🎪 Somewhere Outside Texarkana, Population: Unsettled

The sign came out of nowhere.
A cracked wooden billboard, lit by a single flickering bulb, perched at a crooked angle beside the highway:

“SPINDLE’S WHIRL-O-RAMA CARNIVAL! One Night Only! FUN! FOOD! FERAL FRIENDS?”

“Did that sign just say feral friends?” Jonah asked from the back, peering between seats.
Gabriel, slurping the dregs of a canned iced mocha, leaned across the dashboard. “We have to go.”

Thane didn’t even look up from the map app on his phone. “No.”
Cassie: “Come on. It’s fate.”
Mark, deadpan from the passenger seat: “Fate is dumb.”
Rico, scrolling through TikTok: “Yeah, but if we don’t go, we’ll wonder forever.”
Maya, already strapping on her boots: “And if we do go, we’ll probably get tetanus.”

Thane sighed. “…Ten minutes. We look. We leave. No carnies, no carnage.”

The carnival looked like a Tim Burton fever dream sponsored by expired corn dogs.
Half-lit signs buzzed above rusted rides. A lone Ferris wheel groaned in protest against gravity.
A suspiciously damp clown waved from near the cotton candy stand.

Gabriel was in heaven. “This is amazing.”
Thane: “This is how horror movies start.”

The band spread out, each drawn to something weird.

Cassie found a fortune teller named “Madame Skarlette” who read her aura with a vape pen and whispered, “Beware the full moon… and gluten.”

Jonah wandered into a mirror maze and accidentally scared himself three times before walking into a glass wall.
“This place is cursed,” he announced, nose bleeding.
“No,” Rico said, laughing, “you’re cursed.”

Gabriel, meanwhile, had somehow gotten pulled into a carnival game.
By the time the others found him, he was wielding a giant plastic mallet at a “Smash the Rat” booth while a kid in a mullet screamed, “HIT IT HARDER, FURRY MAN!”

Thane yanked him away mid-swing. “We are leaving.”
“But I almost won a SpongeBob!” Gabriel whined.

“Last call for the Wheel of Wonder!” shouted a voice from atop a rickety scaffolding.

Naturally, they had to ride it.
All of them.

The moment they were strapped in, the whole thing lurched into motion like a dying banshee.

Jonah: “I don’t think it’s supposed to lean like this.”
Rico: “I think I can see the past.”
Gabriel (arms raised): “I REGRET NOTHING.”
Maya: “If we die, I’m going to haunt whoever suggested this.”
Cassie: “That was Gabriel.”
Mark: “Figures.”

At the top of the spin, the ride groaned, shuddered—
—and then stopped.

Mid-air.
Forty feet up.
In silence.

Jonah: “I’m never eating cotton candy again.”
Gabriel: “I think this is how I unlock my final form.”
Thane (claws gripping the safety bar): “When we get down, I am burning this carnival to the ground.”

Back on solid ground, the band stumbled off the ride like baby deer.
Mark’s fur was windblown. Thane looked like he’d fought God.
Cassie threw up behind the churro stand.

Gabriel, still clutching the SpongeBob prize someone did give him, raised a clawed hand.
“Worth it.”

Thane grabbed him by the neck scruff. “You’re sleeping outside tonight.”
Gabriel grinned. “Under the stars. With my SpongeBob.”

Rico: “That was the dumbest thing we’ve ever done.”
Jonah: “No. That birthday party gig still wins.”
Maya: “At least this one didn’t end in cake and crying.”
Cassie: “…Speak for yourself.”

Thane, slumped behind the wheel, muttered to no one in particular:
“Next detour, I’m putting myself in a crate and mailing me home.”