The metal wheels rumble and shudder up the steep incline, the safety bar pressing hard against your gut. Tension, anticipation rise in your gut, mixed uncomfortably with the last four shots of Old Forester you had at the bar.

Yet another dream. The fifth? sixth? twentieth time this week? Numbers have accepted their nebulous, abstract attribute. Or maybe it’s the booze.

Yeah, probably the bourbon. Hard to argue against that one.

This one starts, as all do, in media res. The townspeople to either side of you mere ants, hundreds or maybe thousands of feet below, scuttling back and forth. The sounds of laughter and enjoyment drift up and up and up, filling your senses on their ways to the ears of angels. The air is thick, almost choked, with the smells of pasture grass and spun sugar and fried anything-you-can-imagine.

Carnivals are to food what Rule 34 is to kink.

Off in the distance, there is the neon of a Ferris Wheel, strings of lights marking walkways from one tent to the next, barely notable flickers of lit cigarettes and cell-phone screens. Above, the stars shine brilliantly in a moonless, cloudless sky, seemingly close enough to touch, if you squint just so.

Or, again — probably the bourbon.

You always hated roller coasters, because if the worst-case scenarios that fill your mind didn’t get you, you were too busy fixated on the impending comedown to enjoy the high (practicing the end before the start, song lyrics echoing in your brain).

“Not dis time, t’ough, hey?” Jamaica Pete, reading your mind, strapped in tight next you (although how he’s safely locked in, as scrawny as his frame is, is a mystery for the ages).

Not dis time, indeed. Sitting at the front of the line of cars, you can see that the apex of the track is only seconds away. And right on cue, here come those worst-case horror scenes: derailment, faulty safety equipment, a lone toddler that has been placed onto the tracks by his junkie parent (hey, weirder shit happens).

And it hits: you’re fucking terrified. Bowel-emptyingly, reconsidering your stance on religion terrified. But that’s what makes this ride so worthwhile — without the fear, where’s the fun? No risk, no reward.

“If’n ya really want t’ play it safe, go ride the teacups wit’ th’ fuckin’ kiddies.” Damn it, he’s as right as he is high.

And you realize that you’re in the now, in this seat with a bar crushing your beleaguered liver and centrifugal forces threatening to shower anyone unlucky enough to be seated behind you with pre-processed bourbon. When the ride ends, you can deal with that then — burn that bridge when you cross it. Maybe they’ll let you ride again and again and again until this dream ends, and maybe this is the one dream you never have to wake up from.

But for now, touch a star over your left shoulder for good luck, swallow hard so you didn’t waste that bar tab, and enjoy the fall, ’cause it’s happening now, here, and you’re just along for the ride at this point.