Twisted Tales Contest

Word Count : 1,417

The Mary-go-round was playing its song, but it sounded like a 45 record playing at 33 speed, it was just moving slower and slower. It was in the middle of a park almost nobody went to anymore. It wouldn’t run all of the time, it had a mechanism where you would stick in a quarter, and it would go around, and play its song for about three minutes. Back when they used to hold festivals in this park, there were operator keys, that the operator could stick into it, and let it run freely. Now, most of the horses were rusted, and the reason there was no rust on the poles was because they were made out of cheap plastic.

Don Morris used to take his daughter to the park, when the park had been taken better care of, when there was a jungle gym and a slide and several swings to sit on. He was the clown when they were holding the festival. It was cute, his wife did a good job applying blush to his face and eyeliner, and he would squirt the kids with his flower, and ask if they wanted their picture taken. The festival would conclude at 8pm, just as the sun was turning pink to blue, as it set, and the stars were out, they would have fireworks, marshmallows and coffee, for the adults. It was probably 20 years since that festival had occurred, and as soon as they had abandoned the park, and taken most of the fixtures out of it, they opened a new park in downtown, across from the high rise buildings, where the parents children could play, while the adults spent their child's college money on new purses, or new shoes, or a nice new watch.

Don Morris’s daughter had died, almost twelve years to the day, she would’ve been 22. The Mary-go-round was still in the old park, probably someone at the mayors office figured it would be an eyesore in the new one, although the new park did not have any Mary-go-round. It was in the fall, when the days were getting noticeably shorter and you could see your breath after 5pm, that Don would go to the old park and just sit on the old benches, and occasionally put in a quarter into the mechanism and cry. His wife had died too in the accident that killed his daughter, and he was thankful she did not know about this. He had always tried to put on a happy face for his wife, no matter what he was feeling inside. He had sold their 4 room house, after his wife and child died; he couldn’t go into the kitchen without missing his wife's cooking, and he couldn’t go in the bedroom where they made love; he mostly just slept and cried on the couch with the TV very loud.

Finally he just sold the house, and had begun renting a studio apartment on the third floor of a slum. Each day that he went to work, he was more and more broken, until he had given up on his job as well to go and live on the public dole. He wouldn’t go out for groceries, and just sleep on the futon/bed until his landlord would knock on his door and ask for money. The fact Don Morris was no longer eating was becoming visibly apparent, he was nothing but skin and bones; he might’ve looked into the mirror and thought he looked like a meth-head, but there was no mirror in his apartment. Still, in the fall he managed to put on all of his clothes, and go out to the old park, to morn the loss of his daughter.

His wife and him had been together since grade school, and when they would do something like go into a ghost house at the fair, they had an agreement, that if one of them died, the other would go on. It was simple kid thinking, as a matter of fact, it might’ve been something his wife had seen in an old movie. They had had this ideology all the way up until they realized their were no more threats to their lives, they would grow to be old and happy, and raise their daughter to be better than their parents had raised them. But, then the accident happened, the bus driver who had been drinking, swerved out of the way of a car on a patch of black ice. The medics on the scene had thought it would help to let him know that they probably didn’t suffer. Probably. So he went on, day by day, not morning his wife, he knew she wouldn’t have wanted him too, but instead their daughter.

This year when he went out to the old park, it had been particularly cold, he was wearing two pairs of his baggy sweats, five of his large tee-shirts and two sweaters, and a coat he had gotten from the thrift store. His bones were cold, he had gotten the chill all the way inside of him. He looked out and saw it had begun snowing. He got up, stuck his hand inside his pants pocket and dug out a quarter, he put it inside the mechanism, and the Mary-go-round had sprung to life. He opened the rusted gate, and got on, crying for his daughter. The police man, who was patrolling the park, saw a large man get on the old ride meant for kids. Since his duty was to make sure there were no people out (there had been a storm advisory) he started jogging to the old ride, it seemed to go faster the faster he jogged. The man had stood up, on top of the horse, holding his hands up to touch the ceiling, the police man was yelling at the top of his lungs, but it was blown away in the wind, and finally; what he feared would happen, happened, the pole had gone up into the ride, slicing the mans fingers, and a fixture from the ride had cut the mans head clean off.

About an hour later, it was a white out, the patrol man had called his unit, but the CB wasn’t working, he wondered if he should drive back, but no; this was a crime scene. The policeman stood and shook and shivered about five hours, until the storm had passed; now it was twenty bellow zero, but his device had at least started working. He looked up at the black sky, “This is fifty-four to base, base do you read?”

“This is base. Why haven’t you been responding? Are you okay?”

“Yes, just stuck out here in the cold, we have a victim and we need an ambulance to the old park on Evergreen Way. He’s dead, but we might still get an identification, over.”

The policeman had to wait nearly three more hours, until the end of his shift, before the ambulance came. It was a busy night for the dead in Handerton. The ambulance, police chief and a couple reporters made it out to the sight. He had given his report to the police chief, who had examined both the ride and the body, he had frowned in a couple of sad pictures for the newspaper. He was sent home, he had stopped at a store first for a cup of coffee.

That winter had been so bad, that they couldn’t even clean up the ride until everything had thawed out in the spring. There wasn’t much left. The mayor had planned to demolish the ride, although four years later, when he was up for re-election, it still hadn’t been done, and had been forgotten by most folk.

The ride still stayed there, its parts still functional, only now it ran slower. It might’ve been pieces of Don’s hands had been stuck still in the ride. And now, it operated without anyone putting a quarter in, although nobody ever saw it, because that park still had yellow police lines on it, stating ‘do not cross’. The sound could be heard in the silent summer breeze, half a mile, a clear shot to Don’s old apartment, some claimed they could hear it, some denied such a thing; the old tune, ‘Dum de dum de dumpity dum...The monkey chased the weasel.’ The only thing left to show that Don, his wife, and his daughter had ever existed.

It might have been haunted.