Trisha and that afternoon’s parade Beast melted in the back of a mostly plastic carriage. They puddled. The audience saw everything soft-glow and sparkle from a roped-off distance, just like the cartoons. But inside, their ride cooked like a Fisher-Price playset oven. A stinky film sludged all the primary colors and bulbous embossing. It stunk. Trisha felt like all the plastic would swallow her.

“You’re not feeling well,” that afternoon’s parade Beast told Trisha. His fursuit muffled his voice; he could be a hundred different cast members trained to play the part.

“I’m fine,” she said, “Just a little overheated.”

“You’re not fine. You love this parade. It’s your favorite.”

Trisha wondered who this Beast who knew her favorite parade could be. She was always so checked out, truly lost on her own trip, whenever she worked in-character. Everyone and everything else washed away. Every Beast was interchangeable, because she was so the Beauty.

“I got fired,” she confessed.

“You got fired.” he echoed.

“Not fired, technically. Asked to consider my next role. Reassigned. I could be a Country Bear. Or a Fairy Godmother. But not her… Not anymore.” She futzed with the sticky seam between her yellow polyester fingers. “This was my last parade. I asked for one last time. I thought I would enjoy it, but instead, I’m just obsessing over everything I hate.”

“How could they fire you? You’re perfect.”

“They don’t make you a princess just because you’re pretty.”

“You’re not pretty. You’re obscene.”

She smirked. “Being obscene isn’t enough. You have to become the part. That’s not the same as looking like she does in the movies. You need to look like every other princess that ever played her before you, so all the family photos look the same, every year, and so guests don’t notice different girls playing the same princess at different parts of the park on the same day. And you need to fit the costume…”

“That’s such bullshit.”

“I thought I was safe. My waist has been a twenty-six since I was eighteen. My nails are always butter pink, oval tips, clean cuticles, look policy to the letter. I don’t show up hungover or late. I’ve never been disapproved, or even warned, for any reason, for anything…” She swallowed. “But this morning, they told me, ‘There’s no upward mobility in your current position.’ And I told them I didn’t care, that this was the only position I ever dreamed of, my whole life, forever…” She swallowed again. “And then they handed me some pamphlets about visitor services and animatronic repair. They said they’d already hired more of me, that there were too many…” She promised herself not to cry, not in-costume. 

“So what are you going to do next?”

“What am I going to do now… Next… I haven’t gotten there. I was only thinking as far ahead as the parade…”

“And that was underwhelming.”

“And that’s over.”

“It’s over.”

Trisha looked through the rubbery film of the carriage window. It fogged in time with her sighs. The post-parade theme song, piped in through speakers disguised as mossy rock formations and ye olde mailboxes, murmured on, incessantly. 

“I could feel it coming,” she said, “But I thought I could wish things different. I was wishing on everything… Shooting stars. Airplanes. Drones. Angel numbers.”

“I don’t get angel numbers. Numbers have always been beyond me. Isn’t all math angel numbers?”

“They’re like… Repeating digits. On license plate numbers, alarm clocks , microwaves… I was looking for elevens. Every time I saw one, I would pray as hard as I could to stay. Another year. Another month. I guess wishing doesn’t work, even here.” She tried to giggle at her shitty joke. It felt hollow and dumb.

The Beast rapped his fingers along the side of the window sill. He contemplated.

“Let’s get out of here,” he told her.

“What?”

“They fired you. What’s the point of getting fired if you can’t just leave?”

“We can’t just leave. We have to go backstage.”

“Why not?” he asked her.

“Because we can’t just waltz through the park as we please. I mean, we used to, in the eighties, but now there are meet-and-greets…”

“Only to situate us closer to the gift shops.”

“So we don’t get mobbed. Crowd control.”

“And when your fifteen seconds are up, Mommy can buy you a stuffed animal and a fifty dollar commemorative photo right around the corner. It’s not crowd control, it’s grotesque.”

“When I was a kid, I used to ride with Alice on the teacups sometimes… She was still a special exception, back then…”

“That sounds like a good memory. Let’s be a special exception for some strangers we’ll never see again.”

