Round and Round She Goes

"You 'bout ready to get off, baby?"
"No, please, Daddy- one more time!"
The father- a thickset man with a bright pink tie knotted high up around his neck- was calling to his daughter. She had gotten on four turns ago, clad in a poofy-pink princess gown, while her dad was on the phone, yelling at someone, and had taken the horse behind and to the left of me, a white one with a gold saddle and blue feathers. I could tell that I, a grown woman who had been on the ride for longer than the two had been there, was making the father nervous. The little girl, hopped up on fair food (the stuff that tastes so good while you eat it but makes you sick as a dog later- fried butter on a stick anyone?) didn't seem to notice- I think that her eyeballs were vibrating.
The ride stops and the little girl reluctantly gets off. "You wanna go 'gain, sugar?" the worker, a short man wtih a shaved head and handlebar mustach asked. I nod, and he presses the big red button. "You're luck this place ain't crowded today." he winks, leaning forward to give me the oh-so-sexy (gag) view of his curly black chest hair with a gold chain nestled in the middle of it.
The carnival is almost completely deserted: the entire state has been under a hurrican advisory warning for the past sixteen hours and, while it seems that we have once again dodged the bullet, the rain that has been almost continuous makes me sympathize with the inhabitants of the lost city of Atlantis. There is nothing more depressing than an empty carnival: the barker sits in his shed, his bullhorn beside him, reading ("Buxom Babes of the Bahammas", somehow I don't think that it's an instructional book); all of the games and food stands are closed; the poor schmuck who works the ferris wheel is stuck cleaning the vomit out of the front seat. All the while, though, the carousel goes around and around, its lights making the small circle within its realm look bright and it's cheery music ("music to slit your wrists to" I call it in my more snarky moods) reminding you that, no matter what, some things don't change- and never will.
"So....you couldn't ride around aimlessly in circles in your car?"
I jump- by the way, never a good idea when you're sitting on a plastic horse's saddle designed for kids aged two to seven- almost falling onto the hard metal of the carousel's base. Kent, his hair dark mahogany brown with the rain, smiles at me from his pink pony.
"What, and miss the chance to see you on the gayest-looking horse on this ride?" I laugh, "Not a chance."
"Your mom's worried about you, Cill. She's been calling you for an hour."
"Phone's in the car." I stare off into the distance, "I'm thinking about joining the Carnies. Could be a clown or something."
"Cellia, you hate greasepaint. Besides, your aim sucks."
He looks around, shuddering, "Cill, can we get outta here? This place gives me the creeps. All carnivals have since I read this book about a haunted carousel that made you vanish if you rode it."
I roll my eyes, "Kent, you gotta stop reading those tween horror books that people wrote to support their acid habit."
"Hey, you read Stephen King."
"That's different. He did Coke. Besides, Carrie was one of those girls that you just had to root for."
"Oh, yeah. Regular American Sweetheart that girl was."