Swipe Right for Murder

by Derek Milman

  She jumps into action. I hear the sound of an alarm, the ride creaking to a stop, and emergency instructions over a loudspeaker. I run back onto the boardwalk. Another motorcycle zooms down it from the other direction. I’m trapped in the middle of both bikes. I look at one, then the other. Both the Swans are loading crossbows. And I’m wide open, totally vulnerable. I’m not sure where to run.

  But then gunshots ring out and one of the Swans flies off his bike. Shiloh appears from behind him, gun aimed with both hands. The gunshots create an almost instant panic, which is probably good, as people scream and grab their children, running for the exits.

  I can see people pouring off the Derby. Within seconds, it’s totally evacuated. The other motorcycle revs, turns, and speeds away down the boardwalk. But I get the feeling he’s not going far.

  I run over to Shiloh. “Thanks!”

  “I got them to shut the pool down,” he says.

  “I got the Derby Racer evacuated.”

  The sirens are getting louder. In the distance, on Long Island Sound, I see the lights of police boats approaching the beach.

  We both glance up at the Mind Melter. No one on the coaster heard the gunshots. It’s whizzing by, and it’s loud (whooshing, rushing, clacking), full of screaming kids, their arms in the air. We run over to it, and on the way we reach the downed biker.

  It’s Hardy Boy Frank. He’s taken off his helmet and is coughing up blood. He’s also bleeding from his shoulder. Shiloh was right; he nailed the guy from the car.

  “How many of you are here?” says Shiloh, aiming the gun down at him.

  “Traitor,” growls Hardy Boy Frank, spitting blood at Shiloh.

  Shiloh grabs the crossbow from him and leans down. “You would have killed all those kids in that pool?”

  “You nearly shot a little kid on a carousel,” I add.

  He never answers. Hardy Boy Frank coughs up more blood, then his face goes still and he dies right there in front of us.

  This guy has been chasing and terrorizing me across the entire State of New York for days, and now he’s gone just like that, so fast and quiet. It’s weird I don’t feel more about seeing him die. I didn’t even get a chance to say some clever final zinger like “Enjoy hell!” that would have been the last thing this asshole heard.

  Shiloh straightens, puts a hand on my shoulder, “We have to get you—”

  I know he was going to say out of here, because that’s what he’s been going on about all morning, but he doesn’t finish the sentence. Instead he stumbles backward with an arrow sticking out of his shoulder.

  “AH, CHRIST!” he says, his voice choked by pain as he grips the arrow. I reach for him.

  “No, don’t touch it!” he screams. “Get out of here! Run!”

  The other motorcycle is speeding toward us across the emptying boardwalk. People are jumping out of its path.

  There are too many people, still running, scattered about, for Shiloh to shoot back at this distance. But the bike is getting closer. “Run!” Shiloh yells at me again.

  The park is suddenly flooded with police offers and feds. They must have just arrived and rushed through the gates. They all have their guns out.

  And then they all get knocked to their feet by an enormous explosion, followed by a terrifying, apocalyptic fireball, angry orange and hellish black. The Derby Horse Racer just exploded, shooting projectiles of wood and metal and splintered glass and whole derby horses into the air.

  Weirdly, this now justifies the completely nonsensical Quest Gardens welcome sign we saw on the way here, with the horses flying into the sky.

  Shiloh and I duck behind a juice bar to take cover from the falling debris. After a moment, I peek out. It seems everyone had gotten far enough away from the Derby ride in time, and the police hadn’t moved in yet. I don’t see any injuries. That’s a goddamn miracle. People are shouting and screaming. The cops are trying to contain the chaos.

  Then all I hear is one collective whine of police sirens, coming from everywhere. “I can’t believe they bombed the Derby!” I shout at Shiloh, whose mouth is wide open, his face bloodless.

  “They probably tried to hack it,” he says. “But these rides are too old. Those idiots. It’s all manual. There are no computers. So they just blew it up.”

  “What about the coaster?”

  We run out from behind the juice bar. The Mind Melter has come to a halt now, and cops are quickly leading people off the ride.

