WHEEL OF FATE: By Erin Cole
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009The amusement park glittered of tinsel and lights and whistled with excitement, except nobody was having any fun. Not on the Ferris wheel that spun around madly, or at mini golf, where a missed put resulted in a clubbing, and definitely not in the line I stood in, the Wheel of Fate. Every time the strobe light came on, one befell their luck, plummeting down a slide in bloody screams and pitiful sobbing.
The sound of raucous trumpets bellowed and symbols bashed incessantly, while jesters in bright costumes and donkey-eared hats tripped and kicked people. A bearded man on a unicycle sniggered, as he stuffed pies of worms and slugs into his greasy mouth, and the women in green-striped stilts marched around, spilling bugs and insects over peoples’ heads.
As the line moved up, I glimpsed something in the corner of the tent, shadows crouching. When the strobe lights flashed again, I saw the figures more clearly—giant, brown spiders, with fangs pinched around slimy appendages.
Someone pushed me forward. My time to spin the wheel had arrived. But the tags were not filled with dollar amounts, prizes, or trips to the Bahamas. Instead, they listed terrible misfortunes: brain tumor, life imprisonment, meningitis, cancer, paralysis…death by spiders.
Holy fuck.
I glanced at the corner of the tent again. Clusters of black eyes gleamed back at me with waxy, hairy legs that twitched and curled. I tried to faint by holding my breath. I didn’t care if I never woke again, just as long as I wasn’t here. But no such luck.
“Spin!” A man shouted at me. A rat sat perched on his shoulder, the tail flicking around his neck. I reached for the handles of the wheel when I realized with the disabling drunkenness of fear that they were sticks of bone. Before the lady in stilts dumped something on me, I gave the wheel a whirl, hard and fast, and crossed my fingers.
C’mon cancer, cancer, cancer, bankruptcy, swine flu!
Not the spiders…please.
The wheel came to an abrupt halt, the ticker, a skeletal hand, stopped on a BLANK label. That couldn’t be good.
“HA!” the man roared, pointing his finger at me. It stretched grotesquely and landed on my nose, flattening it against my face. My mind mimicked the Ferris wheel, screams and all.
“You…,” he paused, narrowing yellow eyes on me.
I didn’t dare speak. Nothing would come out right — it hadn’t for the ones before me.
“You have nothing!” He laughed and hacked up phlegm. “Doomed to a life of emptiness,” he said, shooing me away with his filthy hand.
The strobe lights flashed again and before I slipped down the slide, I flipped off those spiders. Then, I found myself in the middle of white space. No walls, no trees, no sky. Nothing but white fuzz.
I walked, and sat, and walked some more, for hours or days I couldn’t tell. It was like a bad case of writer’s block. The whiteness started burning my eyes and the silence stung my ears. I looked at my hands—they were turning white too, fading into nothing.
Then, something appeared on the horizon.
I started to run jubilantly towards it, but a noise slowed my pace and clenched at my heart. Was that trumpets I heard? And the murmur of laughing…no…a snigger? The tip of a tent emerged as I got closer.
Oh, gawd. Fuck that.
I wheeled around, running back into the emptiness. Nothing was better than some things.
© 2009 Erin Cole
