Lindsay and I were at a carnival, riding the roller coaster, and I've never been on a scarier ride. It went up really high and plunged down into this deep, dark pit, and then it went upside down in this terrifyingly fast loop, and we were all screaming, and it kept accelerating, so that the cars would tilt as we swerved around the corners, and then finally everything went blank.
When I came to we were in the water up to our necks, and the roller coaster was above us. I grabbed Lindsay, and we clung to the car and started kicking for shore where a lot of shocked-looking people were waiting for us. At first I couldn't work out what had happened. Hadn't we just gone for a swim? Then I realized that we'd fallen off the roller coaster into the water. One of the carnival attendants helped us out of the water and told us what we had to do to deal with the shock - "Don't eat anything, and you can only drink this mineral water." He handed us a squashy bottle. "This water?" "That one." I drank some. It tasted vaguely lemony. Lindsay seemed fine, and I only had a couple of sore places, but I had this feeling that we should have been far more badly injured, judging by the height we fell.
We left the carnival to head for home. We had a long journey ahead of us, through several towns with strange names, and in one of them we had a run-in with the police. I can't remember exactly what happened, but we ended up being framed for a murder that was committed by a military man called General Miller. We had a travelling companion, General Miller's daughter, who we thought we were friends with and she helped set us up. We were taken to the police station and were awaiting trial, and were feeling pretty depressed about it, when I realized that I could get out of my handcuffs. I took them off and went into the next room where General Miller's daughter was sitting. She watched me approach, scared, and I punched her. Or at least I tried to. My hand kind of slipped off her face. I tried hitting her several times, just to get the message across that she'd done a really terrible thing, then I grabbed her. "I didn't even get to hit you properly," I said, "but we're going now." I turned around and Lindsay and I left the police station. One of the officers tried to stop us and I said "We are just going to walk out of here and you can't stop us. These charges are total bullshit and everyone will know about it. There's nothing you can do."
They followed us out of the station, but there was a large crowd outside for some kind of celebration, and I started shouting the names of the police officers as they followed. Finally I yelled, "And I'd like to thank General Miller for our stay in prison!" and they quit following me. I think I'd hit the jackpot with that one - he was an important man and they didn't want him exposed to any scandal. As we passed through the police station gate I felt a strange itching on my ankle, and looked down to see a pink tattoo appear there. It was the word "FREE" and a symbol of some kind, like a bird. I asked someone in the crowd about it, and they told me that it had appeared there because I'd taken control of my own destiny. I looked down again and it was already fading.
Finally we got home, except home wasn't really home, it was my old family home, and my mother and father and sister were there, as well as my old friend Lean and her parents. I'd hardly got there before I wanted to leave again, and we decided we'd go out for the evening, but my mother wanted me to water the garden. So I thought, anything for peace, and I went outside to try and get the hose working. I couldn't seem to attach the nozzle correctly, and my mother came outside and was standing over me as I tried to do it, criticizing me angrily, so I pushed her away roughly and told her to go mind her own business. This sent her into a panic because she thought I had tried to hit her, and she ran around the side of the house waving her hands.
I decided in a resigned kind of way that I'd better go get her and apologize, and went around the side. She was in tears, and she'd grown, so that she was now about a foot taller than me, and very big. She was still panicked, and she was holding a mobile phone. "I'm going to call General Miller! I'll tell them all what you're really like!" I took the phone from her and hugged her, afraid that she might actually do it. "I'm sorry I shoved you, but I wouldn't really have hit you, I was just play-acting." She seemed to calm down a bit, and shrank to her normal size and went back into the house.
I finished fitting the hose, and started spraying the bushes and the grass, and then I noticed my dad watching me from the kitchen with a puzzled expression. I looked at him, and then looked at the hose, and the garden, and realized how stupid this was. I was just pandering to my mother's irrational desires to make my own life easier, and I suddenly felt ashamed when I saw my dad watching me do it. I turned the hose off and went back into the house. "I'm not going to water the garden today. It rained twice today, there's no need." My mother replied angrily, "There was a lot of wind!", and I said, "Yes - it was stormy. Everything got very wet. We're going to go out tonight, and if you think about it and you still think the garden needs watering, then I'll do it tomorrow night, okay?" She seemed to accept this. I added, "By the way, Lindsay and I got thrown out of a roller coaster this evening, we're lucky we weren't badly hurt," but no one was really listening, so we just left. | 
