The face paint stings a bit. The faint smell of aerosol and chlorine clings to my clothes. Our backstage area is in the waterpark’s changing rooms. During the summer, park guests fought over expensive cabanas while the same ten songs blared over the speakers. This time of year, it is the home base for about fifty scare actors waiting to be unleashed onto the excited public just outside the waterpark. I got dressed in the men’s locker room cluttered with an array of fake blood, plastic masks, and prosthetics. I’ve been in the makeup chair for about twenty minutes. My eyes sting the most. I can feel the aqua paint crust on my skin. The effect is supposed to make my face pop with 3D glasses on. The makeup artist looks over my face. She then decides to put some aqua paint in my beard.
“Okay, you’re ready, Captain Hook. Send in the next ghoul,” she says.
I stumble out of the chair. As a “ghoul,” the park’s name for a scare actor, I was told to wear all-black shoes. I only have an old pair of Van Slip-Ons with a wide white band. My shoes are covered in black electrical tape which has peeled off already. I was also told to wear black pants. My only pair are frumpy black sweatpants. Flecks of sticky aqua paint stain my red puffy pirate shirt. The hook has a handle I hold on to, which causes my hand to cramp. I catch a glimpse of myself in the dressing room’s mirror. I look like a grimy, smoke-stained pirate who works at a discount rate for birthday parties. How am I going to be scary? I think to myself.
John is waiting for me outside. His costume is a bloodied neon-painted jumpsuit. He’s supposed to be a post-nuclear disaster survivor or a cannibal. I can’t remember what he told me when we both got hired a couple of weeks ago. His face has been spraypainted blue. He’s eating a granola bar.
“Cool makeup,” he says through a layer of granola and chocolate chips.
“Thanks,” I say.
He offers me a granola bar. I’m too nervous to eat so I shake my head. I don’t want to throw up in front of the guests. We’re going to march from the waterpark to the backstage area behind the Entertainment building in less than an hour. I try to remember our stage directions for the opening show, but they get murky as I get more nervous. I believe that once we see the cherry-picker lift our local demon-king above the trees, we are supposed to run out and start scaring park guests, or something like that. It feels too late to ask my manager if that’s correct.
I look over to John, who doesn’t seem fazed at all. John is my opposite: friendly, talkative, and confident. He’s been speaking for both of us for as long as I can remember. We’re a good team. He does all the talking. I just stand behind him while sometimes nodding my head at what he says. It’s a classic pairing for a reason.
I’m about to ask him if he’s nervous when he suddenly takes my hand, “We got to say hi to everyone before it’s showtime!”
I don’t get in a word edgewise as he drags me to the rest of the group. They’re all standing under awnings, trying to protect themselves from the heat of the late September afternoon sun. We make a tour of all the other ghouls. It’s a flurry of names as John introduces us in a rushed “I’m John and this is my little big bro, Tommy,” before he bounces off to the next person. I caught a few things on this whirlwind tour: veteran actors make their own characters and the newbies like me are also nervous. Anything else, like what their names are, is lost in the rush to meet the other fifty-ish ghouls standing outside.
“All right, ghouls. Line up!” one of the managers shouts.
It is time. I have to face the fact that I must be scary now despite how unscary I feel.
I sort of black out during the walk from the waterpark to the main park. John is growling and screaming at guests. I don’t remember doing much of anything as we walked to the area just outside of the stage where the opening show takes place. Guests tried to entice me to scare them, but I froze. Once we’re backstage, John turns to me and asks, “Are you okay, bro?”
“Yeah,” I lie. “I’m great.”
“Good. I think I like scaring people.”
“Awesome,” I give a thumbs up and a smile.
The opening show goes on for about twenty minutes. The backstage area behind the Entertainment Building is small for fifty ghouls pressing up against the fence. It’s hard to follow the show with all the screaming going on both sides of the fence. Most of the ghouls are reacting wildly to the show. I get a few glimpses of figures enrobed in red velvet and dead colonial-era girls but not much of the show’s plot. The speakers are blaring 2000s alt-rock so I can’t get much of the dialogue. I then hear my manager shout, “Go, go, go.”
The door flies open. A mass of bodies pushes me out of the way. John grabs me and drags me onto the midway. Ghouls are running everywhere. Some have climbed onto the stands scaring guests out of their seats. There is a major traffic jam of people blocking both paths out of the stage. I forget that I’m being paid to do something in the chaos. I am dragged by John towards my house, where I’ll be spending the rest of my night. I suddenly remember I’m dressed as Captain Hook and try to scare people. It doesn’t look that impressive being dragged by a radium-soaked mechanic even with a plastic hook for a hand. Once he releases me, John gives me a big hug, then leaps screaming towards some guests.
My house is themed to fairy tales. The room I’m assigned looks like a pirate ship decorated to look like a discotheque. Neon pink skeletons and lime green cannons flanked the treasure chest filled with gold. It’s supposed to look scarier when the blacklights are on. I get into position behind a wall. The lights go down. After a moment of silence, the house comes alive. The sound of an air cannon fires up. Ambient howls fill the air. One of my coworkers cackles in the dark. It’s now or never.
It’s hard to know when to pop out. The wall blocks my view. I am also not wearing my glasses, so I have the vision of a bat. I have my hooked hand peering out just in case. I hear someone coming. I try to lunge out but only emerge when the guests are on their way out. I try this again and again. I have missed three scares already trying to squeeze myself between the walls. I think this is stupid and position myself right next to the room’s opening. I lean all my weight on one of the posts and wait. There are some bottlenecks in the beginning, but guests generally come about five minutes apart.
As the night continues, there is one guest who really stands out to me. He poked his head into my room, looked at me, and then turned to his friend, “Where do they find these people? That guy is huge!” I did my scare routine, and they got out of my room quickly. I thought about that comment throughout the rest of the night. To me, all the people I worked with were just people. A lot of them were students who did algebra homework on their breaks, played Cards Against Humanity, and preferred eating cheese puffs and drinking soda. They talked about their dream jobs after working this one. They talked about where they wanted to go to college. They talked about who their crushes were and if anyone was going to rat them out.
I see a mother and child come into my room. I begin my spiel, “What are you doing on me ship? Get—”
“Why are you scaring my son?” she says.
Excuse me? I think
“Get out of me—”
“I paid 17 dollars for his ticket and now he’s scared.”
I think about the message blaring over the speakers of the park during that last hour of waiting Fright Fest is a +13 event. Please take this into consideration when bringing young children to the event.
“I figured that Fairy Tales would be an easy house to start with now he says he doesn’t want to do any more of them. I want my money back.”
I am speechless. What am I supposed to say here? We’ve only been open for thirty minutes and I already have someone complaining. Who complains to a pirate? I do the only thing that makes sense in the situation: talk.
“Get out!” I shout.
“Excuse me—”
“I don’t care! You’re trespassing on my ship.” I push my shoulders up and wave my hook. She gets the hint and leaves. I return to my post to get ready to scare the next guests.