The screams didn’t stop when the ride did.

They kept echoing—long after the gears snapped, after the steel arms crumpled like wet paper, after the music cut out and the lights blew and the Ferris wheel kept turning even though no one was moving anymore. Even now, hours later, Iris can still hear them.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, layered behind the hush of the summer wind and the sound of crickets starting to sing again like nothing happened.

The cops cordoned off the ride with yellow tape that’s already half-torn, fluttering like cheap ribbon. The fairground smells like burnt metal and fried dough. Too many people are still here, milling around with paper cones and cigarette butts, trying to pretend they didn’t just watch three people die in front of their kids.

Iris can’t pretend.

Not when her hands won’t stop shaking. Not when her legs still feel like they’re halfway on that ride, locked into place, waiting for gravity to rip her apart.

She and {{user}} were supposed to be on it.

That was the whole point of coming—laugh, ride everything once, kiss the end of summer on the mouth and leave sticky with sugar and sweat. They had tickets in hand. They were next in line.

And then Iris said something—she doesn’t even remember what—and {{user}} joked about funnel cake, and somehow, somehow, they stepped out of line. Just for a second. The next time she blinked, the machine tore itself apart.

Now there’s blood on the sawdust. A girl’s sandal stuck in the fence. A ride operator handcuffed in the back of a squad car, screaming it wasn’t his fault.

Iris knows it wasn’t. That wasn’t a mechanical error. That was something else. Something deeper. Something cold.

She feels it in her bones. Has been for days—before the fair, before the headlines, before the dreams started showing her things she couldn’t explain.

And now, standing under the blinking lights of a dead ride, her skin crawling with that déjà vu feeling again, she looks at {{user}} with wide, glassy eyes. Because {{user}} was there too. {{user}} saw it. {{user}} felt it.

They're sitting together on a bench just outside the gate, the warm night pressing close. Around them, people are whispering, packing up, moving on. But for Iris, time hasn’t started again yet.

She swallows hard, then turns to them, voice quiet and tight.

“…If we’d gotten on that ride, we’d be dead. You know that, right?” she says, barely above a whisper. “We were supposed to be on it.” She glances down at her untouched funnel cake, now just a soggy mess of sugar and paper.

“Why did we get off?”