Laughter breaks through the noise of
the carnival. The brightly lit rides spin and twirl in colors of
yellow and red as the faces of the children riding them turn a little
green. I can smell popcorn being popped and cotton candy being
spun. There are people all around my friends and I as we stand there
in front of the shooting parlor, the operator heckling us to no
effect.
I catch a glimpse of a girl I danced
with merely one night before. The lights on the ride dim and the
laughter stops. The rides halt and the man in the shooting parlor,
finally quiet. I cannot smell. I cannot hear. I can only see
her, smiling, looking at me with a look that could melt stone.
One crazy little thought. The first
one of its kind to pop into my head. “Ask her out,” a little
voice says through my ear. I start to perspire just a little as that
one, unbelievable thought bounces around in my head like it was the
only thing there. My hands start to tremor as my heart rate spikes.
I miraculously muster the intestinal fortitude to take one step in
her direction. That one step is followed by another, and then
another.
Suddenly I am standing there holding
her hand. Unable to recall even asking the question, though it is
clear I did, I walk back to my friends with her hand shooting heat up
my arm and into my chest. It pulsates throughout my body, slowing
time down to a crawl. “Is this what drugs feel like?”
The lights begin to glow again and the
laughter returns. The rides begin to twirl once more and the man in
the shooting parlor is now louder than he ever was before. I walk
hand in hand with her through the carnival that is now brighter than
it ever was before. I am happier than I ever was before.
The last two, Clues are His Creations and this one, are a little strange in respect to the theme. In the Clues piece, I tried (tried) to go from big to small and small to big in each paragraph. In this piece I went from Big to small to big again. I hope that is allowed. I just all kind of flowed that way.
ReplyDelete“Is this what drugs feel like?”
ReplyDeleteIn my experience, falling in love has much more powerful effects in the brain than drugs do, but each do, in my experience, lead in the end to a crash proportional in depth to the height of the original euphoria, i.e., worse for love than for drugs.
I liked your description of those frozen moments of excitement.