FantasticLand

by Mike Bockoven

  She said, “No, we’re not safe. But neither are they.”

  INTERVIEW 8: CRISTOBAL ABASOLO

  Concession Manager in the Fairy Prairie, Eventual Robot Soldier

  I was the guy who left the Deadpools. It was nothing personal, and I had my reasons. I wasn’t going to be anywhere near the Pirates, not after what happened to me and then to Tom, you know? The Deadpools and the Pirates, they were right next to each other in the park. I wanted to be as far away as possible. I believe the phrase in English is, “Fuck that noise.”

  I came for the summer from Chile. They say in America they love men with accents, and I can lay it on thick if it’s to my advantage. FantasticLand, they recruit from certain countries very aggressively because they like having an international flavor. I remember seeing ads all over my Facebook page the summer before I came to work. They get visitors from all over, so why not come here and work for the summer? The money is good, the people are good, and it’s just as hot as it is where I live on the equator. I came the summer before the storm, and the people, they really liked me. I don’t want to go into too much detail, but I was lucky a lot. Is that how you say it? I was lucky? I don’t want to say too much. My parents will likely hear this. They will insist I go right to church after, I think.

  Because I came back and because I encouraged others to come, they made me a manager at one of the restaurants in the Fairy Prairie. I oversaw four of the snack stations. There were two cupcake stands, a smoothie station, and a place that sold nachos. I, uh, I never really understood the nacho station, but who was I to judge? Americans, they love disgusting cheese. They were all very profitable. I was in charge of making the schedules and handling the deliveries, that sort of thing. No problem. At least, not until I met Travis. He worked in the Hero Haven and he played Radio Roger, who was one of Private Pummel’s group. He and I became very good friends. We were together all the time we could be together. Sometimes, if I could manage, I would go over there to watch him interact with the visitors. He would do this thing where he would give the kid one of his radios and run to the other side of a building and try to talk to the kid and tell him where to go. It was very cute to watch. We were very good friends.

  Mostly, in the Fairy Prairie, it is girls. Nothing against girls, but after getting out of the shelter, I felt like it would be a good idea to be with guys who could protect each other if they needed to. Let me back up. After the shelter and after that Pirate leader killed the boy who fell off the roof, everyone I talked to felt like they needed to protect themselves and groups were the easiest way to find protection. The girls who ran the shops, they were not happy to have people there. They started making lots of noise and saying, “You can’t stand here,” and “You need to find somewhere else to go.” It all got worse after that boy fell off the roof. People started going their separate ways and looking for a group. I could have gone back to the Fairies, but I didn’t have a lot in common with those girls. I was their boss, but I didn’t think they would listen to me. We didn’t listen to bosses after we got out of the shelter.

  Why? I have thought about this. You know Mr. Garliek, the man who was supposed to be in charge? Everyone thought he killed that girl, yes? You’ve heard about this? He had a group of people around him who were supposed to help him be in charge and when everyone got out, they all immediately decided they didn’t want to listen to him anymore. I wouldn’t have listened to him either. He was very rude to everyone around him. He had no authority because everyone believed he had killed that girl for disagreeing with him. Instead of everyone being afraid that he would kill them too, everyone ignored him. I think that when everyone ignored him, all the managers on all levels decided they had no authority either. They joined a group, and other leaders stepped forward. That’s how it worked and how you got the tribes. The leader became a joke; no one cared enough to step up and try to lead. I wasn’t going to risk anything for a nacho stand and two cupcake stations. Those girls who worked in the concession stands, they never showed me respect, anyway.

  I decided to not go with the Fairies and followed Travis. He was good friends with Riley, so he had a group who would welcome him. Everyone was very welcoming at first, but Riley looked at me like I was not right. After the first meeting but before everything went bad, she came to me while I was playing cards with Travis and some of his friends. She asked if I would like to go on the first patrol and that it would be a good idea because I could get to know some of the other people who worked here. I remember saying, “Most of my friends are here, so it’s OK,” and she left me alone, but she pulled Travis aside and talked to him. When he sat back down, he told me it would be a really good idea to go on patrol. I did it because Travis asked.

  Please remember, no one thought this was anything dangerous. I was comfortable in the lounge, I was with my friends, I had a full belly, one of Travis’s friends had stolen several bottles of wine from one of the restaurants, and we had started drinking them. It was starting to feel like an adventure or like a camp where there’s no Internet. I didn’t want to leave because I was warm and dry and felt good, but Travis said it would “grease the wheels” and that I would make new friends. I did what Travis wanted.

  Riley introduced me to Tom, who was a nice guy. I will say that about him. The other girl, named Shelly, she was going to go, but Tom told her not to. He told her to save her strength for the next patrol. He had two other people selected, one named Sam and one named Adrienne. Sam worked at the Hero Haven and Adrienne, she didn’t say much. I learned she was from the shops on the Golden Road, and her English wasn’t as good as mine. She was from Venezuela and was very scared. When she saw me and I spoke to her in Spanish, her eyes lit up and she began speaking very quickly about what had happened to her. She got as far as the shelter and broke one of her fingers when the lights went out before Tom asked that we speak English so we all could talk to each other. I told him her English wasn’t great but we promised not to talk about anything important. He wasn’t mad, but he told me it was rude to speak in Spanish. I didn’t want him to be angry with me, so I agreed. She spoke in English and told me what happened to her finger. She wanted to see a doctor, and when Tom wasn’t looking, I whispered to her that she was a strong girl and that she could get through this but I did it in Spanish so only she would understand me. She was a little more confident after that, but we didn’t speak Spanish any longer.

  Adrienne was very sweet but was very scared. I remember she kept reaching into her pocket. She didn’t put her hands in her pocket and leave them there; she would put them in, then take them out, then put them in again. When I asked her why she did that, she said, “I keep feeling my phone vibrate,” even though they had taken our phones away. Then she said, “I keep hoping it’s a message saying they are going to rescue us.” I remember feeling very sad when she said that.

  The patrol shouldn’t have taken very long because the Hero Haven is less than a hundred acres, but everything is slower when there are no lights. I want to impress upon you how dark it was. There was no electricity at all—there were no street lights or exit signs or anything to light the way. It occurred to me, at that time, that a patrol was absolutely worthless when you’re stumbling around in the dark. People could be right in front of us and we wouldn’t have known it, plus we didn’t exactly see the point. What would we have done if we had run into someone? I asked Tom this, and he said we would “assess their intentions,” which didn’t make much sense to me. We had flashlights, but they were no match for the size of the area we were trying to illuminate. I noticed after only a few minutes that our group would instinctively move toward any light we were able to find. We found some battery-operated signs that were starting to go out, and we found a lit public toilet that was hooked up to some sort of generator. Of course it was raining, so between the dark and the wet we were very miserable, and Tom wouldn’t tell us what it was we were doing out there. We were blindly following the lead of this man, moving toward any light we saw, which was h
ow we ended up in the Pirate gift shop.

  I don’t know what Tom was thinking, and I’ve thought a lot about it. I could only come up with two ideas. The first was that he wanted to take people to the Pirates to see how they would react. The second is that he wanted to feel like he was in control, and this patrol was the way he came up with to do it. Either way it was a bad plan. The lights that we saw, and we saw them from quite a distance, belonged to old-fashioned lanterns that had been lit. They were part of the park’s decor, is that the right word? Decor? They were always there but hardly ever used. They put out a lot of light, and when we got there they were lit but no one was there. Only us and lots of souvenirs, T-shirts, and cases of pop and energy drinks. There were also chocolate bars by the register but no other food that we could see. Tom and Sam grabbed a few bags and stuffed some drinks and chocolate into them. They were in a hurry, so they didn’t see what was happening outside, but I did.

