"Live Action Park": a journey into mystery ( 3029 words)

Here’s a story inspired by seeing a vintage pinball machine, during an annual camping trip with my family.- Cecil
A man with a certain maniacal glee in his eyes leads another man into People’s Crossing, pictured here: The other fellow’s dressed in a Hawaiian shirt. He’s putting out a cigar as they travel over the bridge. He coughs, then says:

Blamed walk to the top of this mountain best be worth it.
Mr. Anthony, you are considering turning back?

Not on your life, Sandu! We’ve got five grand riding on your proof that you can demonstrate what I will agree is Extra Sensory Perception.

If you hadn’t walked up from nowhwere, told me my name, that I go by ‘R.A.’- that I’m a gambling addict, that I’ve seen it all but you can go one better, money guaranteed- and my blamed social security number! Why aren’t you selling lottery numbers?

Sandu: Power made of belief- beyond every day levels, in this cynical world- can move that entire mountain top, RA. My sense of a tremendous source to tap all but assures me the purse on which we’ve agreed. Though I assure you, the greed is there simply because it was part of my abilities, from the beginning of the time the entire world feared me!

Rogers Anthony: So what was it- a day or something? I don’t even know why I’d believe you really dropped a building on Thor. I always thought he was some media gimmick.


Sandu: It’s the trickster’s power that gave me leave to levitate an entire bank- teleport the people inside, to the ground- then disappear with the building.
Rogers A: What’d you do, hide it on the moon?

Sandu: Now, who’s psychic?


Roger Anthony is a man whose pulse lives for thrills. I never quit believing in my own luck!
Too bad for you, that means you’re likely not to convince me.

Sandu: No one knows enough to be a pessimist, Roger. Now, come to this side trail. I want the others to pass.
Roger Anthony: While we’re going down side trails together, partner, best believe I carry this Walther P-38 with me. I thought if I told you ‘bout it, might spare us some unpleasant surprises.

You don’t frighten me, Anthony. But careful flashing that.


Plot: They’re watching some questers (explain) following our supporting character, Julie Shanon, their quest leader.
As she takes them back across the bridge- the other direction- we hear snippets of conversation. These are five eight year-olds, roughly. They disturb the reverie of one of the park’s visitors.

He’s good-natured. A quick explanation of who they are breaks out, all having a good time, but one needs the restroom. Julie and David Bennigan feel an instant connection. She would indeed appreciate some adult convo, but that’s not in the cards. Lunch, however, is coming up.

Here we get David Bennigan roped into applying to be a Quest Leader. He’s in town waiting to continue research at the university with his colleague, Sajatha Balasuriya. David was just here enjoying nature, but things swiftly move to produce:

Bennigan, when next we see him, has quickly mastered the game, though he’s never LARP’ed per se. He’ll be on the field, training one week, and on day ten...we’ll pick up with him and a group, on their way back up to Settler’s Park, now known as People's Crossing.

-Sandu and Rogers Anthony watch through binoculars, as Sandu points out the man who is drawn to this spot. You see, something is attracting people. Very special kinds of people. Sandu predicts that man will be part of his key to showing Rogers Anthony what real power is. Rogers scoffs, but says, “I’ll give you this: if this is a set-up, you’ve made it entertaining. I won’t say you’ve pulled any wool over my eyes- especially in this frickin’ heat! So- how long til we see this Power?


Sandu: Four weeks.

Rogers: You’re putting me on!

Sandu: That’s for you to decide in two weeks, if your attention’s not wandered elsewhere.
Rogers: Nah, I’m staying- well, somewhere classier than this, we’ll leave it at that. Sandu: Be seeing you.

Rogers: What are we now, the Fugitive?
Sandu: No. That man, David Bennigan, is the real fugitive.

