Page 6 of One Adult, Please

I go straight because the theater is a big room with lots of seats and probably multiple exits and right now my survival strategy is "find a dark room with more than one door" which isn't exactly military-grade planning but it's what I've got and I'm committed.

The theater lobby is empty. Popcorn machine still warm. A cardboard cutout of a cartoon mermaid named Melody stands near the door, holding a starfish and smiling with the dead-eyed optimism of someone who's never paid taxes. A sign on the door says NEXT SHOW: 4:00 PM: SEATS AVAILABLE!

Seats available. "I bet they are, Melody. I bet they really are."

I push through the double doors into the theater proper and it's bigger than I expected. Stadium seating, all facing a wide stage with a closed curtain painted to look like an ocean floor. Emergency strips glow along the aisle edges in soft blue.

I pick a row near the middle and sit down and eat my second churro and try to think.

The theater doors open behind me.

I slide out of my seat and onto the floor between the rows so fast that I bang my elbow on the armrest and have to physically bite my hoodie sleeve to keep from yelping. If it's security, I'm done.

I peek over the seat back.

It's not security.

It's a WonderSphere mascot. This one is Sheldon the Sea Turtle. I recognize him from the signage. He's six feet tall, plush green, with a big painted smile and cartoon eyes and a shell on his back that's supposed to look friendly and instead looks like a UFO crashed into a Build-A-Bear.

Sheldon is walking wrong. Not "mascot with low visibility and a private thigh rash" wrong. Wrong wrong.

Sheldon is staggering. One leg dragging slightly, the big foam foot catching on the carpet. His arms are hanging loose instead of doing the mandatory friendship flapping required by mascot law. His head is tilted at an angle that makes it look like his neck gave up on the whole concept of alignment. And he's making a sound. A low, wet, gurgling sound that's coming from inside the costume and is not part of Melody's Undersea Adventure.

My first thought: heatstroke. Mascots are just crockpots with legs. This person probably needs water, medical attention, and someone brave enough to unzip the turtle before he becomes soup in there.

My second thought: the smell. It hits me three seconds after Sheldon enters. Sweet, rotten, and thick enough to taste.

I cover my mouth with my Wondie hoodie sleeve. My eyes are watering.

Sheldon lurches down the center aisle. Closer. The costume is stained. Stains that are seeping through the green plush fabric from the inside out, and my brain is doing a very fast and very unwelcome math problem about what kind of bodily situation creates that particular color palette.

One of Sheldon's foam hands is torn. And through the gap I see actual human fingers. They're grayish. They're curled in a way that fingers curl when the person attached to them isn't having a great time.

I sink lower behind the seats. My heart is doing something aggressive in my chest. My churro is threatening to reverse course. I owe Craig an apology. Spiritually, from a distance, while hiding from a rotting turtle, I can admit he may have had one or two valid concerns about letting people in.

Sheldon stops. Middle of the aisle, six rows behind me. His big foam turtle head swivels. The gurgling sound gets louder. Something is clicking inside the costume, a jaw sound, teeth on teeth.

He starts moving again. Wobbling past my row. I'm flat on the floor between seats, tote bag clutched to my chest, watching through the gap between seat bases as two big green foam feet drag past me. One of the feet has a dark trail behind it.

I don't breathe. I don't move. I don't even blink, which is a thing I didn't know I could control until right now when every single bodily function has apparently submitted to the authority of pure terror.

Sheldon keeps going. Lurches down toward the stage, bumps into the front row of seats, turns vaguely left, bumps into the wall, turns again, and disappears through a side exit near the stage.

The door swings shut behind him. The smell lingers. The wet trail on the carpet glistens under the emergency lighting.

I stay on the floor for a very long time. Probably ninety seconds but it feels like I age several years down here between the seats with my purse digging into my hip.

Then I get up. My hands are shaking. My knees are doing a thing where they feel like they're made of suggestions instead of bones. But I'm up and I'm moving and I'm heading in the opposite direction from wherever Sheldon went because whatever is wrong with Sheldon is very wrong and very not-heatstroke and I need to be in a room with a lock right now.

I push through a service door near the back of the theater. It leads to a hallway. The hallway leads to another door marked CELESTIAL BAY THEATER ANIMATRONIC MAINTENANCE. Behind this door, I can hear the soft hum of machinery.

I open the door and I find the mermaids.

There are six of them, arranged on tiered platforms in two shallow arcs. They're the full-size kind, detailed and weirdly beautiful in that way where they're almost real enough to be unsettling and fake enough to be safe. Their eyes are glass and their smiles are painted and they're staring at absolutely nothing with vacant contentment.

The room is lit by the standby glow of the animatronic control panels and a few safety lights near the floor. It's warm from the machinery. It smells like electrical components, silicone, and the ghost of theatrical fog fluid.

It doesn't smell like Sheldon.