The Dementor's Kiss

That Harry Potter ride in Orlando I will never get on again! That forbidden journey ride where you wave around on an animatronic arm getting sea sick while giant animatronic spiders, Dragons, and dementors come at you extremely closely with no way to move back. You are strapped into the ride and stuck at the distance at which the ride creators decided you should have the metal creepies right in your face! Many people are scared of the Frankenstein ride, but the animatronics are a nice distance from you in that ride, plus don't have to go upside-down. Dracula flies over you at a distance above and Frankenstein is mostly on balconies.

Of course this ride is in my nightmares with worse variations. There are times where they are actually touching me. I can feel spider legs, hot dragon breath, and teeth on me. The worst of all is the skeletal fingers of the dementor running across my legs while all I can do is close my eyes and clinch the restraints on the ride waiting to wake up. My dreams also add the spinning from the Escape from Gringotts ride and the dropping that is in the Hagrid's motorbike adventure, causing even more extreme nausea than the ride on the regular.

The next add to the nightmare is surprise of sound with the spiders stomping on popping oozing bubbles, the dragon roaring, and the dementor clinking its bones really loudly against the metal of the ride. The ride starts to become darker where you can't see as well and the animatronics sometimes don't appear at me from the front. They start appearing at the side and back while surrounding me from all sides. There is no escape until I wake up each time, usually it is from somehow finding a wand within the ride, grabbing it and then expelliarmus my way out of there.

I wake up relived, but it is short lived as I realize it all continues. Life can be like a trap you are strapped into. The straps are made of belts of money and the big spiders are the troubles I tried to step on and squish before, but they just keep getting bigger and bigger. The dragon is those who have the power, when you try to stand up to them they have the fire to rain down onto you while you desperately search for water to douse it out. The dementor is all the bullies on the daily. People who suck from humanity and try to leave those around them in despair. I sit there with my little stick as a wand trying to swat them back while they try to play bigger, better, and scarier.

Wake up and life is a waving ride that I am trying to find the switch to turn off while navigating in the dark. I rub my hands along the sides of the wall touching strange objects, or not knowing if I will fall between the tracks. I reach for the lighter I keep in my pocked and set the dementor on fire, using the running out flames to try and defeat the dragon's constant firewall. This becomes consuming and spreading while the big dragon has to charge every time after a bit of usage from the flames. That tiny bit is what makes all the difference in making a way through the constant incendios everyone throws at each other. The sprinklers in the ride go off and it all shuts down. The rides become old scrap metal, but people don't have off switches now do they?