If I were drawing this as an American comic book, I’d try to have us on page six, a training montage for David Bennigan. "Sight and Sound- stay within sight and sound of the kids." "Remember to look for poison ivy on the trails" "No effect! No effect! See, that's how you make characters with defenses that save you energy." The caption for this next page, seven,
details it and says something to the effect that, this is the most intense experience of inner childhood, well, a positive one, anyway. He had pretty much the worst kind of father you can have present in your home. How embarrassing for this physicist to admit to himself: this is the first child hood fun he can actually recall.
He and Julie chat on a break in the rain, by the shelter. SHANON: Training SEEMS to agree with you!
BENNIGAN:
Well, I’m not here to relive my own childhood. I’m here to play along with these childhoods.

Then, still page 7, we get that first line of kids crossing the bike path. One panel of Power Circle.
Pages eight and nine would be wonderfully visual: a montage of nine scene, culminating in one happy panel with Bennigan, smiling softly, in the lead, into the tunnel beside the bridge where he first saw this activity.
So, on page ten, one kid gets delusional, and tries to command Bennigan. Suddenly Madelaine, all 35 kg of her, floats. At first, wonder! But she wants to be ABLE to get down on her own. But she’s whisked, screaming, away towards a nearby peak, the pretend Ogre’s Rock outlook, piled with boulders. She’s precarious up there, surprised and frightened and trying to take this in. As the one child begins to drain life force itself away from Bennigan, David looks and sees a blank, energy-gushing stare. A hypnotic suggestion lies super-imposed on the boy’s face, a wicked face without human color, saying:

Sandu:
I drink your essence, like water from a goblet, yielding every drop to my inhuman thirst! This astral sight comes to him as he begins to change form...to a form that can see such things. It is said, in great moments of stress, especially in relationship to danger, our body can achieve adrenaline spikes that render new limits to the possible.

David wants to keep some control in the change. His one intention though: help Madelaine! This, he retains...even as the physicist transforms into a one thousand pound, seven foot tall behemoth born in an atomic explosion. And whatever the merits of his hidden enemy’s ability to read minds and manipulate susceptible ones...the creature now before Handley and the other kids is NOT—in an agreeable mood!

The green-skinned man flexes his leg muscles- not even very deeply- and naturally sends his body, a projectile to the cliffside. With massive hands, the man-monster takes Madelaine. She has felt very existential fears this week- with a new baby brother, and here at camp while Mom gives birth.
Page 12: This is the one moment she forgets all that- and suddenly, the thumping contact with the ground inspires a cry of joy! Not three seconds later, they land at the edge of Eben G. Fine Park. And when she climbs away from the hulk, she realizes: she is unharmed.


The belief of the children in the awesome sight before them provides psychic energy to Sandu’s plan. Now, he must r
isk being seen, and summon the power that is now his, to make them- Believe! And when they watch the log he levitates from fallen to upright, they do believe they see a powerful sorcerer in Sandu. Then, the log vanishes!


And this wave of intense belief, coupled with the feeling of utter disbelief, reinvigorates a misguided man, who once served as a pawn of no less than the Norse God of Mischief, who once held those who looked upon him in the grip of power beyond their ken. And what once was- is once more!


Her rescuer turns, and skips mightily away, airborne and west-bound, towards the less-accessible mountaintops. Sandu teleports from the area, before Julie walk into sight. Her attention is on counting the kids. Then, as if remembering , the super-strong physique turns, in three jumps, back towards the place of change..from a man who is, right now, the center of questions for a quest leader: Page 13

Julie Shannon :
--avid? Do you have your walkie talkie? Where did Madelaine go?
Julie : She’s ...at camp? She’s OK!!
Thus is attention turned away, just long enough...for the behemoth to satisfy his urge to come back and fight an enemy he knows is ‘not the boy...but is whoever did this, even here? Magic- bah!’
But, riled as he is, a few minutes of wandering...scaring the hell out of a first-aid training class with a stretcher and a dummy...petting a deer...and being found post-transformation by his friend. The fallout is a re-assessment of what was seen, and serious questions:

