Rick stood, overlooking the amusement park. Alone. He’d been here once before, when his parents took him when he was young. Too small to go on any of the rides, he’d watched his parents climb to the top of the biggest slide in the park and go down together and he’d paid the lady at the booth for a photo with money they’d given him before he’d walked to the area at the slides base to be reuinited. It was a fond memory, Their smiling faces, hands held, staring into each others eyes. Frozen for a moment in the camera’s flash before they continued to slide smoothly downward. Rick’s life had changed forever after that day. Not necessarily for the worst. Though it had changed all the same. This was not an uncomfortable thought for Rick, as he’d known the change was coming. The transition, if you could even call it that. Rick himself had never been able to elaborate on how his life had changed. He knew that the day to day workings of his life were the same. He still attended school, driven their by his father after his mother had helped brush his hair over the dark mark of a scar Rick had collected during one of many experiments with his bicycle and the steep hill his house had been on. Rick was reminded of this change every time he saw the photograph, the quiet frustration of it just seemed to accompany the pleasant memories of his childhood.

A fortnight ago, Rick had visited them for the first time in almost a year. His booted feet clunking on their shiney metallic flooring providing a rhythm to his embarassed apology. “Don’t worry” they’d said, scanning their son’s face for emotion, “I think we’ll around for quite some time yet!” They’d joked. Rick smiled on the outside, but inside his anxiety ran with every heartbeat. The blood in the sink every morning had been very real, as had the loosening of his teeth and the thinning of his flesh and balding of his head. When he’d told them he wanted to re-visit the Park, they’d nodded silently. His mother had held him close and touched her finger against his old scar and told him he should visit them again soon.

Atop the slide, Rick gave some thought to how much this place had changed. The slide, once the places crowning feature was now flanked on all sides by attractions that dwarfed it. Rick watched the rollercoaster go through several loops, it’s occupants screaming with excitement before falling silent. He watched the high-riser lift its riders far into the sky and he listened to them scream as it let go and they plummeted towards the earth. Rick breathed in. The little camera view of the bottom of the slide must have been there to show an operator when it was safe for the next slider, though no one had bothered any more. The safety light was at a constant green. And so at his leisure, Rick pushed himself off the top. A flash freezing him like this forever. For now.