FantasticLand

by Mike Bockoven

  So we’ve got threats of violence out in the park. By that point I had a few girls, seven of us all told, who were sort of acting like a board of directors. They were never elected, it just sort of happened. They said, and I agreed, that we needed to pay attention to defense, and I happened to know that we had six bow and arrow sets in our inventory. Not toy ones, real ones, that were retailed at $1,100, and we figured they would sell because of all the movies right now where girls use bows and arrows. What are there, like, seven series of movies where there are badass girl archers? Turned out there were at least three badass girl archers in our group and another four who were good enough to take lessons from the good ones, so the Archer Corp was born. Basically, one archer would patrol the rooftops during the daylight. We put them on top of Fantastic Holidays Forever because it was tall, and no one was sneaking up on you there. Plus it was a hell of a view. The idea was, if threats showed up, the archers could take to the rooftops and make them think twice. And of course, after that, girls wanted to know how to fight if they didn’t have bows and arrows, so we set up self-defense classes taught by this girl named Randy … actually, I think her name was Amanda but she went by Randy, and she basically taught police-style tactics. Go for the eyes or the balls, use their weight against them, that sort of thing.

  It was a good thing we did that, too, because the first raid came just six days after we all left the bunker. It was at night, so I’m still not sure who it was, but I have my suspicions. Someone else must have gotten their hands on the inventory sheets, because the raiders showed up at Fantastic Film Gifts and Autographs and started ransacking the place. A few of the girls heard the ruckus, woke everyone up, and we all marched shoulder to shoulder to the store, and I rapped on the glass and told them to come out. There was this long pause, and remember, it’s pitch black except for our flashlights, and they came out running. I don’t think they figured there would be nearly as many of us as there were, because they hit the wall of ShopGirls full speed. That was the only thing that saved them. The girls, God love ’em, they kicked, and they scratched, and they grabbed, and there was screaming, and by the time it was clear they had gotten away, the girls were all so jacked up we could have burned down the whole park, the whole state of Florida, and good riddance. We were all fine aside from a few bruises, and one girl was super excited. She kept saying, “We gotta get back to the commons, you’ve gotta see this!” and when we got back, we lit the lanterns, and she stands on one of the couches and yells, “I got his fucking ear!” and holds up this bloody ear and everyone just screamed and danced and whooped and hugged each other and … I don’t know. We all felt like sisters. We all felt like badasses. It was one of the greatest nights of my life.

  Like I said, I was my best self when I was leading those girls. Part of me still hates “people” but I loved that group. I still do. They were my girls, they were my family, they were my army. And given all we were up against later on, I can tell you we put up one hell of a fight.

  INTERVIEW 12: CHASE POUNDER

  Ride Line Supervisor, Pirate.

  It was clear from the first couple of days that everyone in our section was on borrowed time.

  I tried to get things organized. And when that didn’t work, I tried to help protect people. And when that didn’t work, I tried to join another group. And when that didn’t work, I strongly contemplated suicide. Looking back, I’m glad I didn’t go through with it. At the time, there wasn’t a guaranteed painless way to do it. Any option I considered could have gone horribly wrong and left me in more pain than I was sure to face from the Pirates. Now that I’m out of the park, I know that there are ways of healing from trauma. I am on that road, but I guess the best way to put it is that I have lived through some shit. As part of that healing process and getting all my cards on the table, I’d like to be very honest with you. This is hard for me. I’m not going to lie, this opens me up to possible legal issues. But I’m going to tell you because I have decided there must be a reckoning. There’s no other way I can move forward, so if I have to take some lumps because of this, so be it.

  I will spare you the details about life working at the park. I was a college student making money in the summer, and I stayed on because I needed to sock a little more away before I went back to school. I was not thrilled with my job working the Fairy Flight ride. It was endless little girls and boys all day long. When you work the line, you get to see the worst of people, or at least that’s what I thought. Breaking up fights was not an uncommon occurrence, and I started lifting weights in the FresnoVille gym after my first week because it was pretty clear I was going to be throwing my weight around on a semiregular basis. I remember talking about my job to people back home as if it was so hard. Looking back, it might have been the biggest adversity I had ever overcome in my life up to that point. On occasion, some entitled and stressed-out parents would yell and maybe push me because the line was too long. That was it. That was my big struggle that defined me as a person.

  I remember one time there were these two guys who got into a fight in line. By the time I got to them, they were trying to punch each other, both their wives were screaming the worst type of language you can imagine, and both of them were filming the fight with their phones. Hundreds of kids were hearing a woman shriek, “Die you fucking cunt!” as loud as she could while the other one was screaming, “This is going on YouTube! This is going on YouTube!” Then I show up and try to break up the fight and ended up getting hit on the side of the head really hard. Sure enough, the woman uploaded the video like she said she would. A bunch of the comments were about me getting hit. “That asshole deserved it” and “FantasticLand employee goes down like the bitch he is!” … that sort of thing. I thought that was hard to take at the time. There weren’t any camera phones during the time the park was flooded, but I guarantee you, it was a thousand times worse.