‘Dawg’ Dwees, a site supervisor with They pronouns, says: If it’s not safe to go up there, then we’ll need to cancel the rest of the week! HR, Tiffany Livvy, she/her: Things like this could ruin the camp. How can we predict if the creature will return? Sheriff Laura Han she/her: It seemed benign, but it’s beyond our control. We can only monitor the park and prepare tactical/ rescue units.
Page 14 Anthony slyly fuels the fire with a rumor that Bennigan resembles an FBI Most Wanted Fugitive.
We’ll see he simply wants to derail Sandu’s plans, for fear he’s in over his head. So, last panels of the page: Bennigan and his questers come together as a group along a trail down a hill. Bennigan: So, Eric, Shawn, are you aware of the Trickster Water Spout who was speaking with Lilith and Ziev, back there?
ERIC: There was questing? For real?
ZIEV: Yeah! He could keep the quest going any time!
BENNIGAN: Right, so don’t get too far ahead. Even if gravity’s calling.
Mindful for poison ivy, too.

So, Lilith, we have a clue now where to seek your mother, The Warm Black Queen.
LILITH: I want to see her again. At Ogres’ Rock, I got another message, Ziev: from my other mother, The White Marble Queen. She cast an projection of herself, to ask me to join her.
MADELAINE: Are we meeting up with another group for a battle?
BENNIGAN: Oh yeah: let me radio Quest Leader Julie, so we can prepare for that! This is Oak Tree, going for Bee.
JULIE: Bee seeing you in about three minutes.

HUGH: I want to defeat the Green Knight of Horror’s Valley!

BENNIGAN: OK, let’s see if you can tame Sewer Rat. Rock! Paper! Scissors! Shoot!

Sorry! Wow, that’s seven or eight rounds we haven’t been able to win by the rules- and I’m sorry I forgot about them and nearly left you with the sewer rat. But- I wonder if there’s a story reason why Sewer is so hard to tame? What do you think, Tigeriffic? Page 15
HUGH: I wanna quest against the Green Knight! We’re in dream, so I see him!!
I know how to fight him! This isn’t questing.
BENNIGAN: Sorry. Look, Hugh. Your fellow questers are trying to retrieve a rat from the sewer near the Orb Vision Theater...while we found ogres entering, backstage?
HUGH: But that’s not the quest! That’s not questing! For once, why don’t you listen to me???
Bennigan, empty water bottle in hand, walks away three paces quickly, upon responding:
No.
Bennigan relies on the control that’s come more easily than ever to him, in these six intense months. You can call him Monster. But this one took a soulful path.
Still, he is not perfect. He is four steps away when he flings the empty bottle to the ground. And with then a deep breath, he turns and says: You see, this quest is for everyone. Each of you.
I’m going to walk right over here. Stay here in the shade. I’ll be in sight and sound. All I need is a minute to myself, OK?
Bennigan sits on a stump. He takes a truly deep breath, as if so much depends on it.
The five seconds respite, spent with eyes heavy-lidded, breaks with the arrival of :
JULIA SHANON: Hey! Getting ready for a change?
BENNIGAN: Oh, hey! I would love to play two bosses for the kids here in a minute.
SHANON: I could squeeze that in, before I take off at two. Sure!
Bennigan springs up and walks with Shanon over to the children, who’d been stunned,
by the frustration they felt, the uncertainty underlying their merry, nearly-perfect endeavor today in the summer sun. And in the Belief invested in that doubt, Sandu finds a place for his ESP to offer a sense of greater power...getting strong, now...preparing for the two to arrive, with friendly voices and faces, to their relief. Only….the comfort turns into a hunger they had not noticed before.
A flow of power- and more, if they will but consume it!

The horns of peril play from the piannissimo drums of forces distant, now arriving. The power-up for this coming battle seems glorious...and a majesty erupts within their breasts, as they, children, become empowered as truly might they dream...even the least power-tripping of them, feels the essential difference. And it is good that their natural minds are blissed out for what comes next, for you see..

