Posted on August 11, 2009 - by Rasham

WISHING WELL

I came here because I didn’t know of where else to go where I could escape the tormenting heat and rest without being punished by guilt which would surmount until I gave in and purchased some useless thing which would serve as rent paid for the space I embodied. It seems I wasn’t alone; the population here is a handful of other directionless folk, where instead of committing suicide one simply decides it would be easier to make the trip to the local wishing well. I was watching the carousel which was so out of place in the mist of a nightmarish fortune that was unfolding before my tired feet. I sit with a penny in my hand reluctant to release it into the waters and I wonder if it is even worth the effort to make a wish. I open my hand and the bronze button slides clumsily down the length of my palm and seems to linger a moment at the edge, hesitating, as if to mirror my disposition on this regrettable day. In a single moment the object spirals towards its aqueous fate and I imagine that it contains both the power to preserve and destroy me and I clench my eyes to avoid witnessing its final descent into the bottom of this artificial pond, to join other decaying hopes and dreams now breathless at the end of this sepulcher for wishes. It’s done, and now it rests in the pit of pale blue, and the process proved as unfulfilling as the day was born, and I turn and walk towards the door.

Before I am able to depart from these afternoon moments of misery and loathing I am asked by a blinking light to forfeit a quarter (and a quarter of my skepticism) and stand tall upon a machine no less than half my height. The quarter seems happy to part from my mess of pathetic personals and slips down the throat of this steel beast, the clinking and clanging growing dim as it settles amongst the collection of other silver refugees. I await the results with a long face and a heavy heart: 127 pounds of me weighing down upon this earth, and a lousy excuse for a daily insight: the machine says ‘money will fall into your hands’. How appropriate: the lack of that which has brought me to entertain this soulless trap is the very thing which is now promised to me. I sighed and left, into the sunlight, though I thought I was walking into a veil of disgruntled rain clouds on a scorned day.