Flash Lit February 2020 #2 - Upside Down

“I wonder if I shall fall right through the earth!  How funny it’ll seem to come out among the people that walk with their heads downwards!  The antipathies, I think—” Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter 1

“I don’t like this,” Addie said.  The entrance to Sydney’s Luna Park was through the gaping, white-toothed mouth of a giant head.  She was not fooled by the rosy cheeks or the lifted eyebrows.  The fact that people were walking freely back out did not mean that other people had not been swallowed forever.  Also, she could hear screaming.

Her mother sighed impatiently.  “Don’t you want to go on the carousel?  Get a candy apple?”

Her father crouched down next to her and used the quiet voice he always used when he wanted to pretend he wasn’t just as impatient.  “How about we just give it a try?” he said.

“But it’s looking at me,” she protested.

“I’ll hold your hand and you can close your eyes until we’re through.”

Addie was pretty sure there was a flaw in his thinking, but a candy apple would be nice.  She gulped and let the enormous teeth pass over her.  The carousel played its magic music and whirled her around as her painted steed pranced up and down.  Every orbit of the horse was marked with a wave toward her parents, a ritual of departure and return.

To get to the coveted candy apple, they had to walk through the fun house mirrors.  Addie laughed to see her head perched on a very long neck like a serpent, her feet little squat things far away.  In one, she was enormously fat.  Another reflected her swelled in the middle and upside down, as if the mirror were some enormous spoon.

Her parents whispered furiously behind her.  She heard her mother say, “This was your idea—you tell her.”

He sighed and nodded, paying for the apple.  Addie took it from him as he said, “Honey, your mother and I are getting a divorce.”

The apple, acting in accordance with both Newton and Murphy, landed caramel side down.