Shadows of great-headed creatures begin to assemble from the children’s, somberly. They speak with voices that sound like frying meat, and some presence – like an Id, tempted by power such as the young body has never known- makes puppets of the long-dark creatures, translucent in the afternoon light, but visible as the clouds close over head with a lightning herald’ s five-second crack, miles beyond the city.
The shadow-creatures using the children say:
Yes, we could play this game, all summer! Lots of grown-ups to come offer what we really crave! We’re gonna eat you up! I never knew the taste of feelings was delicious!
You try willpower. Rock, Paper, Scissors!
You lose, Quest Leader! Time to pay up our reward.

Page 17 Four months..and now, when there is no choice, save to leave his his hidden, true opponent to apparent wickedness and an open field of targets for his belief/ fear/ inspiration spell- he must simply trust his alter body to insure survival. Life without the transformation has been...like living a dream. Cautiously...yet, undeniably, with more confidence...if not arrogance, but now is no time to root against himsel
f. BENNIGAN: Respect for all life around us. Time now, in MY shadow.
Maybe..if I am not afraid...that respect, then…

Release stressors which might cyclically evoke vulnerablity to the change. What wonderful luck he’d had since that unfortunate last time. Not damaging anything had been an achievement, but not enough to safely settle in some neighborhood in Anywhere, U.S.A. Bennigan made Nature his partner, and found more of himself than he’d maybe ever known. That’s a passing tragedy in what happens next. For these feelings, evoking primitive responses within us all, glow in apparency. And what must never be done- harm to the children-in this he believes, he has cultivated peace and patience enough, to his core. And what must be done?
Who yet may know?


But now, this form...bursting with superhuman strength, a rippling sense of the substantive expansion of his physique...if anything has energy to survive now...yes.
And be there no other recourse...this is his life to lay down. It has been his uncanny experience now, not to die in a mind-staggering number of lethal experiences. His alter is nothing, if not, durable.
The creature does not attack. Of course not. How could they harm such as he?

Do children want to play?
How strange, the emotional lightening that accompanies their blows, in seconds!
The wizard casts an elemental orb ray, and the massive mountain of a man lifts his hands for protection. Their monster snarls, then smiles, which is creepy, but cute. He reacts to the smallest, wolf totem girl as though her swasher sword was that of a mighty warrior, one he wants to dodge, but too late! Madelaine, the mystic, offers to heal the green-skinned goliath.
And the entire band is suddenly gripped with
Wonder! They realize they are having this fantastic encounter, in real, waking life.
And in the ensuing, joyous melee, Sandu pretty near loses his hold on the situation. He waited patiently this long, though, years-he can relax his desire to make puppets of them all, and let the Belief, grow, the Imagination grow, and then...with his extrasensory control, he begins asserting the impression that the questers powers are real! This fuels the fire..

and he stares into this, with some awe for this perception of the power generated by childhood play. Power that will be his power….
SANDU: NOW!

Harmless horseplay of fantasy characters suddenly darkens like the sky under a heavy drenching rain with hail stones, pelting the emotional being of the mighty being in their midst, as nightmarish personas take over the attack!


The Will to Live sustains the jade giant. But the thought of that, too, vanishing like a wisp, before the heat of Sandu’s scheme, saddens a mind that saddles doubt, not well. And now, sighting Julie, with this primal understanding :

if I leap, she is left alone with them.
And so, too, are the others, images of the people of the camp, to whom his alter ego has so effortlessly connected. So the man-creature’s response- with a saddened heart, and troubled brow- is one virtually no foe ever evoked. Almost every fearsome monster he has battled instead discovered his limitless rage- and vitality. He sinks to his knees, opens his arms...a sign of surrender from battle. And though this does not stop the onslaught of power, granted to become real, its hosts overcome with a consciousness only wishing to feast… As Sandu watches peace finally fall upon the resigned behemoth’s face, his assurance of final victory brings him his first laughter in years. That would be a somewhat horrific Ending-Ending. But I adapted the second half of my story in all-original terms, here: