The vent suddenly veered downward in a violent, physics-defying drop.
There was no time to scream—just the collective sound of our bodies whooshing into the abyss like meatballs launched from a cannon.
And just like that, we were trapped in what could only be described as the world's sketchiest, most legally questionable indoor roller coaster.
Rona, naturally, was having the time of her life.
"This is AMAZING!" she cried. "Again! Again!"
Meanwhile, poor Isaac, wedged just ahead of me and still tightly bound, was mumbling furiously through his tape. Judging by the furious muffled cadence, he was either delivering a dissertation on our collective incompetence or casting ancient curses in Morse code.
Behind me, Ronald wasn't faring much better.
Between sobs and terrified gasps, he was crying out, "Why is the smell of rubbish getting stronger?!" before promptly vomiting and sniffling through the next turn.
My own problems? Oh, just a casual case of vent-induced friction burns.
"MY BUTT IS ON FIRE!" I screamed, flailing for any sort of brake, only to accelerate even faster.
We spiraled. We bounced. We screamed.
At one point, we zipped past a small raccoon family having what appeared to be a quiet, candlelit dinner. The father raccoon dropped his fork and stared at us in mute horror.
It was chaos. It was madness.
It was Tuesday.
Not that the day of the week mattered—when your life is a nonstop rollercoaster of catastrophes, every day feels like Monday dipped in chaos.
After what felt like a lifetime of spiraling through the rusty bowels of the universe, Rona suddenly threw her arms up and shouted, "Booo! The ride's ending already?!"
I, on the other hand, exhaled with the kind of relief reserved for narrowly avoided disasters and cancelled meetings.
Finally, I thought. A moment of peace. A chance to breathe. A fleeting second where—
The air thickened.
The metal around us started to sweat.
And so did my soul.
"…That's not good," I muttered, nose wrinkling.
There was a low rumble—ominous, mechanical, and far too familiar.
Then—
WHOOSH—THUD!
We dropped like cursed potatoes.
Correction: I dropped like a sack of bricks. Isaac followed, bound and silenced, thudding down like a disgruntled log. Then came Ronald—who descended like a meteor of misery and sealed our collective fate in a very undignified human pancake stack.
My face was mushed directly into Isaac's back. Isaac's face had the misfortune of greeting the floor. And Ronald, our unwilling final layer, landed with a weighty OOF that knocked the last shred of hope from my lungs.
And Rona?
Oh, she stuck the landing.
Graceful as a beam of moonlight, she landed on her feet with the poise of an Olympic gymnast, twirling once with a flourish and a self-satisfied clap.
"Ten out of ten," she said brightly, giving herself a little clap as she danced around our pile of groaning bodies.
Somewhere beneath the mountain of Ronald, Isaac let out a weak, muffled squeak. I think it translated to, "End me now."
I wheezed, "Ronald… buddy… maybe… get off before we all merge into one organism…"
Ronald whimpered, tears threatening again. "I—I think I crushed something important."
"Yes," Isaac's voice rasped from below. "My spine. My will to live. Possibly both."
We lay there in a tangled, groggy mess for a few moments—just long enough for the dizziness to subside and the full weight of our situation to settle in.
Then I blinked.
"Wait… are we… moving?"
A low mechanical whir answered me.
Ronald's eyes widened. He blinked, once, then twice—then jerked his head around with a strangled gasp. His pupils shrank like someone had just whispered "test tomorrow."
"W-We're on a conveyor belt!" he shrieked, his voice cracking like a violin string under duress. "A moving conveyor belt!"
Isaac squinted blearily. "That explains the vibrating floor…"
Rona casually twirled a strand of her hair. "Oooh. Is this another ride?"
I sat up with a grimace, turning my head just enough to see where the belt was heading.
And there it was.
Glowing red.
Spewing heat.
Coughing out greasy smoke like it had beef with the air itself.
The incinerator.
A giant metal maw, ready to deep-fry our souls.
My eye twitched. "Of course. Of course it ends with fire."
I slapped the wall beside us. Solid. Unyielding. My knuckles stung. "And the walls are thick. Great."
Ronald scrambled to his feet with the elegance of a baby giraffe on roller skates. "No wonder it smells like barbecue in here! And it's hotter than a sauna full of burning rats!"
Isaac's muffled voice from beneath the tape sounded suspiciously like a scream of betrayal. I yanked the tape off without ceremony.
"AGHHH—"
"Quiet, Isaac. We're trying to not get roasted."
Meanwhile, Rona had hopped to her feet and was now walking backwards up the belt, arms outstretched like a demented tour guide.
