Christmas With Dinosaur

By jinnis

When we found the voucher for a discount on the Lost World Christmas Night Ride in our letterbox, Stephen and I had a good laugh. Why would anyone wish to spend Christmas in an entertainment park beneath plastic fern and in the company of fake dinosaurs? No, we would enjoy the traditional dinner with his family—and later celebrate in each other's company.

That was two days before I found out about Melissa. Well, I'd known her for years, as she worked in Stephen's company as an accountant. We'd met at several events and I'd actually liked her. So did Stephen, it seems. After my dentist appointment, I went to pick up a gift for his mother, as I knew he was too busy to remember himself. Stephen and Melissa stood near the jewellery counter in the warehouse, too engrossed with themselves to pay attention to passers-by like me.

When he came home late that night, I'd already packed most of his stuff. He moved to her place the next day.

Of course, I could have—should have known long ago. All the late hours he worked these last months, the frequent business trips abroad. When I told my friend Tessa, she called me naïve. I guess she was right. And while I should have been used to live in an empty apartment by then, it turned out I wasn't. I'd wake late at night, waiting for the sound of his key in the door lock. It never came.

With the holidays approaching, the loneliness became oppressive. My friends were busy and set in their own ways. I buried myself in work, but then the last school day came, and while I sent my beaming pupils on their way, I got Tessa's text from the airport. She and her partner left on their annual holiday at a beach somewhere.

Bleakness invaded my mind, and I broke down. To cheer myself up, I rearranged the apartment. A fresh setting would help me move on. The voucher turned up while sorting through the mail. Close to tears, I threw it into the wastepaper box. But five minutes later, I retrieved it—perhaps it wasn't a bad idea to spend Christmas Eve in the company of strangers.

~ ~ ~

When I arrived at the theme park, the diversity of the public attending the event surprised me. Aside from elder couples and singles in all age groups, there were several families with children and a group of teens. An exotic buffet in a tropical garden setting awaited us in a hothouse.

To my surprise, the palm trees and colourful flowers were real and so were the butterflies. After two glasses of punch, I relaxed enough to start a conversation with a woman my age. She was here with her two children, a boy of eight and a girl of ten in full explorer mood.

Alice, the mother, smiled as she watched them chase a huge blue butterfly. "At least they can forget their dad for a moment."

"What happened?"

She sighed and ran a hand through unruly black curls. "The big C. We were supposed to go on a holiday, but with him gone and all the unpaid bills for his treatment, I couldn't afford it. This here is meant as a brief distraction for the kids."

"I'm sorry."

Her smile was faint, but warm. "Thank you. We will manage, in time, but let us talk about something more cheerful."

I was happy to comply, and we spent an agreeable conversation during dinner. When the time for the actual night cruise arrived, it was clear we would stick together.

A theme park employee in khaki shorts and a pith helmet ushered us to a boardwalk. "Pease don't forget your coats. The cruise is outside, so you might get cold."

A young woman on the quay distributed blankets. "Twelve people per boat. Have a great cruise."

"Mom? I have to go to the bathroom."

Alice sighed and turned to the woman with the blankets. "Is there a bathroom somewhere?"

"Back along the boardwalk and to the left, right behind the banana plants."

"Thank you. Sorry, Mariah, I hope to see you later."

I smiled. "There is no rush. I'll wait for you and Julie."

"If you're sure?" She turned to her son. "Do you need to go too, Andy?"

He shook his head. "I'll stay here with Mariah."

Alice and Julie hurried back along the walk while Andy and I watched the guests scramble into the boats. Each barge hooked onto a submerged traction cable, maintaining the illusion of a free floating ride.

After the dinner and free drinks, there was laughter and cheers as one boat after the other disappeared into the tunnel portal marked with a sign "Lost World" adorned with fairy lights. Soon, all the boats had left except one. Only a couple in their sixties waited alongside us, the man patiently explaining to Andy how the traction mechanism worked.

I turned to his wife. "Your husband is quite good with children."

