The Disney Reality

Chapter 4- Fireworks of Terror

When we got there, I was so relieved to finally see people there. They all crowded around in anticipation of seeing the vivid colors burst into the black starry sky. Children sat on their parents’ shoulders, filling up with joy with each passing minute. For some reason, I was like the odd child that did not like fireworks. The sounds had always terrified me. Resembling gunshots, I always jumped with each pop and prayed for our end. It was 9:45 pm, the fireworks would soon rattle my nerves in just a few minutes. I looked around at the people and noticed that in some parts of the crowd, the mascots would come around and hand out glowsticks to children. There was a Donald Duck, Goofy, Minnie Mouse, Pluto and of course Mickey Mouse. I looked at Lisa with wide eyes as she looked back at me, exchanging looks of terror. My mom began calling for Mickey to come over to me. I quickly grabbed her arm and told her not to call him.
“But you love Mickey don’t you?” she asked weirdly, almost creepily as I looked on in complete bewilderment. She continued calling him over until he finally rummaged through the crowd, his fixated smiling face looking directly at me. He chuckled and handed me a blue glowstick as well as Lisa a red one. We both took them and watched as Mickey stood there, calling us his buddies. We weakly chuckled, secretly praying for him to leave. Once he did, we both inspected the glowsticks and saw nothing weird about them ...thankfully. About five minutes later, 10:00 pm rolled around as a man on the intercom announced that it was time to celebrate Disney World’s 30th anniversary. He went on for a couple of minutes glorifying Walt Disney and his creations like Mickey. He also brought up the long forgotten Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, claiming he was the original Mickey Mouse. As he talked about Oswald, the Mickey suit came back our way and stood a few feet from me. I nudged Lisa, who saw this and gripped my left hand tightly. I then heard a strange muttering coming from my right side. When I turned to the right, I saw Mickey staring directly at me. I quickly turned around to face the front, hoping he’d turn away. I looked out the corner of my eye and saw he got a few feet closer, still muttering. I looked at Lisa, who was not even looking my direction. When I turned back to my right, Mickey was literally six inches from me, still staring at me and muttering. He then leaned his large head right against my ear, muttering “He has abandoned us. He has left us to rot. He has left us in hell.”
I began shaking, trying to keep my composure to not cause another scene in public. I quietly asked him “Who is he? Why me?”
Mickey then stopped muttering as he stared at me, silently, motionlessly. My eyes began to tear up as I yanked on Lisa’s arm, hoping she turned around. She was still looking to the left but I saw something in front of her. It was Minnie Mouse, staring at her. I felt her arm shake as she quivered. Suddenly, the fireworks began popping into the sky, illuminating the night with bright lights that spelled out “Disney World 30” and the crowd cheered loudly. I looked up at the sky and hoped that Mickey would be gone. When I looked back, thankfully, he vanished. I saw that Minnie was gone as well as Lisa looked at me with teary eyes and a red face that gleamed in the flashes of light. My parents looked back at us and saw how shook up we were and expressed concern as we stared at them, not knowing what to even say. After a few minutes of us being silent, we returned to the hotel. When we walked into the lobby, again, it was vacant. Nobody seemed to return back to the hotel after the fireworks, which made the situation even more unsettling for Lisa and I. My parents now were a bit worried as they called out for anyone to no avail. They were obviously confounded and disturbed by this point, now seeing why Lisa and I were anxious to begin with. They assured us that everything was fine and that people would be back later in the night. They knew that this was possibly a lie, but they still tried to maintain sanity by not only assuring us but also assuring themselves things were normal.
We went back up to our room where Jamie put in his favorite Disney movie, Alice in Wonderland. I liked the movie, but the Cheshire Cat always creeped me out. It wasn’t even the standing on his own head thing, it was the fact that he knew so much about Alice and the world and yet was so ambiguous and a dangerously clever character. I know at seven years old I should not have been thinking like that, but I guess I was not your ordinary child.