Styrofoam Throne (4 page)

“What do you think you’re doing?”

My mouth was too full to answer. I tried to respond but egg yolk ran down my chin and I flashed the rest with an open smile.

Some old guy said, “Boy’s gotta eat. Sure didn’t get to be six foot five on Cracker Jacks.”

Janice patronized him with a smile.

A man staring at his oatmeal added, “Wish that was me. Last time I got that plate was over ten years ago and I think parts of it are still inside me.”

Everyone stopped to pay attention to the last detail. The man tried to cover his tracks with a hearty cough followed by a “’Scuse me.”

“I’d like to bet he can’t finish the rest in three minutes,” another old guy chimed in.

I ate and ate until I had one final stab of pancake, sausage, egg yolk, and syrup left. Janice fixed her eyes on me as I devoured the last bite.

“Okay, now get to work.”

“Can I have a water?”

“Jesus.”

Janice turned around to the service station and poured a glass of water from the pitcher. At the same time, I slipped my hand into my pocket and brought the small vial out from underneath the counter. It was ipecac, the medical world’s solution for inducing vomit. I unscrewed the top and thanked Janice for the water. I faked like I was coughing as I downed the entire vial, chasing it as fast as I could with the ice water. The desired effect began rumbling in my stomach way sooner and more intense than I thought it would.

“Hunnnnggaaaaaah!” Vomit exploded out of my mouth in all directions. Every bite I had just taken was now painting the counter and the walls, and splattering nearby patrons of The Roost.

“Oh, God, it’s on my legs!” one of the regulars yelled.

“What the hell?!” Janice screamed as she ran to the back for a bowl.

I had never taken ipecac before, so I didn’t really know what happened other than that it made you barf. That was happening, yes—but to my increasing horror, it wasn’t stopping.

I didn’t know what to do with myself. Even if I did I wouldn’t be able to do anything amid the flood coming out. Janice returned with a large bowl. When I looked up from my hands and knees, I puked again—covering the bowl, Janice’s apron, and her shoes.

The scene was too much for the regulars to stomach. Utensils fell loudly to their plates. People bumped their tables trying to get up and away. They yelled things like “Land’s sakes!” and “My word!” or “Heavens to Betsy!”

I could only look up for brief snapshots before returning to my own puddle, unable to halt the process I brought on myself. I had blown through the Trucker Special and was beginning to see bits from days ago. The skeletal remains of lettuce. An “X” and “Y” from alphabet soup. A sausage pellet.
 

By now, I was struggling to get enough air when I lost my grip on the vial I was hiding. Janice saw it fall to the floor and grabbed it.

“Ipecac! You little shit!”

“Janice, your boy’s sick.” Don, a regular, stood up for me. “Go eas—ah, God, the smell!” and before Don could finish his defense, he ran outside and disappeared.

“He took ipecac! It makes you do this!” Janice was now on the “other level.” “Get out! I never want to see you again!”

My strength was gone, but I managed to make it to the door while dry heaving and burping up pink and yellow spit.
 

“You bastard!” Janice yelled as she threw my empty plate past me, shattering the glass door and sending me tumbling into the parking lot.

3

I wandered down the road with a quivering gut. My shirt was stained with a V-shape of puke from my neck down. I wiped my slimy hands on the grass by the side of the road and belched an encore. My guts were hollow but I felt bigger. Finally something came up from my stomach that wasn’t puke. Pride.

“I’m free,” I thought, even though I knew that freedom would only last until later tonight—when I’d have to go home. The home provided by the place I’d just flooded with vomit. I told myself I could sit there and trip out about it or I could keep walking away. “Had to be done,” I told myself. “Fuck The Roost.”

I checked every pay phone I came across for change. Nothing. I looked up the road and saw the new Castle Dunes billboard, in the same spot every year. The sign always featured a more terrifying, decayed version of Dracula than the year before, pointing the way down the street with one hand and beckoning you closer with the other. “Castle Dunes! More screams! More gore! More terror than ever before!” it read in dripping letters.

