Carousel

This story begins a set-up Three Living and the Three Dead legend with character variants.

I guess one could say that I am very childish. The trait has not developed negatively but nevertheless it has developed interestingly. After dwelling around abandoned playgrounds the influence of nostalgia tends to draw me to the local carnival. Although I am an entity that abhors crowds, noise, and things of that magnitude I have made few exceptions.

The trips that I made here were unusual but somehow necessary. I found it similar to visiting a high-ranking family member at a family reunion. I had to wade through crowds of self-indulgent and rather mindless bodies to get to my end goal.
An alternative option was to search at night. However, I knew that Reaper lurks the grounds of where I needed to go at night. I had just encountered him some time before and I can only take him in small doses…
Very small doses.

The day itself was not a terrible day. The nuances and high-paced movements of crowds can easily weigh down and annoy a slow moving being such as I. Luckily my flawed lack of patience didn’t affect me too poorly since  the ride I was looking for appeared fairly quickly.
A dilapidated carousel. Sand a rather disoriented tune and creaked as it turned with its current occupants. No one in their right mind would be on this contraption. Well, that is unless they had business here.

The crowd grew thinner as I moved closer to this freak-show of a carousel. I was the last one to request a ride so I rode alone. I took a seat atop the buzzard and gripped the rusted pipe.
“Not the stork this time?” a familiar voice yelled.
I waved my hand. “Phases are changing. Let someone else have him.”
“Do you have a ticket?”
I turned to face the ticket booth. “What sort of business is this? I never needed one before.”
“Always a joke with you. This ride is free, kind of.”
My eyes widened. “What?”
Before I could ask any more follow-up questions the ride began and I was on a bouncing buzzard.

It was honestly a miracle that the carousel even functioned. The purple lead paint was chipping and still falling off with every turn. The carefully detailed artwork of faces and meadows on the side was entirely sun bleached. The golden but now red and rusty poles for the seats had a stench that smelled of straw-pennies. Each gear under the floor could be heard grinding… and breaking? Sometimes I wasn’t quite sure. The ride itself did nothing but creak and complain.
The outdated and out of tune music was rather unsettling but could be dealt with. No matter how chaotic the scene of this carousel I could still see it on opening day, brand new.

I rode through the hypnotic motions of the carousel until I became drowsy. I watched the nameless faces of the crowd pass by infinite times. I have never known this incessant tune and poorly maintained machine to go beyond fifteen minutes. I signaled to the white beard in the ticket booth to stop the ride.
The carousel kept turning.
I made another signal the next spin around.
The beard just smiled.
I took a gander at my surroundings and the ocean of faces had disappeared. I was the last soul at the carnival. It was just me and Father Time.

I saw a glowing and toothy smile through the ticket booth. I had nearly forgotten who ran this particular amusement.
My voice droned in and out. “Timekeeper! I know you’re back there!”
His robe dragged along the ground as he made his way to the front of the carousel. I made a few rotations before my eyes could get a good look at him. This circumstance was in my favor, Reaper wasn’t with him.
“How nice to see you dear!” He stretched his arms out to hug me.
I was not the least bit amused. “Stop this ride Timekeeper…”
He immediately slammed his scythe on the floor of the carousel. Metal collided with metal in a rather anti-climactic manner. Although the two surfaces made an irritating noise as the ride came to a halt, not much else happened.
I motioned to the ticket booth. “You could have just stopped the ride back there.”
When I turned in the direction of my hand, one could not help but notice the lack of everything. Although my surroundings were strange, everything was familiar. I was back in the macrocosm.
Timekeeper took a moment to absorb his surroundings. “You used to adore this place as a child.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Excusez-moi?”

Timekeeper reluctantly turned his sand clock over. “Sequence one.”
I saw a bouncy toddler much like myself running towards the carousel. She was assisted onto the carousel by a faceless man who watched her take a few rounds on it. I began to feel a little uneasy as the display continued in front of me. After the ride was over the man escorted her away and they faded to dust. My blood went cold as their dust hit my face. I simply could not speak. Any utterance would just be irrelevant to the memories played in my head.

Timekeeper turned his head away from me. He adjusted the sand clock and gave a heavy sigh.
“Sequence two.”
The same sequence played with a similar girl. She was very feeble but managed to trot over to the carousel unattended and struggle to get aboard. What I saw next would have caused me to fall on my bottom had we not been floating in the macrocosm. Timekeeper helped her aboard and set her on the stork. The girl coughed a few times but he set her straight before starting the ride. I watched her go round in bliss a few times before her amusement was over... Permanently. Her dust hit my face and I was simply unfazed.
At that point I had gotten tired of hanging out with people like Timekeeper and Death.

Nothing in front of me made any sense. I turned to Timekeeper who had his head facing the earth below us.
“Who were those girls?”
Silence.
“Timekeeper why are none of my actual memories in those memory sequences?”
He simply checked his conductor’s watch and looked around aimlessly.
It hit me. “You don’t control that information do you?”
“No I don’t.”
I moved closer to him. “Your sick and twisted little buddy Reaper controls it doesn’t he?”
“His heart would break if he heard you talking about him like that.”

I screamed but the void of the macrocosm seemed to swallow it. It seemed to throw Timekeeper off since he was a fairly reserved man. Things like shouting and screaming never made much sense to him. In fact, they struck him as illogical.
“Look, Timekeeper…” I started becoming desperate. “Could you at least tell me why you brought me here? Why today of all days did this particular carousel ride turn into… this?
“The ride tells you everything.” He motioned to the seats on the rickety carousel.

The rides on the carousel were lined up in pairs. There was a stork and buzzard, one and zero, male and female, then an infinity bench.
I turned back to Timekeeper and raised an eyebrow. “I’m here because of a really far out amusement park ride?”
“No.”
Normal merry-go-rounds had animals and benches. I was faced with animals, numbers and symbols. I felt like I was putting in a password for something. Turns out I was. It was fairly simple once I practiced what I preach. I hopped aboard the carousel and examined the seven structures.
The obvious came first. “Zero is this void where we stand. Zero is nothing yet at the same time it is all. The macrocosm of darkness and nothingness is the zero of obsolete. But it is not bleak. It is the realm of possibilities. It is the realm of hope. It is the plane of dreams of creative thinking.” I motioned to the buzzard. “Aligned with this zero is the buzzard. The buzzard turns things into nothingness. He too is the dark end of cycles. He is the beginning and the end for he creates but finds nourishment of his own in death.”
Timekeeper nodded.
I moved to the other end of the spectrum. “One on the other hand fills the void that zero created. The earth below as well as the moon and stars that dance around us back up my statement. One is the realm of creation and creativity, not just creative thinking. It is the realm of action where the male and female in question can combine can be free. The original concept in the void has come true and flourished. The proof is around us. This is an infinite cycle. This is an unstoppable force. Even if it stops in one place it resumes in another.”

Timekeeper was silent for a while, both of us were. We watched the earth rotate for a while before we made eye contact again.
I jumped down from the carousel and approached him. “I know why I’m here.”
He turned to me.
“I’ve been wrapped in the clutches of death for so long that I rarely stop to appreciate the inner workings and beauty of life.”
Timekeeper turned his head back to the rotating earth. “You can go home now.” 

Author's Note

Pardon my French.