"This way to your doom~!" she sang. "Please keep all hands, feet, and fragments of your soul inside the ride at all times!"
"RONAAAA!" Ronald shrieked. "STOP TOUR-GUIDING US TO HELL AND HELP!"
"Okay, okay!" she chirped, doing a backflip off the belt with ridiculous ease.
As the furnace loomed ever closer, I kicked at the belt with increasing desperation. "Okay! Nobody panic! We've escaped worse before!"
Ronald pointed at my shaky legs. "Your leg says otherwise."
Isaac glared at me with the fury of someone moments away from combustion. "Because you CAUSED worse before!"
The incinerator let out a deep, ominous fwoooosh, like it was agreeing with him—and eager to make a statement.
We had maybe a minute before we were reduced to sizzling skeletons. But that wasn't even the worst part.
A series of mechanical arms hung above the belt like spider legs, twitching and jerking to life one by one. A massive claw extended from the ceiling with a claaang, snapping open like a hungry beast. Gears whirred. Chains rattled. A trap set to crush, bind, and package us up like day-old leftovers before offering us to the flaming gods of industrial waste.
My heart rate tripled. "Okay," I muttered, eyes darting across the assembly line of doom. "Time to improvise. Again."
Ronald whimpered. "Why is it always improvising?"
"Because planning is for people who aren't chased by guards and falling into incinerators!" I shouted, already crawling across Isaac's back to find an exit—or at least a conveniently broken machine. Or a miracle.
Isaac, still bound, stared daggers up at me, his mouth half open in a fresh rant I didn't have the luxury to hear. Judging by the look in his eyes, he was already calculating seventeen increasingly creative ways to kill me if we lived through this.
If.
"Rona!" I barked. "Ideas?! Anything that doesn't involve interpretive dance or death?"
Before Rona could offer another chaos-fueled suggestion—possibly involving pyrotechnics or interpretive smoke signals—a loud BANG shattered the air behind us.
The metal door slammed open so violently it nearly ripped off the hinges, crashing against the wall with enough force to wake the dead. A flood of guards poured in like a tsunami in riot gear—shouting, armed, and with expressions that said someone's getting tackled today.
Ronald yelped and ducked behind me like a toddler hiding from thunder. "They're going to kill us," he whispered, shaking like a leaf in a wind tunnel.
I remained perfectly still, eyes locked on the guards. "Don't worry," I murmured. "This wall will protect us."
Ronald blinked at me, voice trembling. "But… this wall's designed to stop things from getting out, not in."
I looked away, avoiding his gaze.
And said nothing.
Then came him.
The Chief Guard strode into the room like he was entering stage left of a crime thriller—back straight, boots heavy, and jaw so square it probably paid taxes. He looked around with the pompous air of someone who truly believed the world was a film and he was the main character.
With one authoritative sweep of his hand, he barked, "Stop the conveyor belt!"
A nearby guard skidded across the floor, slammed a fist onto the console, and the belt groaned to a halt—mere feet from the incinerator's yawning, fiery throat. The wave of heat still washed over us like a very angry oven, but at least we weren't about to be flambéed.
Small victories.
In the brief silence that followed, I let a single thought float through my head like a soap bubble:
'Huh. Maybe the Chief Guard's not such a bad guy.'
Then he spoke, his voice raised with the righteous fury of a man who rehearses speeches in the shower.
"Release the hostage and surrender yourselves, criminals!"
My brain paused.
"Hostage?" I echoed blankly, blinking in confusion.
Ronald turned slowly, pointing with trembling fingers toward the still-bound and gagged Isaac, whose expression had escalated from "murderous" to "cataclysmic." His glare could melt steel. If eyes could scream, his would be performing an opera of betrayal.
"I think…" Ronald swallowed. "They mean Isaac."
I followed his gaze to Isaac—hogtied, furious, and vibrating with indignation.
There he was.
Taped, tied, slightly squashed from earlier, and now blinking with the raw intensity of someone composing a very long and very detailed revenge novel in real time. Isaac's entire face radiated one loud, clear message:
'I will never forgive any of you.'
I stared down at him.
"Oh," I muttered as realization crashed into my brain like an overdue package lobbed by a vengeful courier.
"Right… the whole kidnapping thing."
Isaac let out a strangled, furious noise beneath the tape—something multi-syllabic, violently passionate, and definitely containing at least one very personal insult that would require a therapist to unpack.
"Yeah," I admitted, scratching the back of my neck. "That one's on us."
Behind us, the incinerator gave a dramatic fwoosh, its flames belching skyward like a dragon with indigestion.
In front of us, the guards cocked their weapons in grim synchrony.
No one moved.