Forever

Roger slowly walked down the lonely street. He was going passed a cemetery. The gravestones stretched for what seemed like miles. They frightened him to the core of his soul. He dreaded the day one of them would be placed upon his own mortal flesh. “What really does happen once we leave this planet?” was a question that always raced through his mind. It was a question that he was afraid of answering with his own life. Reincarnation, heaven, nirvana; he was fine with all of these, but, just lying there just to decay was one thing he could not bare to think about.
He continued to walk down the crack infested sidewalk as the contents of the cemetery taunted him with thoughts of immoral fear, thoughts in which he had to face every time he passed it.

He heard screaming, laughter and joyful music off in the distance. It was the carnival. His journey would soon come to a close.

He picked up pace. He needed to get away from this horrid place and go somewhere that might give him a feeling of joy and piece. The wondrous noises magnified themselves as he got closer. The beautiful and blinding lights soon came into view. He ran faster. The scents of hot dogs, cotton candy and other tantalizing items swirled about him. The main gate reached for him with open arms, waiting to give him a warm, embracing hug.

At last! He had made it to his long awaited destination. Happiness eagerly hopped around him. Children were laughing, couples were holding hands and much more. What an incredible sight.
He walked around in search of his beautiful girlfriend. The love of his life should have been somewhere. It was difficult to pinpoint her with all of the other people walking every which way.

Something caught his attention. It was not his girl friend, but, there was a woman involved. She was in a small both with a simple sign with peeling paint that said:

WISHES: $3.00
OR
3 FOR A $

He did not fully believe it, but, he figured he would try it for kicks. He slowly approached the shack. The woman inside it was young and pretty, not the stereotypical gypsy woman one would expect to be seeing granting wishes. He got to the booth and stared at her. He greeted her with a trembling as he said, “Hello.”

“Hi, how may I help you?” she ask in reply. Her voice was smooth and inviting.

“I’d like a wish,”

“Just one?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, that’ll make it easy on my part,” she joked with a stupid laugh. Roger also laughed, but in hospitably, not because he found it humorous.

After a slight pause the young woman resumed, “so, what do ya want?”

“I don’t want to die!” he blurted out with out any fragments of hesitation.

The wish maker looked down and get dead quite. “Are you sure?” she whispered.

“Positive.”

“Three dollars, please,” she said with a fear filled voice.

Roger reached into his back pocket to retrieve his wallet. Still debating whether or not she was a fraud, he hesitantly pulled out three gorges. Without glancing up she raised her delicate hands and withdrew the money out of Roger’s fingers. “Thank you,” she stated remorsefully.

“Welcome!” he shouted out as he ran away. It was as simple as that.

Now all he needed was Joann and everything would be complete. He shoved and pushed through crowds in hot pursuit. Minutes ticked away and still no sign. His eyes welled up. He was afraid that something terrible had happened.

His head twisted in every direction. He observed one small detail; everybody seemed to be going in only one direction. Like everyone else, curiosity possessed his body causing him to follow.

All the rides were now becoming abandoned. Where was every one going? Up a short distance a large mass people formed. A thick ring of red and blue lights. These lights did not belong to the carnival, but to the police. People pushed each other out of the way in order to get to the center, and people shouted to each other tiring to make sense of everything.

Roger got to the fleshy mass and weeded his way through. After about a minute he got to the center. What he saw was much more than just a police car. There was a tilted telephone pole with a white convertible wrapped around it, the same color as his lover. His heart thumped with terror. A short distance away he spotted a cot with a bloody woman lying on it. Her brown, tangled hair waved in the wind. He ran towered the carcass. He screamed her name at the top of his lungs. A handful of cops reached for Roger, grabbing him and pulling him back. He continued to shout as he attempted to relive himself of his captors. Some people dressed in the same shade the vehicle lifted a sheet over her and then shut her away in the ambulance. The cops still restrained him as they drove off with his one and only true friend. He stopped his screams and began to cry. The police relived him from their grasps. He collapsed onto the road. “Are you alright?” one of them asked.

“Just leave me alone,” wept Roger.

“Are you sure? We’d be more than willing-”

“Just leave me alone!”

“Alright, alright. We’ll go if it’ll make you happy.”

“Thank you,”

“There’s nothing to see here, so just go on and act like noting happened,” the police man declared to the faces in the crowed. They all listened respectfully.

The cops left him as well knowing perfectly that they were not fully following the job description and that they should try to do something about him.

After what seemed like hours, he finally got to his feet. He walked down the street back in the direction of the graveyard which now seemed very inviting. There was a bridge up ahead; he would go over there to stop his suffering.

He leaned over the rail. He knew it was rather shallow at this point and a few pointed rocks made it even more reassuring. Down he went head first. Time stood still as the water rushed at him. He saw impact but felt nothing, or very little to tell the truth.

His body was sprawled out upon the jagged stones. Water rushed about him. It felt as he fell on a soft, comfortable bed. He slowly got to his feet. His eyes wondered about himself with shock. Not a single drop of blood occupied the outside of his flesh. The terrible truth was reviled.

That girl was not a fraud, the one thing he wanted her to be. Once again he wept. Sorrow was all that was inside of him and it was some thing he could not bare much longer.

After several minutes of this he realized what he should do. He began heading back toward the fair grounds.

After what seemed like hours later, the carnival came back in to view. He wanted to speed up, but his heart was to heavy and just slowed him down even more. Once he got inside it he noticed how easily people forgot about the accident. He wished he could be like them.

Once again that infamous booth came in to view, the last thread of hope. In front of it was a male in a yellow shirt receiving his dream. Roger hoped he had made a much wiser decision than what he did. He slowly approached it.

The guy in the yellow shirt gave away his money and left with an evil grin on his face. Roger could now see the woman. He could tell that fear surged throughout her body. She looked at him with wide terror stricken eyes. “How may I help you?” she asked as she put her hand up to her mouth and coughed up large amounts of blood.
Roger was about to speak but got interrupted as she spoke once again with a raspy voice, “Hurry you don’t have much time!”

“What?”

“The person ahead of you asked for every one to die.”

“That includes me right?”

“You asked for immortality, Right?”

“Yeah.”

“Then no, you are no longer human.”

“What?”

She died before she could answer.

He looked everywhere. Cars ran off the street. People stopped dead in their tracks. Everybody was hacking up blood.

Soon, not a single soul remained. Blood paved the streets and painted the walls. Carcasses were piled on top of each other and he was alone. He could feel insanity taking over. To make maters worse, he knew he would be insane for the rest of his life. forever.