Catch Me

A Lost Childhood

Facing the past is unpleasant. 

Facing someone who hurt you in the past? 

Painful, at best. 

Being the person who hurt them? 

Even more. 

Today was a cold fall afternoon. The air was rather dry today, contrary to the usual humidity that hung in the air. Chell stood in a shallow meadow, the blades of grass sharpened and yellowed by the changing of summer to fall. It crunched below her boots, thick brown ones at that. The sky was scattered with small clumps of clouds and it was slowly descending into a vibrant orange, the sun was simply encouraging it. She didn't look towards it, as the star made her eyes sting. She was watching the night cast a blue blanket over the sky, blending seamlessly into the orange horizon. She was wearing an olive sweater and had tucked her hands into the pockets of it. She was wearing gray leggings, the baggy sweater draping beyond her hip, nearly reaching the center of her thighs. Her hair was let down, the strands drifting slightly in the soft wind, and sharing the breeze was a brown-leafed tree, rocking its branches in rhythm of the earth below it. The leaves waltzed in the wind as they fell alongside feathers and dust.
 
She walked over to the edge of the thick tree and leaned against the trunk. 
Nearby, she heard small whimpers and groans, children being coerced by their parents to head home. 

"If it makes you feel any better, they abandoned you at birth, so I very seriously doubt they'd even want to see you."

She could never get that voice out of her head. She never listened to it, it never hurt her, it was so long ago. Why was she still thinking about her? She could never shake off the feeling that she still was watching her. She couldn't possibly see her now. Not anymore.

Chell took out her phone to check the time. It was getting dark. The blanket of blue was fading into black. The street lights were illuminating and the lights inside houses surrounding the meadow were becoming more apparent.

A hum of an engine began and slowly faded into the distance. She rose from the tree and walked towards her car, parked in the lot. 

While walking across the park, she stepped into the sand-colored wood chips. She approached the playground area and looked away, as she was not interested, or so she thought. Each step was unexpectedly soft and the ground seemed to almost bounce back.

There were a couple of slides and a bridge that connected to structures to another. Beside that, there was a swing set. The whole playground was colorful, vibrant blues and reds and yellows- awfully childish but.. enticing. 

Chell stopped to look at the playground and eyed the swings longfully. She couldn't remember the last time she played on one. She couldn't remember much when she was a kid. It felt like she had missed out on some large portion of her life. She turned her head to check if anyone was around, and upon realizing there was an absence, she trudged through the chips to the swing set.

She rocked herself back and forth peacefully and looked to the blackened sky.

She thought about what she had done to that little robot. 

The spherical one she sent out there. Out in space. With the blue eye. Who wouldn't stop talking. Who tried to kill her. 

She wondered what he was doing up there, only for a millisecond, mind you. She hadn't bothered giving it much thought, it was rather pointless to her. She.. didn't like to think about.. that... all that much. There were so many ways to preoccupy herself that getting involved in her own fears seemed unnecessary or always reopened a wound she had been healing. 

She kicked her legs rhythmically to begin the swings ascent into the sky.