The three seventy-five for a Castle ticket stressed me out. I knew where I was going, I just didn’t know what I’d do once I got there. I wasn’t sure if I could solve my problems by going to the Castle but I could definitely escape them. And since I was already living in the moment today, a temporary escape was a completely credible solution.

I’d spent past summers watching droves pour through the Castle gates and swore that the legend was true—fewer people came out the back than went in. I wanted to be one of the people that was never seen at the exit. Last summer, I saw a girl I liked from school go in. I immediately went to the back of the Castle, from where the rest of the pier extended, and waited for her. Would she come out giggling with her friends with attention-grabbing fake screams or would she be drenched in tears? I figured, somehow, I’d get to the bottom of her cool.

But she never came out. I sat there for two hours and recognized some terrified faces from the ticket line but not hers.
 

The next school year, I approached one of her friends.

“Hey, whatever happened to Tiffany?”

“Ew, get away.” She was not impressed with the guy-wearing-a-cape-and-asking-about-her-friend combo.

“Is she dead?” I said, really trying to be sensitive about it.

“What is the matter with you?!”

“I’m really sorry,” I said while maintaining a respectful tone about her passing.

“Her parents moved up north.”

“’Cause she died in the Castle?”

“Oh my God, you’re such a frickin’ weirdo.”

Later that night, I asked my mom if the Castle killed people who went through it. She said, “Yes.”

I no longer thought the Castle killed people but I didn’t put it past the place. The closer I walked to it, the louder I could hear the “Toccata.” When I arrived in front of the Castle, I hit the same bench where I sat every year and gazed at the dominating structure. It projected a glow of ominous strength. Its giant, iron gates separated me from the “living, breathing nightmare!” that was my dream. Behind the gates stood five towering stories of stone and mortar. Looking closer at the exterior, I noticed some damage to the fake masonry. There were now exposed patches of plywood and drywall where the building’s foundation met the sand. Last winter, a pretty brutal storm rolled through Dunes and the Castle’s much-needed repairs went ignored. I hadn’t been to the pier since it opened for the summer. I took a deep breath and soaked up its cool shadow. It was still early in the day and not many people were around yet. I was at evil-themed peace.

After a while, I got up and checked out the rest of the pier for new stuff. Extending out behind the Castle, the pier was packed with an array of games and junk food. I went over to the arcade, Circuit Circus, to watch people play games. Two older teens were playing one called Joust and drank from oversized soda cups they kept at their feet. I walked up behind them.

“Take off, dude. We’ve got this all day,” the tall, blond one said, nodding to the row of quarters lined on the bottom of the screen. I stopped counting them after twelve.

“I just want to watch.”

“Jesus Christ, is that your breath? Get the fuck out of here,” said the stockier one with a buzz cut.

He reached for his soda between rounds and took a big pull.

“Dude, I gotta piss,” he said.

“Yeah, me too. Hey, we’ll let you watch us play if you guard our spot real quick.” The blond dude made it seem like a threat.

“Okay.”

“Don’t lose our spot.”

The two dudes left for the bathroom while I looked over their game. And money.

At least sixteen quarters. At least. Sixteen divided by four is four. Four dollars right there. Three seventy-five to get into Castle Dunes . . .

I looked around and didn’t see anyone paying attention. I cupped one hand under the row of quarters and slid my finger across the bottom of the screen in one sweeping motion. With a fistful of coins and sweat, I ran out of the arcade, past the carnival games, and straight to the Castle ticket counter.

A frowning girl in white face paint, blackened eyes, and a druid robe sat behind steel bars separating tickets from customers.

“One ticket, please.”

She counted the quarters in impatient silence, tore off a ticket, and threw it at me with the change. I let the change roll down the entrance ramp as I ran up through the iron gates.

Another pale-faced, druid-robed employee took the ticket from my trembling hand and tore it with his teeth—spitting the other half back at me and swallowing the rest.

This was already awesome.

I was ushered into a foyer-type room that had a fake fireplace with a portrait of Dracula above the mantel. Even though it was dark, you could tell the room details were kind of dingy. A small group of customers, young and old, was already gathered in front beneath the portrait. The druid at the door closed it and the lights went out.

