Morning all. Last night I slept like I was hit with a rock. It was more of a collapse than sleep and this morning I am feeling sleep soaked and heavy in the brain. I’m hoping the morning prompt will lighten some of the mental fog. If not, there is coffee brewing. But let’s see if the mental stretching helps first. So timers at the ready? Let’s go.
I think this could be interesting. it sounds like a story start from last year actually, only done from a different angle. I’ll have to look that up. Perhaps I can combine them into a single story idea. But it did lift a little of the fog. Still need coffee though.
Tuesday, May 17th: It was a six year old’s dream.
It was a six year old’s dream. He remembered thinking it would be the best thing in the world to have an entire amusement park to himself. ‘Well not entirely to myself,’ he amended.
Luke looked around. In his mind he pictured the bright colors and exotic scents that made up the amusement parks of his childhood. The fried treats and sugar coated delights were more foreign to his world than any mystical creation. Sugar had been banned from the house for most of his life and the thought of something actually fried in oil entering the house was one he couldn’t even full form a it was so outside the realm of possibilities.
At the amusement park they were there in abundance. He saw them and smelled them on a group trip, but was too afraid of his mother’s reaction to try them on his own. The scents stayed with him.
In his childhood fantasy he indulged. He ate to his heart’s content and rode every ride. He wasn’t alone though. In his childhood dream his father had been with him. When he was little he believed that like sugar an anything that even remotely felt unhealthy to his mother’s culinary views, his father had been banned from the house.
Perhaps this is why his fantasy combined a fatherly visit with the amusement park.
Luke strolled down what had once been a bustling midway. The pavement was cracked and there was an unnatural silence. It weighed heavily as such things do in places where noise is the norm. While the day was bright there were no flashing lights and the colors had faded from the buildings.
While having the amusement park to himself was a dream that even at six he knew was unattainable, he always expected that he would end up walking somewhere with his father. And in truth that had happened, sort of. When his mother died his father put in an appearance. Luke had graduated college and was secure in a job at that point. After the service Luke’s father walked over and introduced himself. As Luke knew all of his mother’s friends, he was the only stranger.
“She’s gone now, I suppose I should ask you if you need anything.”
Luke remembered blinking at the man, the words barely penetrating the fog of grief. He was certain he offered some answer as his father nodded looking relieved and then turned and walked away. It was only later when the words sunk in and actually had meaning that Luke really heard them.
“Who knew the man would be more unattainable than the amusement park,’ Luke thought looking around. Now he not only had the amusement park to himself, but he owned it. The purchase had been incidental. It was part of a larger packaged deal.
Ten til Midnight 