  Two more dudes in green-visored motorcycle helmets, masked by the havoc, hop off their bikes and dash over to us.

  One of them wraps a leather-clad arm around my throat. The second one flanks me on the other side, sticking a pistol against the side of my head. They drag me backward, toward the entrance to the Mild Melter.

  Shiloh lunges at them, even with the arrow sticking out of his shoulder and blood running down his arm, but they pull me away. “Keep back, Shiloh,” says the one with the gun—Scotty. He presses it harder against the side of my head. “Or bang bang, your boyfriend’s dead.”

  “We’re not really sure what our relationship is yet,” I say quietly, but panicking. “It’s burgeoning.”

  “Quiet,” says Scotty.

  “WHOA WHOA WHOA!” the police yell, seeing Scotty, training their weapons on us. It’s a standoff. And I’m on the wrong side.

  “I’m not a Swan!” I scream.

  First of all, this is probably already obvious—no one could possibly look more like a hostage than I do right now. Secondly, and this needs to be said, that is probably the dumbest thing anyone has ever uttered during a police standoff.

  “Put your weapons down or I shoot the kid,” says Scotty, addressing about, oh, three hundred armed police officers. I wonder how this is going to go down.

  “They won’t do that!” says Shiloh, standing between the cops and us, like a referee, both arms out even with the arrow in his shoulder, forming a one-man barricade, which is totally useless but so adorable.

  Scotty ignores both him and the cops, keeps the gun aimed at my head, and says, “Let’s go for a ride.”

  “I’m not really a fan of roller coasters.”

  Especially not now, knowing Scotty’s been using them as terror toys. There are so many horrible ways to die on a roller coaster. My mind starts ticking them off as we slowly shuffle toward it.

  “Had any more of your tornado dreams, by the way?” Scotty asks.

  I actually think about that for a second. “Since this whole thing began, nothing more about tornadoes. Maybe the tornado’s already caught up with me.”

  “Maybe you’re about to get spun up into the sky,” offers Scotty.

  Now I’m sick to my stomach.

  Scotty waves his gun around and shouts demands.

  A ride operator nervously runs over, hands over his head, hostage-style, to start up the Mind Melter again.

  I don’t like this. I don’t like that we’re going on the ride, and I don’t like the way Scotty keeps checking his watch. Like something, somewhere, is timed. Shiloh doesn’t like this, either. “Do not let them get on that ride!” he yells over to the cops.

  “I’ll kill him,” says Scotty. “I’ll shoot him right now. I just want one ride.”

  “He’s booby-trapped it!” Shiloh screams. “Take him out. Take him out now!”

  I can see the police officers shift, eyes roving, analyzing the situation, but Scotty is careful to stay out of anyone’s sights, thrusting me in front of him as a human shield, his gun jammed into my lower back. “If you stop this ride while we’re on it I will kill the kid. Do not stop the ride!” he yells.

  I stare up at the huge cartoonish pink brain perched over the coaster that twinkles red and gold from a million tiny lights inside. ’Cause this is the Mind Melter. Get it? The brain is actually a winding, spiraling tunnel. The coaster spins you around within it, turning the riders themselves into a bizarre personification of insanity, scrambling the brain from the inside. From what I recall, it feels li
ke being trapped inside a gigantic piece of glowing bubble gum. Then the coaster spits you back out, at the highest point, right before the main drop.

  Hardy Boy Joe opens the gate, and the three of us enter through it. Scotty keeps me in front of him the whole time, his pistol pressed hard into the back of my neck, as we board the coaster, facing sideways, so he remains out of anyone’s crosshairs.

  Then we’re inside, undercover.

  There are three yellow trains with six cars each, faded red lightning bolts on the sides. The lightning bolts make me think of Jackson’s tattoo. Thinking of Jackson, my gorgeous best friend who knows me better than anyone and takes no shit, calms me down a little. I think: There are good things in this world among the bad.

  Scotty pushes me into the last row of the last train. He sits beside me. Hardy Boy Joe takes the gun from Scotty and sits in front of us, turned around, keeping the gun aimed at my face.

  “Can I Instagram us?” I say. “All right if I tag you?”

