prompt: secret, title: lucky lucky in misc. flash fiction

If we are lucky, very lucky, this life will have been as if it were a trip to some grand amusement park when we were children, so well-themed and so immersive we could have all sworn that it was really real, in ten thousand different ways, good bad and indifferent.

Even if you’re lucky, very lucky as I on the balance certainly have been, this life isn’t all just fun and games, even if you’re here specifically for the fun and games. Like in any of the other theme parks, Lord knows there are so many times you’re stuck just waiting in the long lines or there are souvenirs you’d love but just cannot afford. All the times you ate or drank too much and puked your guts out, all the twists and all of the turns, the ups and downs and the times lost in the pitch darkness when there was nothing you could do but just be scared. All the games you put a dollar on where you thought you’d win that big-big prize but in the end, the contest was rigged and you were just out another buck. Even if you’re lucky, very lucky, that’s a large chunk of the journey.

But then again, all of the breath-taking highs you got to experience! Those little secret places you discovered or, anyway, believed you had discovered even though millions had all found them out before and yet it was still a discovery for you. The wonders and the marvels, the crazy characters you got to hug and get your pictures taken with. The songs you sang along to and the meals like manna from the heavens, the magical parades you got to watch march by as you stood safely to the side. And the fireworks! Oh, the fireworks that exploded in the evening after the passing of your afternoon changed everything. It made it worth the lines, for sure!

And at the end, so overstimulated, so worn out, so exhausted that as much as it’d seem a shame to ever leave, we’ve tuckered ourselves out so much, done every little thing there was to see and seen every little thing there was to do, it will be okay for it to go away. For our folks to swaddle us up to the nice hotel outside of its gates, for the clean fluffy beds, for the crispy feel that only hotel air-conditioners can give, to fade away into our slumber basking in that pale blue glow of television stations that we couldn’t see back home. Sad that this adventure must eventually end but at peace with what a crazy show we just experienced. If we are lucky, very lucky, that’s how it will have been, snuggled up and dreaming dreams of all we have seen, when that curtain falls.

What a strange adventure. What a horrible and marvelous, complex and quite bewildering scene you lucked into experiencing. You might have even sworn that the whole damned thing was real.

Last updated August 07, 2021