Short Stories

King At The Park

THE KING AT THE PARK

SHE WAS WALKING IN THE PARK ON A COLD AUTUMN DAY, her coat wrapped around herself tightly. Trying not to let the coldness in, though it always seemed to find a way.

            As she was walking along the stone-paved path, she came upon a swing set. The swing set was a rusty blue, probably from the neglect over the thousands of years of it not being used.  The rusty metal was squeaking obnoxiously in the wind.

            She advanced toward the swing set and sat on one of the two swings. She was surprised that it didn’t snap from under her. She wrapped both her hands around the metal chains and started pumping her legs and leaning her body back and forth.

            As she was ascending in the cold autumn air she looked out to the park once again—as she got a better view of it—and looked at all the other things that she would used to play on as a child.

          The red slide, she remembered now, back in her old home there was a park nearby, as also there was a red slide. The one by her old house all those years ago, she remembered it to be clean and plastic. The metal ladder, she remembered, always reflected the sunlight brightly. Though this one was badly rusted, even one of the braces of the ladder were chopped in half at an uneven angle, probably because of the disregard it had gotten from over the years.

           And the wooden seesaw, she remembered how it felt to be up high for a moment, to feel the wind in your hair, you could feel it more than ever, and how you claimed that you could see everything, and just for a moment to feel on top of the world. She remembered how, as a child, you could be easily satisfied, though you still had standards.

            The wooden seesaw that was once new was now starting to rot away. It was a sad thought that the things you thought as a child, those things that you swore were magical and filled with happiness, and that brought you joy, had the capability of leaving, dying, or whatever you would call it.

 *

As she was swinging on the swing she was now as high as she could ever get. She remembered how when she was younger the swing set always taunted her, she always wanted to do a 360, a full circle around the bar, though, unfortunately with reality to strike her once again, she could never do it (unless of course you had a rocket jets set under your swing, though that would be very unsafe. DO NOT attempt this).

            She closed her eyes, in deep thought of her childhood, and tried to remember how this, this greatness of unknowing and imagination, was ripped away from her. As she tried to decipher when and how her imagination faltered she heard the other swing squeak. Curiosity got the best of her and she opened her eyes. There was a little boy on the swing next to her.

            The little boy had blonde hair down to his ears; he was wearing a cardboard crown upon his head, and, from the looks of it, green eyes, though it was hard to tell in the light that was given, as it was cloudy that day.

             Her head was now turned to the child, now fully studying him. She was curious to what was going on in his mind, what made his imagination flow. “Hello,” she greeted the small boy. As the little boys’ eyes were closed, they now opened, he turned to the young adult sitting next to him, “Hello,” he replied.

            And so far that’s all what they said. She did find out how he did have green eyes, they were beautiful.

 *

As the temperature dropped as time went by she decided that it was time to go, because already the sun was descending, it was near the horizon, though it hadn’t started to turn into the evening sky yet.