A recording came on with sounds of crashing thunder and rain. In a flash of strobe lights, the actual Dracula appeared where the portrait had just been. The small crowd screamed and hollered. It was him, the Dracula from the commercial. He had on the same frilly, white Victorian shirt with the medallion swinging from his neck. There were some changes though. His hair wasn’t entirely black. He had about a quarter-inch of blond roots showing and now looked too buff to be evil. Dracula pounced onto the mantel and whipped his cape at the crowd.

“We’ve been expecting you!” he said in a bad Transylvanian accent. It was hilarious even though I was expecting to be scared. But it wasn’t just terror I came for, this stuff also made me laugh. Shitty or great, it was all horror to me and I loved it.

“Allow me to introduce myself. I am the Prince of Darkness, the King of Castle Dunes, and the last thing you may ever see! You may call me Dracoooolya. Kneel at my throne that is Castle Dunes and obey these rules!”

My jaw hung in anticipation. It was awesome but not what I’d expected. Dracula comes out and tells you rules?

“First, keep your hands and feet to yourself or you might not get them back. Second, do not touch my stuff. I killed a lot of people to afford this place—and I don’t need you messing it up. Third, if any of you ladies are wearing perfume on their neck, please wash it off. I do hate the taste. Go now, before I get hunnnngry,” he said, eyeballing a girl in the front.

I thought my face was going to shatter from smiling so much. Dracula couldn’t miss me in the crowd and interpreted it as mockery.

“And you! I promise we will meet again and I’ll wipe that smile off your living face.”

Dracula disappeared behind the mantel in a
poof
of smoke, thunder, and strobes. A druid ushered the group through a hidden door that led to the rest of the self-guided tour.

From the first room on, nothing was watered down. Evil things jumped out at me from crusty jail cells, graveyards, and mazes. I was stoked by its full-on approach. Gore dripped from decapitated heads, zombie guts spilled out of their chests, upside-down crosses were planted on nuns’ faces, and gallons of blood red paint ran down the Castle’s brick walls throughout.

I got to one room where two female vampires were sitting on a bed covered with red silk sheets, holding hands. They claimed to be Dracula’s lovers.

“Oh! You’re handsome. I’m sure Dracula wouldn’t mind if we had just a little snack.”

“Me first!” the other said.

The women stretched their arms at me and begged me to stay for “just a bite.” I soaked up their pleas until it got awkward and they looked at me weirdly while trying to maintain character.

“Don’t just stand there, die with us or leave!”

I couldn’t believe that hot, monster chicks were possibly hitting on me, act or no act. They even gave me an ultimatum that included the option of staying. I left and promised myself I’d be back. On the way out, I heard one of them ask, “Was that puke on his shirt?”

 
A lot of the rooms didn’t have real people in them. There were many set-piece rooms filled with homemade mannequins, like the medieval torture chamber with slightly out-of-proportion executioners, frozen in the position of delivering a death blow to crying maidens. Rooms featured mannequins tied to racks, group hangings, and dead babies in jars. I stopped at the executioner scene and let the rest of the group go ahead of me so I could wander alone.

The craftsmanship of the executioners sucked and was awesome at the same time. I examined the rushed details of the brutes’ faces and the sloppy airbrushing.
 
It made them so much more appealing than the most ornate headstone in Odd Fellows Cemetery. I waited for the screams ahead of me to trail off and walked alone.

I came to a room with a gold-framed, oval-shaped mirror hanging on the wall. When I walked in front of it, there was no reflection of me—just the empty room behind me. I stood before it as the lights dimmed and sounds of thunder filled the room. An unnaturally low, wizardy voice began speaking through a recording.

“I am the Mirror of Death and as I have looked through others who have come before you—so do I look into your life.” Thunder crashed again and the voice continued, “You seem to pass through life always seeking something just beyond your reach. You have not been aware of this evasive goal, just of an inner rebellion and restlessness against your lot.”

I looked around the empty room. This mirror was taking some pretty personal leaps.

“You have felt that evil or bad luck surrounded you and held you back. This is an alibi for your own shortcomings. Go now . . . and wander the darkened halls of Castle Dunes . . . and find power.”