the big flip.
When he died, their father had two requests. His lawyer read them in a voice that sounded like a car’s tires crunching over gravel. A liver-spotted hand trembled as he held the paper. He shook so violently it was a wonder he could read at all. The three grown Bardot children, with their bright red hair and freckled faces, sat across from him at his mahogany desk.
“First,” he said, “Elizabeth is the new CEO of Flippy’s Burgers.”
Elizabeth clapped a hand over her mouth to muffle a cry of glee. The lawyer read on about the legal ramifications of her inheritance, droning ambiently as she squealed with delight. She cried like a prom queen. Tears streaked down her freckled face. Riley tore her gaze from her sister’s joy to glance out the window and admire the Chicago skyline – cold, unyielding, the same as it ever was.
“Second,” said the lawyer. “Prescott is now the CEO of the family’s amusement park, Flippy’s Place.”
Prescott leaned back in his seat, smug and silent. He crossed his arms behind his head and smiled thoughtfully to himself, one leg crossed over the other at the knee. A hand, thick and adorned with chunky golden rings, gave an impatient winding gesture as the lawyer rushed through their father’s restrictions: the mascot must remain unchanged, the company’s theme song must stay the same.
The taste of bile flooded Riley’s mouth. She swallowed hard. Prescott’s muscular knee banged into the desk separating the siblings from their father’s octogenarian representative. The Flippy bobblehead on its surface shuddered. The mascot was a strange anthropomorphic burger-man. Its lettuce, tomato, and beef-filled head rested on the otherwise normal body of a businessman with a suit and tie. The bobblehead rocked and eyes on snail-like stalks made of sesame bun stared at Michael Bardot’s youngest daughter.
Riley always found Flippy’s eagerness to be devoured unsettling. Now she understood the feeling.
Her siblings embraced each other and chattered excitedly about their plans on the walk out of the small wood-paneled office. While the television screen in the elevator played commercials for Flippy’s new menu (the camera energetically panning over plates stacked with burgers, fish sandwiches, french fries, and hot dogs), Prescott was already talking about his plans for a new ride at Flippy’s.
“It’ll be called The Big Flip,” he said, scratching his broad stubbled jaw. “It’s like you’re the burger getting flipped by a giant spatula.”
Elizabeth talked over him. She counted her new menu ideas on manicured fingers. Neither of the pair looked at Riley. The two elder siblings just stared past each other and prattled excitedly. All the noise gave Riley the creeping aura of an oncoming migraine. They sounded like a pair of barking dogs.
The commercial on the small screen in the elevator cut to a woman sitting hunched over in a booth. A child sat beside her with his arms crossed in front of his stomach.
“Flippy’s is unlike anything I’ve ever had,” the mother in the commercial said with a smile that didn’t meet her eyes.
“I can’t get enough of it,” said the child. His speech was sluggish and his gaze slowly scanned from left to right as he read a queue card off-camera.
Neither Elizabeth nor Prescott called Riley in the weeks that followed. She followed their lives through commercials and news stories. Every advertisement for a new salad from Flippy’s made her nauseous. The tomatoes glistened, shiny under studio lights and painted vibrant with lipstick and careful photo editing. Flippy’s maw spread wide and flapped like a puppet as he told customers to try the new “Flip Challenge” where they flip their diet of processed foods into one of newer, healthier options and smaller portions.
Riley cried often. It was strange that she cried so much now. Her father’s death changed her life as much as a car crash in Tokyo, but some irritating exposed nerve still ached from his absence. She paced around her apartment and called friends. Drunk on six-dollar wine from the pharmacy next to her apartment, she ranted about how her father had never been there for her.
“I hate him!” She shouted loud enough to frighten her cat, who darted underneath the coffee table to hide. “He gave Elizabeth and Prescott his legacy! All I got was a stupid check!”
Whenever a friend inevitably suggested she see a therapist, she hung up on them and called the next name in her contacts.
