My close friend

What If

"Ah, finally the police has arrived...! Come on Chan! Don't lose any more time and start the engine...!" exclaimed Mom, trying her best to keep calm. 

"Let's get out of here as fast as possible!" added Auntie. They were really in a haste to reach dear home.

Their current attitude could be nevertheless understood; almost having been severely injured (if not more) by something we were unaware of, certainly left us with a deep fear for our dear life. People were still running and those who thought that they had had the brilliant idea of already taking their car out of the parking lot, have really been played by the congestion caused by the evacuating lot of people, blocking the the exit completely.

The police, who had just arrived on the park's premises, were doing their best in calming down the situation and helping the park's staff in dealing with the causative incident. Sooner than we thought, the police had managed to channel the people so that it made way for the vehicles to move out. And since we were not far from the exit, we got out of the parking lot and drove towards safety, with the huge help of the police officers. More often than not, the police had proven to be inefficient, but thankfully enough, they have been really professional this time around. Often prone to corruptibility, some people have given up on the police force, however, cases like these would certainly bring our hopes up.

"For once, those police officers are taking their job seriously...!" let out Uncle, who seemed to have indeed spoken for most of us here.

Unfortunately, we were advancing at walking speed. But given our situation, it was certainly better than not moving forward at all...! It had been fifteen long minutes, but we eventually made it out of the park. Of course, a huge traffic jam was awaiting us on our way back home, but at least we were no longer in the park's premises. You should have surely noticed that lingering on the grounds of the park any longer was an option everyone did not even consider. Why was that, you might ask. The common opinion about that tantrum was that it was more than probable that it was due to a hidden bomb, hastily implanted by someone in there, and that it has been discovered in time. 

Bombing attacks were being heard of more often these days, and according the previous attacks and obviously, logically speaking, a more than suitable place to set up a bomb would be an overly crowded place, such as a stadium, or an amusement park. Another reason why most of us were thinking about the likelihood of a bomb attack, was due to the recent incident that happened next town, involving a poor little girl of barely ten years old, who was acting as a kamikaze upon the orders of her dear father. Mostly everyone was shocked to have learnt about that father's familial sense of duty and responsibility. He was insane enough to teach his child that that was her destiny...! That, that was what she was born to do! That if she did it, not only would her parents be proud, but Allah (the Islamic God) would also be happy! Seriously, this world is really messed up!

We were barely advancing a metre each minute, and it was starting to get on my- on everyone's nerves rather. I turned the radio on in hopes that some music would ease our frustration and lighten the atmosphere. As it was still around half past two in the afternoon, the next news bulletin would be aired only in thirty minutes, implying that we would have to wait for half an hour to hear about that incident. Thankfully, some soothing jazzy song was being played and everyone let out a sigh of relief, feeling less annoyed by the slow pace with which we were moving.

"And now, the afternoon flash bulletin. The headlines: The Saint Pedro's-"

What!? Since when had I stopped listening to the radio..!? Well, I have never listened to it in the afternoon anyway. I was certain that the bulletin was not for another thirty minutes though. Anyway, the most important thing was that we would finally get to know what happened back there.

"- to the Statistics Bureau, the Government cannot finance the construction of such-"

We were all ears to what the anchor was saying and we kept waiting to here to hear either of the words: Imaginary Land or bomb attack. By then, most of us had agreed on the bombing assault. After having waited for about five minutes, we all felt a chilling feeling as the words 'Imaginary Land' were pronounced.

"- happened around three o'clock today.  A couple, Josh Kendral and Sarah Fordshire, were floating away along the channel of water in the Dark Ride when smelled something uncannily disgusting and revolting. They eventually found out the cause of such a smell: the corpse of a young girl handing above them. The staff of the recently opened amusement park, with the help of the police, succeeded in safely bringing the girl down without dismembering the already decomposing body. Our reporter, Ema Chayil and her team are on the premises and shall give us more details in a few seconds... Ema ? Can you hear us ? Ema-"

"Yes Krissy, we are hearing you just fine. I am now with Officer Danil Bent who was in charge of the whole operation. So, Officer, tell us what really happened here."

"Well, the girl has been taken in for an autopsy operation, hence we have yet to know her identity and uh, the actual cause of her unfortunate death... Nevertheless, according to one of the witnesses... Uh, Josh Kendral, he felt something tapping his shoulder and when he turned to see what it was, he uh, he found a 'floating' pair of sneakers. And when uh, he looked up to see the latter's owner, he unfortunately discovered, to his great horror, the poor dead girl, rocking back and forth uh, from where she had been hanged."

Those 'uh's...! I swear, was it too much to ask to speak like uh, maybe a normal person!? Man, all this attitudinizing because of a brief interview...! Simply nauseating!

"I see. And what are the higher ups thinking about the amusement park ? Will it undergo the same treatment as the previous amusement park, Fleiva Park ?" 

"Nothing has uh, been decided yet, but if you ask me, I don't think uh, that it will be shut down as this has not been a case of dysfunction of uh, any of the rides. However, it seems clear that uh, uh the personnel, has not handled the situation, uh, appropriately, causing people to uh, panic and run away. According to me, they should have been uh, more tactful and uh, discreet."

"Yes, I see. Well Officer, thank you for your precious time."

"The pleasure has been all mine."
See!? It was not that difficult to speak normally, was it!? You dumb excuse of an Officer...!

"As you have heard Krissy, they have yet to elucidate the case, but the least that we can say is that it has definitely been a Dark Ride for Josh, Sarah and the other passengers of that boat."

"Indeed it was, Ema. thank you for your hard work. We shall now move on to another topic: the Minister of Education and-"

I immediately stopped listening any further; my ears were close to bleeding with those 'uh's, but, I could not believe what I just heard. We were so close to seeing the decomposing corpse of a poor little girl back there! If we had been a few minutes early, or if we had not stopped by to see our parents, we might just as well have been the ones who would have witnessed her hanging corpse! Chanyeol and I might have been the one to have picked up that disgusting, rotten smell! I could have been the one to have been kicked on the shoulder by the rocking dead body! No matter how much I wanted to stop thinking about it and switch off my mind, I could not do it. I was too big a deal for me to turn a blind a blind eye on it. To think that we were thinking about a bombing attack, while in the end... A murder would still remain a murder, no matter the means used.