Free Inferno Park by JL Bryan

jaguar-print loincloth and a woman in a matching bikini. The man held a spear, while a snake coiled around the woman’s body and down her arm.
    “Check out the balloons on her,” Reeves said. He hopped over the rope railing and into the weedy area with the plastic statues, and Kevin followed. Reeves felt up the girl mannequin, pawing at her jaguar-fur bikini top with both hands, and snickered to himself.
    Kevin touched the plastic abdominal muscles on the male mannequin, feeling a little jealous of his cut muscles. He patted the front of the loincloth, wondering whether the guy had a big plastic wiener in there, but it felt flat and smooth rather than anatomically correct.
    “You freaking perv,” Reeves said. “This tiger looks so fake.”
    Reeves kicked the plastic tiger in its snarling face.
    Green, swampy light appeared along the front of the dome.
    “What’s that?” Reeves whispered.
    “I don’t know.”
    “Go look, Beefball.”
    Shaking, Kevin walked up the end of the roped boardwalks and gaped into the canal. The water glowed green, illuminating the high cattails and the thick slime and pondweed that grew out of it. The recorded tiger-snarl played somewhere beyond the closed bamboo gate.
    “What the hell?” Reeves whispered right behind him, making him jump.
    “Maybe it has underwater lights, like a swimming pool,” Kevin whispered.
    “Yeah...that’s probably it. Let’s go, this place smells like rotten fish.” Reeves snickered. “Hey, you know what else smells like rotten fish, Beefball? Your mom’s pants.”
    More lights came on around them. Red bulbs glowed in fake torches built into the entrance and exit caves, and more fake torches lit up overhead. Red spotlights illuminated a huge wooden sign at the top of the dome, carved and painted with the words JUNGLE LAND.
    Slow, rhythmic beats sounded deep inside the dome, like half a dozen people striking tight-skinned drums.
    Across the canal from Kevin, among the dome’s fake tropical trees and stuffed parrots, more red torch bulbs flared to life around a straw hut painted with Tiki figures. Kevin guessed the hut probably housed the ride controls. An angry-looking Tiki face was painted on the hut’s front door. Wooden steps with rope handrails led down to a slimy, greenish patch of concrete walkway along the opposite side of the canal from which Kevin stood.
    “Someone knows we’re here,” Kevin whispered. “We should go.”
    “Maybe they’ll let us go on the ride,” Reeves said, staring at the closed Tiki hut door.
    “Are you crazy? Why would they let us do that?”
    The door to the hut swung open with a creak that startled both of them. The inside of the hut was dark, but Kevin thought he could just barely see the outline of a man in a hat.
    “I see you’ve invited yourselves onto my property.” The man spoke in a low, flat voice.
    Kevin and Reeves looked at each other. Kevin thought of the French fries and milkshakes they’d stolen, and he wondered if the guy had been watching them the whole time.
    The smart thing to do was run, but Kevin felt rooted to the spot, along with a sudden fierce need to pee.
    The man emerged from the control shack and stood on the little porch, looking down the short staircase at them. He wore an old-fashioned wide-brimmed white hat, candy-striped, and a white suit with red pinstripes. The suit’s red bow tie matched the folded silk handkerchief in his breast pocket. He didn’t look like someone who’d been working on the slimy, overgrown Jungle Land ride.
    He had close-cropped sandy hair and might have been in his thirties or forties—it was hard for Kevin to judge his age. He regarded them with eyes that were a hollow, almost colorless shade of gray.
    Reeves and Kevin gaped at him, waiting for him to speak. Kevin wondered what kind of trouble they were in now, whether this guy was going to let them go or if he would be a dick and call the cops. Kevin imagined how super-pissed his mom would be if he