  There’s a misconception I’ve read in a bunch of places that it was mainly girls who worked in the Fairy Prairie, but that is not the truth. There were lots of guys there, and some of them were really able to handle themselves. I learned crowd control from a few guys in the Fairy Prairie and learned what to look out for—sudden movements in a line, people who looked like they were trying to conceal something, that moment that turned a loudmouth with a temper into a physical threat—all that sort of thing. Some of the guys had great stories, too, and after hours we would sit around the dorm rooms and drink and talk like they were war stories. There were some good guys in there. If things had gone differently, we could have been a player in the tribes, not that being a “player” was something to aspire to. What I mean is, if we had organized we could have protected ourselves and our people. As things were, no one wanted to try to survive a hurricane surrounded by glitter wings and bedazzled skirts.

  Another thing I’ve heard over and over again is, “Once everyone got out of the shelter, they all went to the section of the park they worked at.” That’s not true either. People went where their friends were, and a few people, not many, thought far enough ahead to go where there was a better chance of food or safety. Most everyone found their friends and that’s where they went, full stop. That’s how we lost most of the guys in the Fairy Prairie. It was a combination of guys not seeing the Pink Palace as a place where they felt really secure and our section not being very tight-knit. It happened really quickly, and it wasn’t hard to understand why it happened, but it made me immediately nervous. It was like I had missed some important meeting where friends in other sections of the park were handed out, and all the guys I hung out with, they were gone, and I was sitting there with no backup. The first couple days after the storm, I was starting to get antsy. It was mainly girls in the park, and right away we were … getting threatening signals, I’ll put it that way. There were a lot of guys, and they were always guys, who would just walk through like they were getting a good look at the place, and when someone went up to them, they would calmly walk back the other direction. They never said anythin
g. That was the worst part. They just wanted to see what was going on, and it wasn’t much. Then, little by little, things started getting worse.

  I had multiple opportunities early on to go to another section of the park. I didn’t. I promised I would be honest with you, so here it is: I didn’t leave for two reasons. One was I thought I could get laid. How’s that for honest? I had a couple of girls squarely in my sights, and by the time it was clear that sex was about 150 places down on my list of priorities, it was too late to leave. The second was that I had a misguided sense of duty. I have no idea where it came from. I felt like even though it was pink and frilly and for little girls, I felt like this was where I was comfortable, and if lines had to be drawn, this was the side of the line I was on. I can’t explain it to you better than that. I wish I could.

  One morning we found two knives jammed into the eyes of the Princess Fairy on top of the Fairy Flight ride. There was no noise the night before and no explanation, but it was the biggest sign in our section, and the message couldn’t have been much clearer. The sign was wooden and painted, which … you kind of have to understand the story of the Princess Fairy to get it, but they were woodland creatures that were big on natural habitats, so there weren’t any huge neon signs or anything. Lots of wood and fake leaves and plants, that sort of thing. I wasn’t in charge at all, no one was really up to that job, but I decided I wanted to climb up and take a closer look. When I got up there, the knives had notes attached to them saying things like, “Get ready, ’cause here we come,” and “A pirate takes what he wants.” I shoved them in my pocket and decided not to show them to anyone. That was a mistake, looking back.

  During the first few weeks in the park, as it sort of settled in that rescue wasn’t coming any time soon, there were no rules. People came and went, and sometimes they stayed other places, so I can’t pinpoint for you when the disappearances began, but I can tell you when they got more brazen. At one point, I had been talking to my friend Marissa, who was a ShopGirl, and hearing all her stories about how there was a raid and all that, when I get back to the Prairie, I see this guy sort of leading this other girl named Charlotte north along the road that leads to the Exclamation Point. I called out to her, and when she turned around, she was crying. I think I said something like, “What’s up?” and she sort of shook her head at me. The guy who was leading her turned around and said, “Hey.” Then there was this long pause and he said, “I’m taking her.” I sort of had a hard time registering that, so I just stood there, and Charlotte, she hung her head and wouldn’t make eye contact. Finally I was able to muster up a, “take her where?” and he said, “Anywhere I want. You aren’t going to stop me.” Then he grabbed her and kept walking.

  I wish I could tell you I regret not standing up for Charlotte. The truth of the matter is, all the bad things that happened, they were going to happen anyway. I could have beaten that guy to a pulp and saved Charlotte and mobilized all the people in the Fairy Prairie and we could have rallied like the ShopGirls and it wouldn’t have made a difference. None. We were already targeted, and we were already done. We were seen as weak, not just by the Pirates but by everyone else who had come by and found us disorganized and kind of in shambles. Plus, that guy was right. I was used to separating fat tourists and taking abuse from soccer moms. I wasn’t sure what sort of fighter I was. Not really. Not yet.

  After my encounter, I ran back to the main restaurant, Canary Fairy’s Confectionaries, where we were all staying because it was cooler in there because of the stained wood motif, and told them what had happened. Basically, our group can be summed up by how they reacted. Some of them cried, and some of them sank into their own corners or went back to reading books or whatever, and those who I could get engaged, they threw out idea after idea after idea about what we should do to fight back or make peace or hide somewhere or join with another group and a million other ideas. In the morning, six of our group had left; I found out later they’d gone to other groups. We still had over twenty-five people, give or take, and nobody was really panicking yet, even though we were bleeding people. Even the criers had calmed down, so I didn’t freak out until two guys showed up that afternoon.

  They both had red bandanas around their heads, and they never stopped grinning the entire time they were there. They came up to the door and knocked. I don’t remember who answered the door, but when it swung open, they were really to the point. They said, “We’re going to be taking a bunch of your food from the snack bars. You’re welcome to stop us.” Then they shut the door, and we could hear them whistling and moving around outside. Immediately, the group started talking about what we should do and how we should stop them. We argued and argued and after a while, I finally laid it out there. I said, “This is simple. They are two guys. If we all go out there right now and threaten them, we can get them to leave,” but of course no one agreed with that. Finally, I started walking around to see if I could find six or eight people to go with me if I decided to go out there. I came up with four. By the time we had worked up the guts to go out there, they had completely cleaned out one of the snow-cone booths. That was a big deal because snow cones are nothing but flavored water, and water was kind of a big deal, especially in the later days of the park. And they had taken all of it. There were something like two thousand bottles of water in the store room, and they had managed to load it up, probably on some carts or something, and take it while we argued about how to stop them. They left another note, with another knife, that said, “See you soon.” At that point, it occurred to me that these guys were giving us weapons. Later that night, we realized they had taken another of the girls.

  That night, I was sleeping on a pile of empty potato sacks that never actually held potatoes but were there for decoration, and I thought, tomorrow I’m going to go to Fantastic Future World or somewhere and see if I can get in with them. But first, I figured, I needed a way to protect myself. I had seen this guy hanging around whose name was Austin, and he was the kind of dude who could get you anything you needed, so I figured he could get me a gun if I was lucky and I don’t know what else if I wasn’t that lucky. He always had options. I … I had squirreled away some money at that point. I had taken it from the cash registers and from the count room because I thought we would be rescued quickly and I could keep the cash on me or something. The first couple of days I honestly thought I was going to make out with enough money to maybe buy a car. The security cameras were down, the drawers were open. It just … it didn’t feel like stealing. It felt like something the park would have to deal with because of the hurricane. Plus, I was stuck in the park with dangerous people all around me and no way to contact the outside world. Call it hazard pay.

  I tried to find Austin most of the next day and wasn’t able to. I spent most of the day in another really long, drawn-out discussion about what to do about the guys who had come and taken a bunch of the water. I swear to you, one of the arguments was, “Why is this such a big deal? It’s raining all the time. Let’s just put out buckets and we can drink out of that.” I felt myself beginning to lose it, so I walked away and a girl named Tia followed me out. She said that she was scared and was worried they were going to take her, and that’s when I sort of lost it. I remember yelling at her, “You should be scared. They are going to take you unless we do something to stop them,” and she started sobbing, so I cooled off and told her the name of a couple of girls I knew on the Golden Road. I told her go up there, admit she was scared, but be strong and tell them everything that’s been going on. Tell them we probably won’t be here too much longer if this keeps up and to get ready. There are going to be refugees, I told her.

  I slept away from the group that night, high up in the scaffolding of the Fairy Flight ride, and I figured out my next few steps. I put finding Austin at the top of the list, and then I was going to head over to the Robots, where I knew a few people. If that didn’t work, I was going to head up to the World’s Circus. I’ve always been a rational guy, so I didn’t believ
e any of what I had heard about all the dead bodies up there. It just didn’t track with me, so that was step two. That was as far as I got in my head because I started hearing screaming from the restaurant. God, I wanted to stay up there. I wanted to wait and cover my ears until I could see sunlight coming from the little corner of the room that fed into the gift shop. I wanted to hide. To be fair, I should have hid, but movement down below made that impossible. There was someone running around the guts of the ride, and I couldn’t see them, and they didn’t know I was there. I had this big iron tool that I had taken from one of the repair shops. It was the closest thing to a weapon I could find, and by that time, I had a pretty good idea of the layout of the place.

  I was able to figure out two things, even though I couldn’t see what was going on. The first thing was there was only one of them. I knew it was a guy by the way he moved and the way he was breathing heavily. The second thing I knew was that this guy was walking along the tracks where the fairy carriages move along the ride. I could hear a very particular clang when he walked. It was this sort of tinny but hollow sound. He was toward the beginning, so I started crawling down as quietly as I could, but it wasn’t nearly quiet enough. He heard me but couldn’t figure out where I was, so he started talking to me. He was one of those guys, full of bravado, just like the ones who had come to take the water. I remember he said, “You can have the first shot. Come on, give me a good one. One good one, right in the face,” and he got angrier and angrier as he said it. Then he started calling me names and yelling at me to come out. I was about ten feet above him and was as quiet as I could possibly be, but after calling me a coward and a few other things, he got really quiet and I knew he was listening for me. Suddenly there was the clink noise, like metal hitting metal. Then another one. Then another one, and then something hit me in the leg. It stung a bit, but I kept quiet. Then a second one hit me a lot harder, in the stomach, and I let out a grunt noise, and he had found me. He was throwing bolts he had gathered from the ride, from what I could tell. Heavy ones.