148 Carousel

Each child had a favorite carousel horse.

The happiness on their faces accrued, adding mass to the universe where everything mattered. The irony is that I passed the carousel every day, unaware of the sheer joy that up-and-down and centrifugal torque mustered for those unused to a pretense of speed unencumbered by seatbelts and windows and behaving.

The summation of the adrenaline, and the thrills, pupil dilation, fast heart, and spontaneous cackling was wasted on me, driving past each day on quotidian errands and mundane transits from A to B.

By night, I was a volunteer fireman, as ours was a small town. We were called only rarely, for brush fires and an occasional garage mishap involving a gasoline can's inaccuracy into a lawnmower. But this night was different. When my dedicated cell phone rang, the dispatcher gave few details--just that it was burning.

The carousel.

I wasn't finished drying myself off from my shower. I cursed my moist skin that frustrated my efforts to slip on my clothing and gear smoothly, dragged down with soap scum and nervous sweat.

The carousel.

Children. Parents. And the worst thing a mind could attempt to reckon with, to no avail: the loss of a child.

My God! I thought, but I hadn't thought about God in decades, my job and my finances and my own family troubles pushing Him aside while I dealt with one day at a time.

I was soon there with my fellow firefighters, but the conflagration seemed hopeless. The gravity of the event imploded my reason to be. I couldn't bear the thought of charred, miniature corpses, clinging desperately to their noble steeds' necks--fusion of ceramic and flesh in a round sarcophagus, smoldering down to the emptiness that comes with evil. Some horrors are juggernauts; up came my dinner and the bile that followed.

The children all cried when the carousel burned down.

I cried, too, when I read the charred sign as I continued running the hose to inundate the inferno:

"CLOSED UNTIL MEMORIAL DAY. PLEASE COME BACK!"

I wept for days, catatonic in gratitude to this universe and the God who certainly exists against the loneliness that had crept into my life.

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AUTHOR'S NOTES:

For Memorial Day, Monday, May 27, Day 148 of the Story-a-Day Challenge.

366 WORDS (without A/N)

Title burning was AI-generated, but the scorching was not!

The USA Memorial Day commemorates fallen soldiers, to which this piece is dedicated, in a sideways--if not maudlin--kind of way, because...loss is loss. I also used the subject of children in this tale of "near miss" tragedy to intersect with one man's reconciliation with God for one main reason: When I look at the sublime beauty of a child, there is no more powerful proof that God exists.

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There are currently three surviving Vocal writers still participating in the 2024 Story-a-Day Challenge:

• L.C. Schäfer, challenge originator

• Rachel Deeming

• Gerard DiLeo (some other guy)

Watch them ring out the old and ring in the new, by wringing out their brains.