Unwritten

Chapter 1 Part 3 - Park Life

I think I must have lost consciousness at that point, because when I awoke, sharp blades of grass dug into my face. Hazily I got to my feet and scanned my surroundings, only to find I was in a park. I quickly found a bench to sit down on whilst I gathered my thoughts.

Last I remembered I was sitting at David's flat having a whiskey at night, but now I was in the park during the day.

"That git, he drugged me," I said slightly bemused to myself as my thoughts drifted back to the whisky glass. It wasn't beyond to possibility for David, he was notorious for his pranks, so much so, that some of the boys banded together and decided to play one him, using a prostitute and pig's head. He had never truly forgiven us for that, so I suspect this could have been one of his revenge pranks.

I looked around the park and felt a strangely familiar vibe to it but I couldn't immediately place what it was.

Seeing a mother and child, I leapt from my bench to ask where I was but both of them gave no response and continued to walk across the field. I thought her behaviour was a tad rude but I accepted that maybe the lady was training her son to not speak to strangers. In which case I couldn't really blame her for that. Next I saw 40-something male jogger nearby and called to him. At first I thought he may not have heard me since he had his earphones in. So I frantically waved my arms in front of him like an epileptic seal on ecstasy without so much as a glimmer of recognition. The Jogger still carried on running, looking through me. I had never felt so inconsequential in my whole life until he ran through me. It was odd unpleasant sensation, I felt the warmth of his skin and the rapid beating of his heart inside me, as my body broke apart around him and reassembled. The sensation wasn't painful, just extremely unpleasant, almost like to I had been violated in some way.

It was then that I came to the sudden realisation that there was a possibility that I might be dead. Maybe whatever David spiked with me had adverse reaction with the whiskey which ultimately could have killed me. I looked at my whereabouts once more in case it gave me anymore of an inkling as to where I was, its eerie familiarity was beginning to nag at me.

It was a park, like any other, neatly maintained grass, littered by the occasional dog turd. There was a little playground area sectioned off from the rest of the park with a waist-high black fence. The playground consisted of a set of swings currently occupied by a boy and a girl, a currently unused tyre-swing and a set of monkey bars. It was then that it struck me, there was something very odd about the about the children, they were unfortunately dressed in 90s throw-back gear and luminous trainers. It was then that I realised I was in the past. As I neared the playground, I knew emphatically, this was not just the past, but it was my past. Disbelief at my own stupidity covered my face, I couldn't believe I hadn't realised sooner the boy was me and the girl was her. Little Gracey Eckhart. It was refreshing to see her again, she always had air of mischievousness hidden beneath her "butter wouldn't melt" face. Her subtle wavy mouse brown hair and faintly freckled face always seemed to make whoever was sitting next to her, the prime suspect for the trouble she had wrought. Usually, it was I, who was chosen to take the blame, but to me it was a small price to pay. There was something always so fascinating about her that drew you to her like a moth to a flame.

I suddenly remembered this day. This was the day she left me. Raw emotions of sadness and anger began to rise up from inside of me, despite knowing it wasn't her fault that it was her father that had taken a new job in Brighton which meant they had to move, but it still hurt to think about it. The friendship left a void that I truly never managed to fill despite the number of years that passed.

I watched as we hugged goodbye and she punched me in in the arm and left me rubbing my shoulder.

This time I was able to see her new life without me in it. I followed her to her dad's Mercedes and sat in in the unoccupied middle seat, not that it really mattered in my current ethereal form but I didn't really feel like reliving the freakish jogger sensation I felt earlier.