Diary of a Biatch

21. When Realisation Hits

I didn't know where I was going, until I wiped a few tears away, smudging mascara in the process, and saw a slightly familiar scene just a while away from me.

My heart started beating faster, as I realised where my feet had taken me, from their own accord, and my tears slowed down too.

I slowed down, and nearly stopped running, but my feet were still moving briskly along the dark, cracked pavement, towards my destination.

It was a park.

But it wasn't just any park. To me, anyway.

It was old now, and nobody went there anymore, due to the fact that a few years ago, a pervert had come here and abducted a child that was in the once crowded playground. So no one came here, as it was a bad reminder of what could happen to you. The little girl was found, but that's got nothing to do with it. Since she was abducted, this playground had been haunted, but in a different sense - not in the sense of someone was murdered and their spirit still lingers here. Not in that sense at all.

Just the sense that you could get abducted, and never see your family again.

But I still carried on walking towards it anyway. I vaguely remembered Carl making me promise never to come here again, but I got rid of that thought almost as quickly as it came.

I finally reached the old rusty gate, and looked in, wiping away more tears that had escaped. Everything was overgrown - obviously, nobody had been here since that fateful time to clear up this mess.

There were weeds growing out of every crack in the ground, even growing up the poles from the climbing frame. The monkey bars were totally surrounded by them, making it almost impossible for anyone to get onto the bars without walking into a jungle of weeds first.

Just by looking at the lush green bushes that used to surround the park, I knew that they had not been taken care of since then, too. They had grown about twice the size since I last saw them, creating a wall around the perimeter of the park. The colour had gone from a beautiful, healthy and joyous green to a dull, desolate green, as if they were all depressed and lonely.

Most of the small trees that had been dotted around the park itself had lost all it's leaves, even though it was spring, the time when everything grows and new life brightens our world. But these trees hadn't had new life and years. They looked - well, they looked dead, with their twisted trunks, and empty branches.

I took a deep breath, and slowly opened the gate. It creaked loudly, disturbing the eerie silence that surrounded the park.

Quietly, almost on my tip-toes, I walked in, daring not to breath at all. After all, I didn't want to bring any unwanted attention to myself.

I looked around, trying to find a sturdy bench that I could sit on. There weren't many to choose from, as most of them had broken, or had been graffitied all over by the older teenagers, who thought they were proper rebels. They must have had some guts coming in here.

I found a bench that looked alright to sit on in the back corner, next to the slide that I used to love going down. I made my way towards it, being careful to not stand on the many dirty needles that had been dumped here from drug addicts.

I sat down, and as soon as I touched the old bench, a memory came rushing back to me.

It was a hot summers day, and the sun was beaming down on us, the sky a perfect, cloudless blue. I laughing along with many of the other young children as I ran across the park, and into the arms of...

Into the arms of my dad.

There was a moment when I couldn't breathe at all, but then the memory carried on.

My dad picked me up, and twirled me around, making my skirt flare out around me. 'Where do you want to go next, sweetheart?' He asked me, with a huge grin on his face.

'The slide!' I shouted excitedly, as my dad carefully sat me on top the slide. 

'Ready?' he had said, with a twinkle in his eye.

'Yeah!' I screamed in excitement, and then a slid down the slide, laughing all the way.

I got to the bottom and my dad picked me up again, cradling me close to him. 

Then the memory faded away, and I found myself with my eyes closed, and my arms wrapped securely around my torso. My eyes opened, and immediately, the happy feeling I had had a moment ago, disappeared. It crumbled to dust, and floated away, and was replaced by a dark, lonely feeling that I had had ever since my dad died.

I had always had that feeling, deep inside me. And as the memory still glimmered slightly in my head, reminding me that this was the park where I used to come to all the time with my father, that dreadful feeling built up inside me. It took over my lungs, allowing me only to take in slight gasps. It took over my eyes, making me only see blurs. It took over my whole body, and then when I couldn't take it any more, I burst into tears.

They came streaming down my face, ruining and destroying any make-up that had ever been there. They dropped into small pools on the ground, climbing into the cracks. They fell onto my light coloured skinny-jeans I was wearing, and darkened the material slightly.

Huge sobs wracked my  body as I remembered everything I possible could about my dad, before he had died. My chest heaved, as I tried to catch a breath before crying out again. I bent over and rested my head on my knees, not caring about what could come through the gates at any moment, not caring about anything in the world, only caring about when my dad had been alive, and when everything and everyone had been happy.

Through all of this, I realised that this had been the only time I had ever actually properly cried since he died. I cried a lot when he had first gone, but for years, I had covered up all my feelings, disguising myself and making it seem like a was happy. But beneath all that, I wasn't happy at all.

I was still grieving, all these years later. I couldn't even describe how I felt anymore, I covered it up so well. But now, I just wished that something would happen, and all these fears and tears would just disappear.

And that something was my dad.

I wished my dad would come back, and make everything better, but I knew, as a huge sob shook my whole body again at this revelation, that he was never coming back. He was buried under the ground, never to be seen, or touched, or spoken to, or listened to ever again. 

He was gone forever.

And now my pathetic excuse for a mother was trying to replace him, just like that.

Well, I thought, anger mixing in with all my other emotions, we'll see about that.

...

I must have been there for ages, because when I finally looked up, the sky had darkened. Well, darkened as much as it could from how much the bushes had grown.

I hadn't looked up on my own accord, though. Something had made me look up. That something had made me stop making any sound at all, and had just made me freeze. I couldn't even breathe. All I could do was stare at the shadow by the gate. That was it - the gate had made the noise that had shut me up so suddenly.

And right next to the gate was a tall, slightly muscled figure. Or you could call it a silhouette. From all the bushes and shadows, I couldn't make sense of any of the facial features at all.

My stomach was in my throat - that was how scared I was.

The only sound I could hear was the pounding in my head, and the dead leaves crunching as that dark silhouette walked steadily towards me. Whoever it was, I could describe their walk as the way a lion would walk. A stalker, somebody trying to catch their prey...

Holy shit...

Carl had warned me to never come here, because a pervert could find you and kidnap you in an instant...