Narrative

Tube of Terror

            Two friends going to the water park, having fun, splashing around, doesn’t seem like a scary story right? It doesn’t. But part of that very trip still burns deep inside me even to this day.

          It was around my best friend Lauren’s birthday and she had invited me to come with her and her family to the Wilderness Water park for the whole day. I was definitely excited, although the ride there took an eternity. Bouncing around,  I felt like a caged animal in that tiny car.

After finally arriving, we dashed into the hotel room and changed to our swimsuits as quick as lightning. The water park had three section, each filled with different thrills and excitements of its own. Lauren had picked the one with a water raft ride called the black hole. As we walked through the halls to the water park, I was worried. My stomach felt sunken and I was freezing and sweaty at the same time. Any sort of ride made me nervous. But after this I would be way more than just nervous.

          All of us, Lauren, her mom, her grandma, and me, all sat in the circular raft. I prayed that I wouldn’t go backwards. Water bubbled and whispered its faint hiss from under the raft. My hands held the handles firm, my knuckles turning white. Then whoosh! The raft slid down the pitch black tunnel, no way of stopping it.

Feeling completely blind, I heard the water splashing around but it was almost like it was nowhere. I was there but I was nowhere. I was moving yet I wasn’t. My hand tried to find Lauren next to me but it felt lost in the void of space, where screaming, even till your vocal cords gave out, would never save you. “Lauren!” I half said, half yelled in the darkness to talk above the gurgle of the water.

         “Sarah, I’m right here!” she hollered as the raft began to shift and slide around. I held so tight to the handles that my hands felt numb.

I felt sweat on my body, even when covered in chlorine-drenched water. The raft was moving a lot, skidding lightly on the surface of the water. Suddenly the raft moved upwards and it was almost like I was standing. Please don’t have the raft flip,  I prayed; the last thing I needed was to be squirming and fidgeting, trying to grab hold of something in the a raft-less raft ride when there was no light.

          Slowly the raft moved to its normal position, and slowly I began to relax. My body was still shaking. A rising light, closer, closer. Soon the raft flooded with light and we were out. The rays surrounded me and I felt in a different world, a different universe. Before, the darkness felt like the last thing I would ever see. But I was alive, breathing hard, still worked up from the event like a deer who just luckily dodged a car. Trembling, I got out of the bright yellow raft, followed by Lauren and her other family members. Thank goodness, the scene was over. The curtained dropped.

But the play wasn’t over; I still think a lot about the event. “I thought we would die” I said to Lauren at the end of that day. “I could almost see the headline: RAFT FLIPS; 4 DROWN IN TUBE OF TERROR.” Lauren told me that I was crazy and laughed, but seriously, I am now terrified that that will happen again on any sort of rides because of that horrible memory.

Looking back, I probably shouldn’t have freaked out. I mean they design those rides so no one gets hurts, right? This memory is pretty important to me anyway because it was still part of a very fun day at the water park with Lauren. That little moment of complete fear, that's what really sticks out from that day. Maybe it would just be best to just forget the “Tube of Terror”.