marmalization is a correctional process designed to make you happy forever! You’ll never feel sad or angry or afraid ever again!” Smiler rather vaguely explained.
“Okay… that sounds nice, I guess. How does it do that?” They entered the room they were headed to, and the chair attached to a black track, which ran through a currently closed doorway to something.
“You, young man, are about to find out!” Smiler responded. He reached for a control panel and pressed a button. The doors swung open, and John was carried into a dimly lit hallway full of robotic arms and security cameras. Celia clapped and squealed, happy to have assisted in someone’s marmalization.
“No! Not needles!” John screamed just before the doors closed. Smiler watched him through the cameras. John shrieked in pain as his arms were stabbed with syringes of Kelmanium. Despite the total lack of joy John was showing, Smiler’s grin got a little bit bigger. The sight of this boy’s transition to an advocate meant The Smiler was one victim closer to having humanity under his control.

THE END, FOR NOW