(Flash Fiction) Pirates of the Caribbean

A terrible secret is kept at Disneyland

I always feel uncomfortable riding the Pirates of the Caribbean Ride at Disneyland, mainly due to what my grandfather showed me.

He used to work there when it was being built in the fifties; he was a builder on the Haunted Mansion. This was at a fairly tumultuous time for Disney, a time people don't really know about, because Disney kept it hidden so well.

See, as Disney began regaining its stride, having stopped propaganda for World War 2 and now building its own theme park, there were people that didn't want Disney to have all that power.

Some of them were people thinking Disney was sympathetic to the Nazi cause, and was working to bring them back to power; others were people who worked at Warner Bros and MGM who wanted to undermine Disney's power.

Regardless, there were people that tried to sabotage Disneyland's creation. They tried rigging rides, poisoning the water around Disneyland, and attacking staff members who were being trained to work in the costumes, you know?

My grandfather knows about this because he caught one of them trying to chop down a section of the mansion. He beat him up, but the guy didn't stop talking about Disney and Nazis. It was pretty ridiculous.

Well, it began to get worse. My grandfather told me there was a psycho that brought a bomb into the park, and was going to bomb Adventureland, which was its most-built attraction at that time. The staff got really scared, and a security guard that was there shot the man. My grandfather watched him die; he was on his way to the Mansion at that time.

At first, no one knew what to do with him. My grandfather was told to get back to work and let the higher-ups worry about it. He was okay with that, and soon forgot about it.

He began getting suspicious when some of his friends began talking rumors about the psycho, saying it had been dumped at the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. At first, he didn't believe it. But then he noticed that the ride went through a radical change: it became a lot darker. At first, it was meant to be had outside, with live actors running around an island playing out an adventure and all that. Now it was really really dark.

My grandfather became suspicious, and one day while on lunch he went to the ride and began snooping around. He noticed the animatronics, and didn't think too much of it, as there would be animatronics in the Mansion. He looked around the treasure room, inside the buildings, and on the ships, but he didn't find any luck. When he came out, one of his friends, Otto, saw him, and figuring he knew why my grandfather was in there, he said he'd show him that night.

So that night, Otto took my grandfather inside, and he took him at where the two ships were shooting at each other. They hopped into the water and swam out to behind the leftmost ship, and then he pointed down. My grandfather took a deep breath, dove under, and felt around. He felt something odd, so he lifted it up, and when he emerged, he saw that psycho right in front of him.

Needless to say, my grandfather was frightened. He left, and he tried telling authorities about it, but they wouldn't do anything about it; apparently Disney funded the police force substantially, and they didn't want to endanger that. He was sworn to secrecy, he told me, and he hadn't told anyone about it except for his family.

We took it as just a playful story, we knew about the rumors of Disney. My grandfather worked there a few more years, as an usher to the Mansion when it opened, and he saw more disappearances. Saboteurs, rivals, and even criminals that were giving the police force a hard time. Whenever he saw anyone be dragged through the workers-only doors, he had a feeling where they were going. Soon, he said, there were enough bodies to cover the floor of the entire ride, and fortunately for Disney, the ride is dark enough to hide them all.

When I went there, I tried reaching down into the water once, just to see what I could feel, and, I s**t you not, they stopped the ride, took me off, and wrote an entire police report about it. I got hit with a $500 fine, and was thrown out of the park! Can you believe that? That has made me fishy ever since.

But I haven't had a chance to do any more investigating, so I can't tell you anymore.

The End

Author's Note

In case you're wondering, this is entirely fictional. I was tasked to come up with a tall tale in my creative writing class. This is what I came up with.