Vehicular Swanslaughter
Anqien should never have let Jinai near the bumper cars.
Well, really, there wasn't a thing they could have done to prevent this. Jinai would get in whatever ride she pleased, and Anqien would be too nice (and too smitten) to let her go alone.
Rollercoasters? Sure, they could handle screaming themself hoarse and feeling queasy for half an hour, for Jinai’s sake.
Blowing half their budget on rigged arcade games? Totally fine. Even though all they had to show for it were a few crushed chocolate bars and a soggy frog plush.
Gallons of cotton candy? Actually kind of amazing. The opposite of a problem.
The bumper cars, however.
This ride had a reputation among Lotus Park's attractions as a death arena, and it hadn't been immediately apparent why. Each of the garish animalesque vehicles only admitted one rider. As the station master with their humourless smile had raised the barricade, Jinai and Anqien had each chosen their own from the car bay: Jinai, a tacky grinning naga—classic choice—and for Anqien, what looked like a bizarre cross between a possum and a ginger cat.
The steering wheel, like so many other things at this park, had been sticky and slightly candy-scented, but they had tried not to think too hard about it as they had careened out onto the glossy floor.
Now, they were two minutes into their round, and Anqien was pretty sure they'd already lost a couple of years of their life.
Amid roars and screeches of drivers and cars alike, their girlfriend's maniacal laughter veered closer and closer. Like an apparition she flashed into their peripheral vision, and they cried out, stamping on the pedal. The two swerved in parallel across the dome, and Anqien's valiant attempts at dodging were futile at last.
"AUGH!"
Her rubber bumper smashed into their side, throwing them against the edge with a jolt. Before the stars had cleared from their vision, she'd shot off in a trail of laughter, chasing down her next victim.
Through a chorus of concerningly loud thumps and vociferations, Anqien drove their possum-cat car quietly onto the oval circuit and did their best to enjoy the strange scenery of hanging lanterns.
Jinai was on some sort of mission, though to what end they weren't sure. Perhaps this was the true curse of Lotus Park's bumper car floor: that it awakened the dormant bloodlust in those most inclined...
Anqien had barely completed that thought, when a bang rocked their entire vehicle, jolting them out of their seat.
"Thirteen!" declared Jinai from her machine of terror. By the time they had regathered their bearings enough to look, she had blurred away like a pouncing snake.
Crash-THUD! "Fourteen!" Some hapless driver screamed in the distance.
Anqien rubbed their temple as their possum-cat pottered along. At this rate, it was only a matter of time before they got kicked out.
By one miracle or another, Jinai and Anqien were not evicted until the full twenty minutes had elapsed. As they clambered out of their vehicles—Anqien a little shaky on their legs—Jinai beamed and took their arm.
“Best ride so far,” she chuckled, and it was hard to begrudge her thrill about the matter, even if they had constituted a third of her "kills".
“Just one thing,” they said as they walked away down the dirt tracks, beneath rainbow canopies. "Next time, I'm not doing the bumper cars."
She smiled oddly at them. "Oh, did I overdo it?"
Anqien braced themself internally. "Uh, it was more than I could handle. Glad you had fun, it just wasn't for me."
She snorted. "Oh, hey, it's fine, you can say if I was being annoying."
"Well, I genuinely thought we were gonna get kicked out."
"Me too." She grinned, then snatched their hand. "Let me make it up to you, though. How about the Swan River next?" A canal wrapped around the entire theme park, and they had been watching the swan-shaped boats migrate past all day.
They nodded. "As long as you don't start ramming the others."
It was a decided change of pace as the pair reached the front of the Swan River queue and were ushered to the boarding bay. By then, the sun was close to setting, and the entire canal, which ran between boardwalks full of chattering pedestrians, glimmered red in the light.
Each of them settled into the poorly cushioned seats, Jinai leaning over to pat Anqien's hand, even as she began to pedal the swan boat out into the canal.
"You sure you don't want me to help?" asked Anqien, pointing at their own set of rotating pedals.
Jinai shrugged. "If you wanna, I can't stop you," she chuckled. “Or you can steer.”
"Even on holiday?” they laughed, as they placed their feet on the pedals, reaching for the joystick between them.
Together, the pair drifted up the waterway, the current bobbing them along. They steered gently around flocks of white boats, all dressed like swans and floating soundlessly alongside. They marvelled at the pink glimmers of the sunset on the artificial canal—a pristine sun-soaked painting whose tranquillity could not possibly be marred...
"It's the crazy bumper car lady! Get her!" The shout smashed the vision to pieces like a gunshot.
In seconds, a large white bird was hurtling towards them from across the canal at full pedal speed—which wasn't very fast, but the visual was made more threatening by the creature's cartoonishly large eyes and the water churning scarlet behind it. Aboard the cygnine boat, a pair of high school kids pointed and bellowed and pedalled like amateur hunters on the chase.
“Uh wow—to port!” Anqien shouted, slamming the joystick while Jinai pedalled for their collective lives. The swan boat jolted left, heeling farther than it was designed to—both lunged out of their seats to rebalance it as its left hull dug into the water. They watched the other hurtle past to their right, the passengers cackling and screeching.
“Oi, kids! Settle down!” It was the first time today that they had been relieved to hear the grown-ups yelling.
As the defeated swan of teens slunk away towards the bridge, the pair sank back into their seats, heaving a sigh.
Jinai shook her head. “These damned consequences for my actions. Gets me every time.”