You are at a carnival, alone. 

Loneliness has never bothered you. You have often found you prefer to be by yourself, bot that you dislike people, but more that you enjoy becoming lost in your own thoughts. And, you think, swiping through songs on your playlist and taking a modest sip of a slightly flat cola, a melody and a beverage take that time to another level. 

You almost collide with someone as you make your way through the crowds. You were young, once, and you suppose you are still young, in a way. Timeless, even, though the word is a bit cliche. Regardless, you dance out of the way, managing to avoid an embarrassing collision. 

While the music guides the rhythm of your feet, the lights around you guide the rhythm of your eyes. Flashing all colors of the rainbow, against the night sky, buildings of different purposes, shapes, and sizes all share one thing: blatantly contrasting neon lights. Your gaze slips from display to display, a food stall illuminated in gold and viridian, the entrance to an arcade flashing in ochre and indigo, a carousel draped in glorious teal and fuchsia. 

The carnival is full of sounds, cheerful laughter, amused derision, and the pleasant babble of normal people freely trading hours of their life through gold and silver into grease, sugar, adrenaline and noise. Some inferior music plays in the background, royalty free instrumental covers of pop songs, somewhere between sickening country and low effort electronic music, repetitive and dull. No one else seems to care but you, who drown it out with a pair of headphones and the choice roar of a playlist full of music that the artists cared about, dancing between genres like an angel high on morphine, invoking emotions that don’t quite transcribe into written language. 

Needless to say, it smells alive here, in a way. The shallow satisfaction of oily or sugary food (or sometimes both) does not live up to the standard of its sickeningly alluring aroma. The prices are sky high and you have no money, anyway. The arrogance and corporate greed that assumes you would but such food is frustrating, but you can admit to yourself that you would probably give in and eat, if you ever felt hungry enough.

You pause near one of the rides. A monstrosity of steel and wood and speed, flinging its riders around like either a bear with a fish, or a child with a stuffed animal, you don’t know. Long ago you would stop in your day to ride one of these, working up the courage as you waited in line, until you strapped in and panicked, internally wishing you could get off, knowing as you reached the top that this was the end of your life, then reveling in flight and freedom and speed that lasted less than a hundreth of the time you spent standing in line. Eventually, like all other things, these thrills faded. Riders pass above, some screaming in high pitched fear, some more yelling in delight. Fools, but glorious in their foolishness. What you would give to live like that again. 

You move on. As you continue your walk, you find yourself occupied by an acute sense of loneliness. Every other person that you pass is sat next to another, many displaying an affection you tried to give away long ago, failing, and never reaching for again. You still feel attracted subtly to some of the faces you pass, but you let them go. You have nothing for them anymore.

You finally approach the exit gates. The world around you shifts, and for a moment you find yourself back in your body, your physical body, back when you had one. Dead, rotting in a box six feet under. Like a seed that never sprouted. Then you find yourself at a new carnival. You don’t recognize the characters of the language above the gates, but you can read them nonetheless. Somewhere else in the world, you walk, a spirit taken before your time, your afterlife the brief heaven of the living’s celebrations, something you can appreciate but never touch, a limbo between heaven, asphodel, and hel, depending on how you look at it. You allow yourself to remember this, remember how you died overdosing in a carnival parking lot. Then you shrug. You will be here for eternity, or until humanity runs out of things to celebrate, and there are much worse ways to spend death. So you walk the carnival, alone, and allow yourself to forget,

alone,

once,

again.