Four years after the meeting with Michael Bardot’s lawyer, Riley stood in a crowd at Flippy’s Place, shivering in the Illinois autumn chill. Huddled in her coat with a bright red scarf around her throat, she watched her brother smile with a pair of comically large scissors in his hands. A golden ribbon shimmered in the sunlight, blocking the entrance to the park’s newest ride.
The Big Flip was exactly as Prescott had described it in the elevator. There was a large animatronic spatula with seating made to look like a burger patty nestled on top. The top of the patty was covered in seatbelts and iron safety bars, which kept riders laying back on its surface. Soft, brown fabric that occupants lay on hid the hard metal exterior underneath. Above the top of the patty was a transparent shield of thick plastic, protecting them when it was flipped.
The ride seemed simple enough. Flippy’s cheerful voice would yell one of his many catchphrases (“It’s flipping time!” tested the best among focus groups) and the spatula would push upward on the patty. A series of pulleys and mechanisms hoisted the patty high up in the air, turned it upside down, then lowered it again. Raise, flip, lower, repeat with increasing speed until the plastic shield parted and the riders were set free.
When Prescott cut the ribbon and was strapped into the ride with Elizabeth beside him, the rest of the parkgoers swarmed the ride’s entrance. Eager attendees shoved each other out of the way. Mothers with children swore at employees who wrung their hands and anxiously informed them children were not allowed on The Big Flip due to safety concerns. A fight broke out amidst a herd of teenagers.
Once the entire surface of the patty was dotted with riders who met the ride’s strict height and weight limits, the plastic shield was sealed with a mechanical hiss. Onlookers applauded. Riley watched and kept her hands in her pockets.
“Oh,” said Flippy in his trademark nasally whine. “For Flip’s sake!”
More applause and laughter rang out in the sea of bodies, as if Flippy might hear the praise of his amused onlookers.
The spatula rose and gently touched the patty’s surface. Like a UFO, the patty rose higher and higher. Riley watched a woman inside wrestle with her seatbelt. She seemed to be determined to loosen it. The patty cast a yawning shadow over the crowd beneath. There was the cranking sound of gears, the screech of metal, and the patty flipped. Slowly, it sank back down. Riders cried out with joy, clapping as the spatula bumped against the plastic shield and they were pulled upwards faster. The speed increased. People shrieked excitedly.
Teenagers continued fighting to Riley’s left. Someone intentionally tossed a cup full of soda at someone else’s girlfriend and punches were thrown in response.
“One last flip should do it,” said Flippy’s voice over the crackling speakers.
The burger raced to the peak of the mechanical arm as fast as it could. It turned over. Its inhabitants gripped the black polyester straps that held them firmly in place and laughed. Prescott and Elizabeth were smiling.
The plastic shield parted prematurely.
The fighting stopped. No one said a word. A man in front of Riley just pointed in mute terror.
The woman who’d been fussing with her seatbelt had successfully loosened the restraint. She’d slipped out from beneath the metal bar around her chest and fell straight down. She plummeted with her arms outstretched. Silent, expressionless, like a mannequin dropped from a store window. Her body hit the spatula with a wet thud. The patty fell after her. Everyone screamed.
A ride attendant smashed buttons on a control pad. Black streaks of eyeliner raced down her face as she sobbed and banged her fist against unresponsive keys. A young man sprinted up the concrete steps to join her. He cried and pressed buttons too. The patty kept falling.
Riley’s ears ached with the shrieks of the damned around her. Many had already rushed away from the scene. Women carried children in their arms and pushed past strangers to shield themselves from what everyone knew was coming.
The patty and its riders slammed down directly against the surface of the spatula.
Whatever noise the crowd might have heard was muffled beneath Flippy’s final remark.
“That’s a good flip!”
Riley stared. The final glimpse of her siblings was burned into her memory. Their horrified expressions were forever cemented into her temporal lobe. Because everyone was screaming and staring at the giant lifelike burger patty, no one noticed Riley was smiling. The gore-smeared patty rose again and drifted high into the air for its final rotation.
The restaurant, the theme park, it was all hers now.
Quietly, like a mantra, she whispered to herself as she pushed through the crowd and retreated towards the exit.
“That’s a good flip.”
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