Ferris Wheel

Endless wandering...ceaseless nothingness separating into other portions. It is the same direction. The same path. The same black sky. The same stars that I have counted more than once to appease my thirst for anything. Any thought, any reaction to the space around me save the feeling of the cold, dull void pressing against my flesh, and the strange, awful feeling of distance from sensation and the immediate moment. All that I have to occupy my thoughts now are memories, having spent all other sources of stimulus long ago.

Without food, I endure. Without company I endure. All that sustains lesser things are gone. All that is left behind is this shell and the memories I carry of once being a man. A human being.

I let my eyes roll shut as I let myself linger on one memory in particular that I tend to enjoy remembering most. There is a wheel of light, spinning in a listless continuous motion. Like I am now. The lights flicker in different hues of color that I have long ago ceased to recall the name for. And positioned all along the edges are persons, much like I used to be. Positioned two by two they twirl around and around, the sound they make lost in the harsh blare of the sound melodically pulsing in the air.

Someone grabs my limb and pulls me along. The fur on their head shifts and tumbles as they run excitedly towards the wheel, calling out to me, encouraging me along. There is a smell that I pick up over all of the food, over the scent of old, sticky machines. We enter into a mass of persons of such variety...such variety. There are such a lack of variety in stars. Up close they are such incredible things, but from afar there are only so many variations. Even when one ceases to glow, even when one dies there is little to make the moment significant. I have seen one die, both up close and afar. It has lost its importance.

The mass of people...we slip through them like water in a stream. Bumping into obstacles, tumbling forward all the same. All caught up in their own lives, their own existences. They don't know that we have to get to the wheel before it closes. It meant so much to the one with tumbling fur that we do it before it is too late.

We stand for a while. They point at it excitedly.

When was the last time I felt excited? When was the last time I felt anything? They promised me so much and yet it has been so long. Or has it? I do not know.

They say words to me that I have ceased to know the meaning of. I say things back, and it seems to please them. They press against me and constrict...I feel warm. The moment pauses for a while in my mind. I linger on it, the sensation of the two humans pressed together. It is not like other objects being pressed together. Like...a need. If I had an organ to quicken, it would, but that isn't what I am anymore.

I lost that long ago, shed away like waste...like waste.

We give another human some thin things out of a enclosure. It accepts it and opens up the passage to the wheel that had ceased to move at all. The wheel of lights flickered like stars. I am pulled along towards the wheel, our limbs conjoined temporarily. We enter into a space made of something cold and solid, and then we are no longer separate, but part of the wheel. Moments pass, then something shifts violently as slowly the wheel begins to move again.

I see the land around me rush forward then fall away, the ground offering more and more to see as we rose up towards the top. Then, just as quickly, the world comes back as we fall back to earth. The wheel rotates. We are the wheel.

The one with me is making noises that are pleasing to hear. When we once again reach the top, I find reason to move, pressing my head against hers. Something moves in me. This is the first of this. We are young. This matters to us...there is us. Not just me. Not now though. My mind comes back to the present. The black of space. The stars. What was is just a memory. Now there is only me.

I return to the wheel, to the moment. She says more words I do not know. I say words I do not know. Her face seems pleased, and I forget all about the wheel. All about the lights and the sounds, the words I have ceased to remember or the colors I have ceased to know the name for. I forget for a moment about the promises of something greater, or about my wandering.

My ceaseless wandering.

For a long time this memory sustained me, but that event was so long ago. I am no longer human, and no longer need for human things. Food and company I have long lost a need for. For they made a promise. And I follow that promise. I look off into space and see the same sight as always, and though I am aware of a sense of movement it feels as if I have traveled little, and all sense of time has been lost to me completely.

My mind tries to remember another moment and I try to fight it off. But I have nothing to distract me. There is nothing to defend myself with.

I am back on the wheel. Back at the moment. I know what is to happen, and what has already passed, and so I feel nothing save a dull feeling of a deepening emptiness. The one with the tumbling fur and I feel the wheel shift under us. Something makes a noise that sounds like breaking, and in an instant there is breaking and twisting of the wheel. And we are falling towards the ground, and I say the only word I know the meaning of now.

No.

There is a heavy pulse of light above me, and the time, the moment freezes in place. I am no longer falling. The wheel in no longer ceasing to be a wheel. I no longer hear the cries of the one who pressed against me and made me feel warm. Made me feel needed.

Then the ones from outside came to me. THEY were forms of endless limbs and lights like star fire. THEY seemed to look at me, though I couldn't see eyes, and when they spoke I felt the time around me quake.

THEY said little, but it was enough. THEY promised me. THEY said that if I wanted I could not cease, but find them in the stars. I could be without death.

Back then I felt fear. I no longer feel fear. So I agreed to follow them, to search for them among the stars. And in an instant I was rising, faster and faster, away from the wheel and the ground. Away from the tumbling fur. And in that moment I realized something terrible. They had offered it all to me alone. And as I pulled away I watched as the one with the tumbling fur fell in the opposite direction and was lost to my sight under what was once a wheel of lights.

As time passed, things changed for me. I felt like I didn't want to find them, that I wanted to hurt them.

Then I felt nothing.

What was once my limbs became my form. What was once was warm and cold became still. I felt less and less and wanted less and less. And after a while I did as I had promised. I went in search for them among the stars. And what was once sight in a single direction became everything at once, limited only by my position in the vastness of space. And though I have searched among the stars I have never found them. THEY have eluded me, and I now find myself simply tumbling towards another star, unsure what I will find. Heat certainly, but that means little to me now.

I see nothing but black and stars when suddenly one of the stars goes out. It captures my attention for a moment, but then the star comes back. Then another disappears and reappears. In the distance I make out something against the blackness and starlight, drifting in my direction. And though it is no longer human I know it in an instant.

What feels like time comes back suddenly as I feel myself desperately wishing to move faster. Is it days? Is it years before me meet? I do not know. At last though, they come into view clearly. We plunge and shift and tumble towards one another, until at last we meet.

I have felt nothing...for so so long. But in an instant I feel something returns to my form. Heat, not in the form of a sensation, but in the form of need.

We head towards the stars, looking for them as they promised. The space is still black, dotted with terrible familiar starlight. The existence around me still presses against me and tries to cool me. But my skin is tough and I want to find them among the stars. Because THEY promised.

Yes, I hear myself say.

WE drift in the same direction outside of the wheel. WE do not speak, for we have ceased to have mouths. But WE have found a way to remain close, and will not let go. Because in the vast, coldness of space WE feel warm. WE tumble together.