Her lips twitched into a small smile. "Tom always wanted children. But alas, it wasn't meant to be."

I didn't know what to reply—this sounded too much like the story of my life. At least they had each other. She stretched out a hand. "I'm Rose. Nice to meet you and your son."

I laughed. "I wish." Perhaps, if we'd had children, Stephen would have thought twice about beginning a relationship. But no, I was daydreaming. "Unfortunately, Andy is not my son. I'm Mariah. His mother and sister should be back any moment."

But the tunnel had swallowed the boatload of cheering teenagers for quite a while when Alice and Julie returned. "Sorry, we had to go all the way back to the entrance hall. The restrooms nearby were closed."

"My fault. I thought they would be open." The employee helped Rose into the front seat of the boat. Tom followed, Alice and Andy took the second row. This left Julie and me in the third.

The young woman handed me the stack of spare blankets. "Just stow them under your seat, please." With a practiced move, she pulled the lever in the bow and locked us onto the traction rope. "Let's get you underway—and merry Christmas."

"Merry Christmas," we replied, and off we went into the tunnel's maw.

Inside, it was pitch black, and Julie edged closer to me.

"Don't worry, this isn't the ghost cruise." At least I hoped it wasn't. We both jumped in our seats when a voracious roar split the air. Julie grabbed my arm. "What's that?"

"Nothing to be afraid of, it's just a recording," Tom's calm voice didn't help the girl relax. She still held onto my arm when we passed through a glittering waterfall illuminated in all the colours of the rainbow. Protected by the boat's glass roof, we arrived in an exotic winter wonderland.

The bare limbs of giant trees reached over the waterway. Their branches were covered with snow, glowing white, blue, and purple in the discreet illumination. Deer-like creatures drinking from the river lifted their heads to stare at us. They looked very much alive, except for the snow covering their backs.

Beside me, Julie gasped. "Andy, look over there." She pointed to the right, where a stegosaur nibbled at a branch.

The boy jumped up in his seat, rocking the boat, and his mother had to hold him back. "It's a real dinosaur, mum."

Julie snorted. "No, it isn't—it's probably plastic."

Alice sent her a desperate glance. "It's still beautiful, isn't it?"

I had to agree. The light and the snow gave the scene a dreamlike quality. Julie just shrugged, but her gaze followed my finger when I pointed out a patch of water lilies. We both shrank away when, amidst them, the back of a giant alligator appeared.

"Huh, that caught me by surprise." We both giggled. And then the roar we heard in the tunnel tore through the air again. I shivered and pulled my coat around me.

"Is this a tyrannosaur, mum?"

I suspected Andy was right. This children's favourite wouldn't be absent in a theme park. But first, our boat followed a bend of the river and we passed along a meadow with a flock of grazing brachiosaurs. One of them lifted its snakelike head and followed our progress. Now, even Julie was engrossed by the show.

Then the riverbed narrowed, and we drifted through a dense forest again. Another bend, and there it was. The T-Rex towered over us and greeted us with its mighty roar. The boat drifted closer to the shore with the beast until we looked up into its fearsome jaw. I almost waited for the smell of decay, so perfect was the illusion.

Instead, our boat stopped.

At first, we thought this was part of the show. Andy climbed almost out of the boat, eager to touch the dinosaur. Julie pointed out the gigantic canines of the beast, and Rose the small arms compared to the muscular hind legs.

Then the lights dimmed and flickered into darkness.

"What's wrong?" Alice's voice carried a hint of worry.

I shrugged. "I don't know—perhaps it's a power outage."

Tom sighed. "I hope it isn't. It will get cold out here on the water."

I pulled up the hood of my coat and did the same for Julie. "Let's try to stay warm, shall we?"

My attempt to keep my voice cheerful failed. Alice placed an arm around her son's shoulders. "I'm sure the power will return at any moment."

Rose shifted in her seat. "I hope they didn't forget us out here."

That was the fear nagging at me all along. With our late departure, and if someone had been eager to close the show and return home to their family...

