The Ride is Broke

A red ball of flame burst open the calm, silent night, bathing the world in a fiery glow. Men, women, and children alike were jolted awake in fear and confusion as the loud explosion created unwanted chaos to the sweet serenity once rocking them slowly to sleep. A pillar of cold, thick, black smoke rose from the ashes of what was once a great symbol of society, slowly climbing its way to the heavens, clawing at the stars and clouds to lift it upwards. It could be seen for miles, a towering beacon meant to waken the world out of its false security. It was a message for mankind; a telegram to tell them that things weren’t the fairy tale ending people always expected life to be. It was to let them know I never got that fairy tale ending I wanted and so righteously deserved.

“What the hell happened to you man?”

…It was a familiar voice that often flashed across the depths of my inner mind. More like crawled, really. I wished it would only be a flash. That for one second it would be there, rearing its ugly, sick, twisted thoughts and the next it would be gone, just like that. Instead, it simply hung around like it didn’t have a goddamn care in the world. It merely sat in the middle of my ever-bustling human mind. And where it decided to loiter happened to be the epicenter of my entire thinking function, everything that went through me passed by it, looking at it, noticing it. It was like some goddamned bum was sitting around the middle of a business complex, shouting blasphemies about the second coming to anyone who could hear, yearning for someone to pay attention. It was completely out of place…yet exactly where it belonged, somehow.

I took a long drag of the cigarette, held in the smoke for a few seconds, and breathed it back out. More liked coughed really, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I didn’t smoke, I just pretended I did. The more I put up that act of being some sort of debonair movie star, a rebel without—with—a cause, the better chance people wouldn’t be able to see through me, right?

“Are you listening to me man? Sometimes I wonder if you ever listen to me anymore.”

“Of course I’m fucking listen to you; just hold on for a damn second will ya? I’m trying to think here.”

Truth be told, I didn’t listen to him. Oh sure, I heard everything he said, I’ve always been a very attentive man. But that’s the thing; I only heard what people said now. I stopped listening a long time ago. I don’t really remember when. Maybe it was when they told me Santa Clause wasn’t real. It was a pretty tender issue for me back then. One day I knew there was this big fat guy who my parents essentially let break into our house once every year, to being told the next it was a total crock. Who the hell does that? It’s like people make up the biggest goddamn lies they can, trying to make them as ridiculous as possible, just to see if you’ll actually believe them. Sadistic bastards.

“You sure they’re ready for this yet? Will they understand?”

“They sure as hell better understand, They’ve had the last 20 years to get ready for this,” I snorted in a low, muttering voice. “They should expect this after what They’ve done to me…”

I had convinced myself a long time ago that what I became was a fault of Theirs.

I remember growing up in a field. I would run across long meadows all day, feeling the tall blades of grass playfully grab at my body, pretending to try and slow me down but really pushing me further ahead. The soft earth underneath my bare feet would tickle at my soles, forcing me to jump in glee, making me laugh in the still summer day. Then I would get tired and lie down at the top of the grassy knoll, my knoll, and breathe in the almost sickly sweet afternoon air. I would gaze upwards into the sky and watch those cotton candy clouds amble their way across the horizon, not a care in the world. I was one of those clouds then. To this day I still wish I was one.

They were the ones that took it away from me. One day I was imprisoned in a cell of brick and mortar, cold gray replacing the deep green, vibrant blue, and dazzling white that were once my days of a cloud. I stayed a captive for years, and though I have escaped that brick and mortar after all this time, it still imprisons my mind, it won’t let me be free like I once was. I have to get free, and there is only one way to do it. I have to break out.

“Gonna be one helluva fireworks show tonight, ain’t it? Definitely one they’ll remember for a long time.”

He was damned right about that. People get too complacent sometimes. They just think life is some goddamned carousel and all you gotta do is get on one of those horsies and get ready for the time of your life. They were wrong though. Sometimes you have to pay to get on the ride, and more often than not the fare is too much for you to afford. Sometimes, even when you pay for it, the ride’s broke anyway. That’s what happened to me. I paid for the goddamned ride and the thing didn’t even work. Music didn’t sound right, lights wouldn’t go on, the thing wouldn’t even go around in a circle for me like everyone else. It went up and down, but it never went anywhere.

Sometimes you have show people that life isn’t really a carousel. I guess that someone just happens to be me. I took a final drag of the cigarette and dropped it on the ground. I didn’t blow the smoke back out, I just swallowed it, accepted it.

When the butt of the cig’ hit the driveway, a line of fire snaked away, going along the trail I had left it to follow. The fire hungrily gobbled the fuel I gave it, bringing it inexorably closer to the building. It rushed through the front doors and into the main hall. It continued onwards, bouncing down the stairs, leaping in glee and excitement at the thought of the feast ahead. Finally it turned the corner and entered the basement, continuing towards the gas line.

“Let’s get the hell outta here,” I said to myself. I jumped into my car and drove off, alone. The people in the building wouldn’t even know what happened. They’d be blindsided just like I was. Unfair, but hey, so is life. Driving along the gravel road, up a small hill, almost like a knoll, I looked back for a split second and saw that thick, suffocating smoke rising up to and past the sky. I’ll never forget what I thought at that moment. I had so wished when the smoke from that burning building lifted to the sky that it would be a dazzling white column and somehow I would drift upwards with it. But it wasn’t. It was just an ugly black and gray like everything else, and I knew that I still was not free.