“We can’t,” she insisted. “We would be in so much trouble. They know where everyone is, always. They would know we were AWOL right away.”

“And then what? They’re going to arrest Beauty and the Beast in the middle of Fantasyland? Handcuff us and escort us to jail? We’d make quite the commemorative photos.”

The Beast kicked open the door of the carriage. It did look empty outside the cavalcade, like maybe nobody cared.

He held his furry hand out for hers.

“They could ban me for life,” she said, futilely. 

“Haven’t you been here enough times already?” he asked.

Trisha let him lead her away.

A red ribbon of crosswalk ran everywhere they were supposed to stay in-character, even from vantages where guests couldn’t possibly spot them. A reminder to always stay on. Trisha didn’t feel on, but she did feel in-character, threaded by the Beast through all the clumps of families in mouse ears and cargo shorts. The kids gawked, absolutely enthralled by their speed, believing they’d caught a choreographed sideshow playing out especially for them. The Beast spun Trisha into a dip, and everyone cheered, and then they took off again, tunneling through the labyrinth of tourists. She held onto his paw for dear life, shotgunned with unexpected, unfamiliar ecstasy. Her practiced princess smile was gone, and in its place was something utterly real and loud and full.

The Beast pulled her past the log flume and the pixie village and the world of tomorrow. The music and the din of park guests merged together into a single shimmering landscape. The world whirled.  She was in a symphony, a film scene. She barely recognized the rides and the exit signs, she didn’t know the way anymore, and yet her heels carried her with such fluid familiarity that she could’ve run this race a thousand times.

Eventually, they arrived at a maintenance nook behind the cavern of a mermaid grotto. A waterfall disguised the machinery from the rest of the park. It swamped over the pair of them in a rippling curtain. The crevasse was damp and dirty, it smelled like piss, an abandoned solo cup was crumpled in a corner, and yet it was the most magical ride she’d ever rode.

“What is this place?” she asked him.

“It’s where I smoke weed at lunch,” he said.

“How did you ever find it?” she asked him.

“I’m always looking for a way out,” he replied. Then he yanked off his Beast head. 

The moment before he unveiled his face felt like it lasted forever. She didn’t want this spell to break, for him to reveal himself as some acne-scarred loser she purposefully avoided in the company cafeteria.

Instead, he was a narrow, gorgeous crust punk she’d never seen before, with a circus of stick-and pokes snaking his neck. His inky hair stuck against his forehead, and his inky eyelashes were dotted with dew. He reached inside his fursuit and procured a joint. When he lit up, she stared at his purplish, wet mouth. 

“You want some?” he asked her.

“We’re not allowed,” she said.

He pressed her against the cave wall and ran his thumb under her chin. He exhaled into her mouth. She sipped on his breath. She watched their smoke hang in the air, swirling on beads of waterfall mist.

“You can do whatever you want,” he told her.

She kissed him. He kissed her back. 

She kissed him badly, her teeth digging into his lips, and he kissed her worse, yanking her wig as he drug his fingers up her nape. They crushed into each other, tearing off their expensive, annoying costumes. There were too many layers of yellow plastic. There was so much to rip from her body, and it couldn’t come off her fast enough.

He didn’t stop to admire her body once her hoop skirt pooled at her ankles. He just pressed against her even harder, pressed so close his fursuit could fuse to her skin, rushing his palms down her chest, scratching his Beast nails into her armpits. He pushed against her breasts and flicked her nipples with his fuzzy claws. The cove wall scraped her bare back. Sweat and saliva slicked their cheeks.

He raked his furry fingers against the wishbone of her pussy. Her clitoris was soaking wet and aching. Everything got soft and fuzzy and dripping. Every stroke of his claws made her legs shake. It felt so good she forgot to breathe. Heat slithered her thighs and pooled in her belly. She was incinerating. She came effortlessly. 

She deflated against him, listening to the waterfall coo, the park soundtrack warble on. The footfall of security closing in. The ugly feedback from their walkie-talkies. 

“This was very stupid of me,” Trisha laughed.

“You’re so fucking beautiful when you’re stupid,” he said.