One day, there was a park, and in the park there was a carousel.
A teenager who wore a grey hoody and hipster glasses, which lenses were tinted black, had decided to stroll over at the park. The carousel caught his eye. He had nothing to do, so he went over at the toll-booth to get a ticket for the next round of the carousel.
The toll-booth lady, observer of many eccentricities going along in the park, did not mind the gloomy boy with a grey hoody and shades. She smiled to him after she gave back some change, hoping to brighten up this boy's day.
The teenager muttered a small thank you, and leaned on the bars by the carousel, watching a few kids pretending that they were riding steeds onward to a far-away place.
It was playing songs wrought from nursery rhymes, and he flinched, remembering the days his mother sang to him the same songs while birds outside his window harmonised. He hesitated to get into the carousel when its shrill bell rang.
The whole mechanism slowly halted, and an attendant pawed the entrance gate open. The children went off, smiling, their parents leading them to the other regions of the park.
Some other children presented their tickets, and were admitted inside.
"Sir?" asked the attendant. He blushed, because he knew that he was beyond the targeted audience of the ride, and the attendant shared the knowledge, but nevertheless asked to get him in.
"Okay," he replied, shot a small smile, and took off his sunglasses. Finally some sense had gotten into him, and he slipped the shades in his jeans pocket. The attendant looked vaguely familiar, instilling a distant memory he dreaded to recall.
He stepped inside, and circled the carousel, in search for a good horse. He didn't want to sit on the moon seats, because all you did was sit inside them, hold a stupid gold bar in front of you, while the moon thing just swung up and down and up and down.
Next, he glanced at some horses, and out of amusement gave them a few names like "Pinkie Pie", "Troy", "Breehy-hinny-brinny-hoohy-hah", "Bullseye", "Shadowmere", "Maximus", "Frou-Frou", and "Valkyrie", but he chose none of them.
Instead, he picked an ordinary random horse, which was fairly sized. He stepped up on the metal stirrups and mounted himself on the saddle which was connected to the horse.
Then, he caressed the lines on its mane, which felt kind of porcelain-y, and waited for the bell to ring, which in turn was waiting for the carousel's other passengers. So he studied his surroundings for a bit. He looked at the horse beside him. Its coat was silvery-white and its eyes seemed to house a raging storm. He named it Shadowfax.
Little yellow bulbs lit the outlines and the inside walls, engravings of fleur-de-lis and art nouveau vines on the inside circle of the carousel. His hands gripped the pole that held the horse to the carousel, which went through it after the horse's neck ended. He tried to imagine this as if the horse were real. Gruesome.
Never mind, his mind averted to the children, who had now boarded the ride.
Two of them were picky about their horses. A striking, tall, curly-dark haired child in a school uniform looked at a snowy-white one with a golden mane, a red bridle and an intricate pink-purple-and-gold rug paces in front of the hoodied boy.
He shouted to his friend, "Molly! Look no further, there's this pretty white one you'll probably like."
A patter of footsteps, and a reddish brunette replied, "She's absolutely wonderful, Sherlock! Thanks!" and got up on the horse.
Sherlock and Molly. Pretty names. The Sherlock boy took up a grey-maned black horse with golden tack beside her, and glanced behind him. He caught the grey teenager's gaze, and grinned at him.
YOU ARE READING
I hate carousels
Short Story"What'd you say? You hate carousels?" "Yes. And don't let's speak about it." "Come on. Carousels are fun, you can go to Faeryland in them, you'll feel like you're flying on a pegasus up in the sky, meet interesting nostalgic people who aren't chil...
