The Laughing Ferris Wheel
On nights when the wind carries the scent of stale popcorn and rain on old cotton, the abandoned fairground remembers its namesake ride. The Laughing Ferris Wheel isn’t just rust and night—it's a memory that refuses to fade, turning softly in the darkness and inviting those who listen closely to step closer to the edge between fear and fascination.
Footsteps in the Dust
I came with a flashlight that hissed at the switch and a resolve thin as a rope. The midway stretched out like a skull with glittering teeth, and the wheel stood there, a colossal circle of bone-white spokes. Each creak of metal sounded rehearsed, as if the wheel had practiced its own deathbed lullaby for decades. When the wind found the ride, it sounded less like wind and more like a crowded whisper—voices gathering just beyond the ear, waiting for the moment you pause too long.
- The air tastes faintly of rust and sugar, a paradox that clings to the tongue.
- Spokes catch the moonlight and scatter it into shards that drift across the ground.
- A single car sways slightly, greenish glow leaking from its seams as if an eye winks at you from within.
“We are not your memory, but the echo you left behind when you forgot to listen.”
When the Wheel Speaks
The moment I stepped closer, the Ferris wheel breathed. It began to turn, slow as a story told by a patient old man, then with a stubborn, almost triumphant rhythm. The laughter rose—not the hearty sound of children at play, but a chorus of soft, spectral chuckles that rose and fell with each click of the cars locking into place. The cabins opened and closed like mouths trying to assemble a joke they never quite finished. Above me, the rafters of the fairground groaned, keeping time with the wheel’s haunting cadence.
Echoes and Endings
I watched the wheel reach the top, where the world felt widest and most dangerous. From that height, the lights bled into the night—an array of bruised colors painting the sky. The laughter swelled into a final, beautiful cruelty: a reminder that joy once lived here, even if only as a memory that refuses to die. When the wheel slowed, I opened my mouth to speak, but only a sigh came out, weighed down by years of unspoken goodbyes.
By dawn, the laughter had faded to a quiet rustle, and the wheel stood still, as if it had never moved at all. I walked away with the certainty that some places remember you more clearly than you remember them, and that the Laughing Ferris Wheel will wait for the next listener who believes in a joke too powerful to forget.