  Scotty and Hardy Boy Joe remove their helmets and place them on the empty seats. Scotty removes his gloves. His right hand is bandaged up. He unzips his jacket.

  The ride operator, who can’t be much older than me, gives me a tremulous look. He’s sorry because he knows he’s most likely leading me to my death. Against his will, of course, but still. It’s not a facial expression you see often. It gives me a chill, though. I’ll tell you that.

  I nod at the kid. The kid nods back at me. Nothing anyone can do now.

  I hear even more sirens now. And helicopters. I turn to Scotty. “What’d you do to the ride, huh?”

  He smiles, all crooked and mean. “Oh, how’d you guess?”

  “Blaze of glory, right?”

  He makes this tsk tsk sound. “And you have a family, friends, a fresh romance on your hands. Still in the flush of youth.”

  “So why do this, man? Why take me with you?”

  “If it was just me, no one would care.” He pats me on the back. “Now they’ll remember. Plus, you ruined everything else I set in motion.”

  “You took this too far.”

  And something about that disappoints me.

  Scotty glares at me. “So, just to be clear, you were okay with us hacking drones and bombing government buildings in flyover states, mowing down homophobic picketers. It’s just Quest Gardens that put you off?”

  I shake my head. “No, I was never okay with any of this. You stirred something up inside me, I’ll admit that, but I’m not this. That’s the problem with extremism.”

  His eyes widen, amused, mocking. “Oh, do enlighten me, hun.”

  “It goes off the rails. You succumbed to the same ugly hatred the religious right has for us, Scotty. And you were going to kill little kids.”

  “I’m the only chance any of us has left. I told you—sometimes you have to do ugly things to win a war. Fighting. Slaughtering. It’s human nature.”

  “It doesn’t have to be.”

  “When they go low, we go high. That didn’t really work out, did it? Look where the pendulum has swung.” It’s the clarity in his eyes that frightens me the most right now; he’s sober, not clouded by drugs.

  “Homophobes, okay… but why innocent people?” I hear the desperation coating my voice, fraying it.

  “Innocent people—that’s an oxymoron.”

  “Children, Scotty—little children.”

  He looks at me with disgust. “Their children.”

  Jesus. To him, everyone has become the enemy.

  The train starts to move. There’s something eerie about only three people on this rumbling old coaster that should be filled with excited kids and parents. It feels wrong. It is wrong. And so is that gun being pointed at me. “Take the gun off me, please,” I say. “This is a roller coaster. That thing could go off.”

  Hardy Boy Joe only sneers back at me.

  “Do it,” says Scotty, and Hardy Boy Joe lowers the gun.

  I grip the seat with both hands, trying to suppress my pulsating fear. I look straight ahead. “What happened to you, Scotty?”

  “We never truly appreciate what we have until it’s gone. But you understand that, of course.” He looks me in the eye. “Don’t you?”

  “What happened to your boyfriend?” I ask, trying to tighten our connection, hoping that might stabilize him, if that’s even possible at this point.

  Scotty sighs and leans back in his seat. “He wanted children.”

  “He… did?” I’m baffled. His answer is so honest and simple and weird.

  “He was basically straight.” Scotty gives me a wistful smile. “He worked with numbers. He listened to Wilco. He wanted a house in the suburbs, a family. His own family rejected him. They all turned their backs.” He leans in to me close, brushing his shoulder against mine. “They were religious.” He hisses that word as his eyes settle on mine.

  “You didn’t… want those things?”

  “Children? A family? Are you out of your mind?”

  He’s asking me that—hilarious.

  “I wasn’t interested in conformity,” he says. “I wasn’t interested in breeding. But Ken loved the world. He loved it too much, and that was his problem.”

  “How could you love it too much?”

  “It’s why I fell in love with him. But it was also why I fell out of love with him.”

  I place a hand against the back of my neck.

  “Ken loved his little nephews. After he came out to his family—at my insistence—all he had left were Instagram posts of smiling people on lawns who he loved deeply… who would never speak to him again. He refused to delete the app, would just sob over these fucking photos every day.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “And that’s why I left him.”