After ten or fifteen minutes, it became clear we had a real problem. I took a deep breath. "Do you think we can row the boat to the end of the ride?"

"Do we have paddles or something?" Tom was right, of course. Using my phone as a flashlight, I climbed over the seats and found two flimsy paddles in the boat's stern. Tom and I tested them, but we couldn't move our ride.

Rose tapped her husband's shoulder. "Dear, we're still hooked on that cable. We can't go anywhere like this."

"Can't we unhook us, like the lady did?" Andy's suggestion was excellent, but it took Tom another ten minutes to find out how the lever worked. With everyone moving around, the boat was tilting left and right. The moment we unlatched, it became even less stable.

"Sit down in your seats, everyone." I'd accidentally held my hand into the water and found it freezing. "We can't risk capsizing out here."

"It's probably shallow." Tom pushed his paddle to the bottom. He was right, the water was only half a meter deep. "But you're right, it's too cold to wade through."

While everyone sat down again, Tom and I used the paddles. It turned out that we wouldn't go far with their help. The boat was too clumsy and not built for speed.

Alice, holding her phone aloft to let us see something, turned back to me. "This is going to take us half the night. Perhaps we should just try to get to the shore and walk from there."

She was right. We had been right beneath the T-Rex when we lost power. At least, its prominent silhouette was easy to spot against the starlit sky. Minutes later, we ran aground next to it. Tom climbed out of the bow. Water splashed, and he cursed.

"Mariah and Julie, can you climb all the way back to the rear? Then I'll try to pull the boat further out so you don't get wet feet as well."

We did as asked, but it needed Alice's and Andy's weight too to allow him to pull our craft far enough out of the water so we could climb out without getting wet. Before I joined the others, I picked up the blankets from under my seat.

On shore, Tom stamped his feet, and Rose took his arm. "You must get out of the wet shoes and socks, dear. Come sit down." She pointed at one of the chubby dinosaur toes. The old man sat down, but fumbled with his shoelaces. I placed a blanket around his shoulders. "Let me."

While Rose and I rubbed life back into his icy feet with another fleece blanket, Alice and the kids explored the place. They returned minutes later. "The good news is that the dinosaur is indeed made of plastic, the bad news that we're stranded on an island. Back behind these bushes is the channel where the boats return to the starting point of the ride."

It made sense, and we should have thought about it. "We might call the emergency service, I guess."

"That's probably best." Alice dialled the number and described our situation, then listened and disconnected the call with a deep frown. "That woman told me to stop kidding and that they deal with genuine emergencies out there."

Great. Well, we were not in immediate danger and the park would reopen tomorrow morning. But we were in for a long, chilly night, out here.

Julie tugged at my sleeve. "Look what I found. Can we have a fire like the Girl Scouts?" She held a load of dry sticks. "There are more under the dino's belly."

The idea of a fire sounded much better than trudging through the icy channels of a theme park at night. "We need a lighter, though. I don't think I can ignite a spark by rubbing sticks together."

With a broad grin, Tom dug a small pouch out of his coat pocket. It contained a pipe, tobacco, and a box of matches. "No need for prehistoric methods, Mariah."

A quarter of an hour later, we sat around a small fire on the clawed dinosaur toes, snuggled in blankets. Alice pulled a roll of cookies from her bag and distributed them.

"I brought them for an emergency, after all." She pulled Andy closer and kissed his head. "Didn't you want to go on a camping adventure?"

He munched on his cookie. "I wish dad were here. He would have told us a story."

"Oh yes, we need a story." Rose nodded while Tom filled his pipe. "Do you know a good one, Alice? Or you, Mariah?"

I laughed. "Actually, there is one the kids at school rather liked. Let me see if I can remember."

I remembered, of course, but I also knew how to build tension with my audience. I might be a failure in love, but I was a gifted storyteller.

Here we were, stranded in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve on an island in a fake jungle, the dinosaurs around us wearing snow caps and the starlit sky above us stretching into infinity. And while I told my new friends a story about how love is the most precious gift of all, I felt at ease for the first time in weeks.