  A flash of light made me turn my head. I didn’t know what it was at the time, but I started speaking to Adrienne in Spanish. I told her to “Ocultar!” which means “hide,” and she very quickly jumped into a rack of T-shirts. It was the round kind, and it hid her very well, especially in the dark. She was a petite girl, so she made very little noise, but Tom and Sam, they were very loud. They were so loud, they didn’t hear the tapping right away, but it got louder quickly. It started as the sound of metal on wood, not a “clang” but a “thud” and then it got louder. I looked to the area with the most light, and I saw several boys with swords, and they were banging the swords against the side of the building. Soon, they were all banging their real, metal swords on the wooden gift shop walls.

  Tom and Sam stopped and realized there were at least twenty people surrounding the shop. The banging kept going and got louder, and I could hear Tom and Sam talking to each other very quickly and quietly. They never thought to include me. I don’t know what they said, but they spoke very hurriedly, and I could tell, in the low light, they were worried. Then one of the Pirates yelled, in a deep voice, “Time to come out. There’s nowhere to hide so you might as well face us.” Please remember, at this point, things were tense but not what I would call dangerous. I had heard rumors of someone being killed, but it was described as a mercy killing, I think is the phrase. There was no reason to think we were in real danger. I had been beaten up a few times in Chile, and that was what I was expecting. I was prepared for a few hits to the stomach and maybe to the face, and I think I said to Tom, “Let’s let them hit us, and we can go back to the others.” He didn’t say anything, but he yelled back at them. He yelled something like, “Sure, no problem,” and he and Sam went out the front door. I went out behind them.

  There were three boys outside, and one of them had a big pirate hat. They had lit torches and put them behind them so there was enough light to see. I knew one of the boys because I had seen him at a training earlier in the summer, but the other two I didn’t know. I was only able to piece it together afterwards. It’s funny, how the mind plays tricks on you. I saw some of these same boys on the news not all that long ago, and I remember them as tall and muscular, but on the TV, they were the same size as me. In the light of the torches, which were not going out in the rain, they were gigantic, and I could also tell they were not happy. As best as I can remember, they told us we had been caught stealing. Like I said, there were twenty or so boys with swords all in a circle, and they would react to whatever the three in the front would do. When they said, “You’ve been caught stealing,” there were whoops and grunts of approval. That was the scariest to me. They never let us forget how many of them there were or that they had swords. They never let them rest or put them away. They were front and center the whole time.

  The one Pirate to the right of the leader in the big hat, he came up to the three of us and said, “You have a choice.” He said, “You can join us and take a test of loyalty, or you can accept your punishment and go back to your people.” It sounds ridiculous to say it out loud, but he was very serious, and so was everyone else. They grunted in approval. Tom had chosen a lighter tone and was smiling and trying to reason with them. He would say, “Sorry guys, I didn’t know I was stealing,” and offered to put back everything in the sack he had. He did this a few times, saying things like, “Come on, guys,” and “This is stupid, we’re all employees of the same park.” It was the third or fourth time he tried to appeal to them that the leader in the hat quietly stepped forward and smashed Tom’s nose with the handle of his sword. There was enough light for me to see Tom fall to his hands and knees and spit blood onto the ground. The rain had matted his hair, and I remember his outline on the ground. It is a very clear memory.

  The leader, he then said, “You don’t understand where you are,” and he kicked Tom in the ribs. Tom fell backward and lay on his back, breathing hard. He said something else that I didn’t quite hear because of the rain, but it sounded like, “A pirate gets what he wants.” I figured something like this was bound to happen to us next, and Sam thought so too. He jumped forward and said, “I want to join. What do I have to do to join?” They told him to stand still and then they came to me. The one I recognized from training got very close to my face and said, “What about you?” I remember my heart beating very fast, and for the first time feeling like this was something more than a beating. I felt in danger, like I was maybe going to die here. When they asked me what I wanted to do, I suddenly was very aware that they could kill me here in the rain, and no one would stop them or punish them. They had figured that out well before I had.

  I said, “I will join.” I am not proud of this.

  After I said that, the leader in the hat started yelling to the crowd. He said, “We have two potential Pirates here and only room for one.” Sam shot a glance at me and I at him, and I could see his fear. I’m sure he could see mine as well. The leader then said, “It’s time for your test of loyalty. Whoever brings me the girl hiding in the gift shop can stay. Punishment for stealing from us awaits the other.”

  I had secretly been hoping that we would have to fight, as I might have been able to beat him, but once the leader made it clear what he wanted, I knew two things. The first was that Sam would give up Adrienne in a split second if he could and the second was I knew, for a fact, that he hadn’t seen her hide in the T-shirt rack. I knew it almost for certain. After he looked at me, he turned and ran into the shop very quickly, and I followed. There was less light in the gift shop than outside with the torches, and once we got inside I immediately tackled Sam around the waist. He hadn’t expected it, so he went down very hard onto the wet, carpeted floor. I tried to kick him, but there was even less light on the floor. I might have hit him, or I might have kicked a shelf or something, but after that first kick, I lost him. I heard him scrambling around, but it was too dark to get a good sense of anything. I ended up bumping into a shelf, and I heard him scrambling around, then he was quiet. He was hiding, and I didn’t know what his plan was. To be honest, I didn’t know what my plan was. If I found Adrienne, I was going to comfort her and try to figure out a way not to give her up, and at that moment, I didn’t want Sam to find her. I was working on one problem at a time.

  I made my way around the back of the register, and that’s when I heard Adrienne. Sam was dragging her by the hair out of the T-shirt rack, and I ran at him. This … sounds more heroic than it is. I am not much of a fighter, really, and he punched me very hard in the face as I ran toward him. He was ready for me, even in the dark. It knocked me down, and Adrienne, who is small, couldn’t put up much of a fight. Sam got her out of the shop before I could get to my feet, and I was bloody and in the dark. I heard some of the Pirates cheer when they came out of the shop, and I had no choice but to walk out as well. I stood there for a second trying to shake away the stars in my head and trying not to taste the blood from my lip. There were two exits from the gift shop with Pirates outside each one. There was no back door and no place to hide, so I walked out and stood behind them. It was h
ard to do, but not as hard as what was to come.

  When I walked out, all the boys started yelling at me, but the leader put up his hand. He said that I was brave for coming out and facing my fate. He said, “That is no small thing,” and told them to show some respect. Then two of them came with rope and tied my hands in front of me. It was dark, so they did not do a good job. As soon as they let go I realized it wouldn’t be hard to free my hands, and with the darkness, I had a reasonable chance of escape. My blood was pumping very fast, but I decided to stay where I was for a moment and to see what happened to Sam and to Adrienne. I was very scared for her. I had lied to her before. I only knew two women from Venezuela, and they were not very tough.

  Remember I told you there were two torches on either side of the three boys who were leading the group? One of the boys pulled a long thin piece of metal from his bag and held the tip to the torch. No one spoke as he did this. There were three of the boys holding Sam, and the leader walked up to him and said, “If you want to join us, you must know how to inflict pain, and how to handle it.” In a strange way, I felt relieved. My biggest fear was that many of them would rape Adrienne while the others cheered. I … I did not want to see that and was thankful I wouldn’t have to, but then my attention turned back to the torch. The leader had taken the piece of metal out and I understood. It was a brand, I think the word is. It is hot metal used to mark cattle, yes? They meant to mark Sam, but he didn’t realize it until the leader told him to choose where the mark would be. He said “the arm is popular, but we’ve done legs too,” and each of the Pirate boys started pulling up their sleeves or their pant legs to show that they had been marked. They all looked very fresh, which made sense since this was only the first or second night out of the shelter. They were already a tribe and they had the marks to show for it. The marks were all different letters. I couldn’t see what letter they had chosen for Sam.