  There’s a heavy silence for a second as we roll along.

  I bite my lip. “But… why?”

  “I can put up with a lot, but I can’t put up with pathos. I can’t put up with people needing things they will never get. It’s Charlie Brown and Lucy with the football. I’m not attracted to weakness. I love throwing parties, but not pity parties.”

  Despite the random Peanuts reference, an unexpected heaping of sadness gets poured over my escalating terror.

  “Then poor Ken, he had no one left,” says Scotty. “So he checked himself into a sad little motel off a highway in Connecticut and slashed his wrists in a bathtub. Did I know he would do that?” He moves his head, slightly, from side to side. “Nah…”

  “I’m sorry.” Man, this story is a real downer.

  “But… I realized, over time, no one would ever love me like he had.” Tears brim his eyes. “I fucked up. I want him back. And I feel like I get him back—parts of him, in flashes—by fighting everything in the world that hurt him.”

  “I don’t think he was weak,” I say, “I think he just wanted to be loved. I think he just wanted to have a family…”

  “That’s not what we’re on this earth to do,” Scotty intones. “We’re engineered not to be burdened by children, and our ambitions should be greater than upholding the Traditional American Narrative. We are the superior race.”

  My eyes flutter. “Says who? What does that even mean? Who says what we’re on this earth for? No one has those answers. You’re fighting for equal rights, aren’t you? To get married, adopt children, live normal lives—”

  “Right!” Scotty claps a hand to his chest. “Because we deserve those things! We are human beings and we deserve the same rights, dignity, and respect as everyone else! It doesn’t mean I want what everyone else does, but we deserve to be treated equally.”

  I guess I expected more from an evil mastermind so adept at the Art of the Mindfuck than general misanthropy, confusing self-contradictions, and a whole lot of generalized bullshit.

  Scotty can be downright boring and disappointing in the harsh bright sunlight. In the end, there’s not much depth to his sparkling wordplay.

  He smiles at me, sadly. “If I had tornado dreams,
I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be running away from them. I’d be standing still, waiting to get blown into the sky and shredded up for taking everything for granted, for being cruel and coldhearted to someone who never deserved it. But the storms never come for me. Not when I’m awake and not when I’m asleep. Don’t you know, Aidan, what that tornado really means?”

  “No,” I tell him, even though we both know it’s death. It’s always been that.

  And then that awful memory punches me in the face like it so often does:

  You’re not my goddamn brother.

  I sit upright in my seat as we continue to climb, higher and higher, with this clickity clackity sound, remembering the last time I spoke to Neil. Remembering that whole thing yet again.

  I know I said that I was “muddy” on the last time I spoke to Neil.

  That’s not quite true. The last time I spoke to Neil, the night before he died, we had a pretty vicious fight. And it was about the weather.

  How lame is that?

  He had to be at his game the next morning. And my mom had to be at her stupid Saturday morning Pilates class. So there was only one car. And we had only one dad, obviously. And I really needed to be at GameStop, so I could get some dumb video game on the day it came out. Before it sold out.

  I could have downloaded it from the PlayStation store. I could have just done that. But I wanted a physical copy—the physical copy came with a limited-edition booklet of fan art, and I wanted the booklet. And also… I was trying to prove something.

  There was supposed to be a storm. Lightning, hail, everything. And our dad hates driving when it’s storming. So, really, before the storm, there could be only one car ride, and it was going to be either Neil or me.

  And I just got pissed that Neil’s basketball game was going to take preference (yet again) over me doing something, over me getting this video game. For once I just wanted to count, I guess. I felt Neil always counted more—’cause he was older and a jock superstar—and I just wanted to count for once in my goddamn life. I wanted to get that one ride before the stupid storm. For once I wanted it to be about me.

  So I got into it with my dad and with Neil, about how every weekend he takes Neil to his game and this one stupid time why couldn’t he just take me somewhere. One of those irrational things you get into when you’re a kid and you’re helpless. Neil said fine, he’d just get a ride to the game with a friend, but my dad was all like: No, no, no, Aidan needs to learn patience, he needs to learn to wait, he needs to learn he can’t always get his way.