Ride The Cyclone

Words: 3066
Pages: 13

Poem: The Final Poem. The poets fingers, old and frail Write the words of his final poem. Trapped in his mind like a guarded jail, but now, to him, it feels like home. He wondered if he’d be allowed to mail it to his mother, or recite it over the phone.

Alone at a table with meager supplies: Two pieces of parchment, a crayon, and his thoughts. Tears well up and pricks at his eyes, For he knew, his life would soon be lost. The more he thinks, the more he cries, Sorrow dripping down: salty, wet, and hot.

“Five more minutes!” an angry voice calls. The poet keeps on writing, he’s running out of time. “It’s almost time to go!” the words echo through the halls. Another distraction fills his ears, and a clock begins to chime. The poet looks away,
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A year after their accident, their souls end up in limbo with a fortune telling animatronic named Karnak, who has real powers of omniscience and the ability to temporarily control the words and actions of the dead teenagers. He has the choir sing songs about their hopes and dreams and tells them that if they can unanimously vote for one person who deserves to live past the disaster, he will be able to revive that person. Ricky was one of the victims of this accident. In his life, he was unable to speak. In some versions of this musical, he is speech impaired due to an unnamed disability. In others, it was a trauma response due to witnessing his father’s death. Penny Lamb was another victim of the disaster. In the accident, she was decapitated. Her head was never found, and she became an unidentified body, a Jane Doe. In the limbo space where the choir’s souls are stuck, no one is able to remember who Jane Doe used to be, including herself. This fanfiction gives some insight into Penny and Ricky’s relationship before the accident. I like to think that they were friends and that Ricky was the only member of the choir who really paid much attention to Penny in her life. This idea comes from details in several different productions of this musical. In many versions of the opening songs, Ricky is shown to be the only member of the choir able to hear Jane Doe’s operettic riffs before she is revealed to the other characters. They also have many moments later in the show that cause me and other fans to “ship” the two characters, thinking they would be a cute