It was not often that the young woman would find herself in the park anymore. She stopped frequenting it once she grew out of being a high school girl. Many years have passed since that time, and yet the simplicity of the falling leaves and playground chatter did not fail to bring her right back as if she’d never left. 

She walked by the benches that lined the playground, each with children running back and forth to and from their mothers and nannies—or rather, from almost each of them. 

“She’s so beautiful!”

The young woman shifted in the direction of the sound, fixating on the bench to her right where a white linen lined stroller was pulling out the awe from inside one older lady, and many more around her. All strangers—just as much to her, as to the stroller. 

In two long strides, the young woman closed the distance and began turning to face within, while the older wrapped around her hands to the side and scooped it right out.

“Isn’t she beautiful?”

“She…is,” her words began trailing, scooping the little one from the hold of the older woman. Holding the babe out right before her, she stretched out her arms to fit into view the wholeness of it. And yes, the babe was beautiful. 

She is beautiful.

She has the smoothest, roundest, squishiest face of all and the most lively of cheeks, but in the wholeness of her face, nothing takes as much space as her eyes do. Her big, wide and bright blue eyes. 

They must be taking a third of the entire area of her little babe face, the young woman thought. Or perhaps even more if you account for her eyelashes. 

She pulled her arms in to look deeper inside the long wet clusters fanning out from the baby girl’s eyes, letting her bright lavender purples meet the wet and unblinking bright blue of the babe. She got so close that their foreheads were just a few inches apart.

“She is so beautiful!” the woman rejoiced. And yet thought beauty alone does not cover the extent of the sight. 

The little babe is young and plump all over, with limbs cozied all around by a thick, softly textured one-piece and even further tucked in by a similarly plushy wrapping cloth. That cloth that has the kind of weave that makes your fingers sink in like cloud-infused quicksand, without meeting one sign of resistance. 

“She is so beautiful, isn’t she?” the young woman said with a once-over to the other women in the park, unable to look away for longer than that, and began to spin with it. 

The eyes of the babe were fixed, still, and the light inside the young woman went on rising. They had a warp around her like no other, so warm that they she knew it in her bones: if she were to spend any longer than that split second ripped away from the gaze of the babe, it would bring onto her that wretched feeling. The bottomless gush of guilt. She’d then feel it harden, pull her down from the inside by her chest and stomach. All for not being there. 

She continued to spin, blocking out the world despite it brightening, along with everything around it. All other matter and form ceased to exist, and all that remained was that sparkle. The one that extended out from the babe’s wet eyes and to all throughout the length of her long wispy lashes.

The young woman looked right into the center of them, widening her own eyes back at it with big lavender glimmers, then letting them close slightly to rest before widening them back again. 

Widening again, and pausing. 

Widening, and pausing again. 

Widening—while a pair of hands appeared, scooping under hers and taking a hold of the babe.

She turned and continued:

“She is so beautiful—”

A gush of wind blows heavily through the trees lining the playground, ripping away leaves. They fall and hit against the back of the baby’s mother. She rocks the baby up and down with a bounce in her pace and one firm hand holding the back of its head while pressing its face deeper into her chest.

“Yeah, yeah—well, she is not your baby.” The mother turns and leaves together with the stroller, her up and down bounce fading in the young woman’s peripheral vision.

She now in return stood still.

Before her eyes, all seemed out of reach. 

There was no woman, no babe, no playground, no leaves, no sound and no time. Just an out-of-focus blur of the empty and the blank. It was not creeping nor growing in its size, its threat or its authority, but yet made both act and thought—much like the one of raising her head to watch the mother leave the playground—not register. Not while they were still in view, and neither once they had completely abandoned the edges of her vision. 

“Are you ready to go?”

The young woman shook her head out of the daze. “Leave me alone, mother—I am going home.” 

The young woman stomped with her feet on the concrete for the entirety of her way home, much but not all of it due to the invasion of her own mother:

“What’s wrong? Talk to me!”

“…”

“What’s wrong? Talk to me!” 

*

Home, the young woman sped up her pace. She crossed from one room to another under the sound of more steps than feet. 

In the empty hallway: “What’s wrong? Talk to me!”

“Leave me alone, mother—”

In the grandmother’s quarters: “What’s wrong? Talk to me!”

“What’s wrong with her?”

“I don’t know, she won’t talk to me.”

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Leave me alone—”

She paced back and forth, yet the mother and grandmother did not cease trying to talk to her. To make something fun happen. To make her laugh. To make her talk back to them. But she was having none of it, and kept pacing away.

“Leave me alone—”

As she was making one final pass, crossing the threshold between the hallway back into the grandmother’s quarters, she saw it come right at her from the side. 

“TALK TO ME!” The mother’s spirit  jumps out from the thick wood lining the threshold in a jumpscare. Her spirit just a face with no body. 

The young woman continues her step over the threshold and flicks the door closed behind her—a gesture she’d done before, strongly out of habit rather than reaction. 

A pause.

She looked at her grandmother, then blinked. She paused again, letting it register.

“Did she just jump out at me from inside the wood?”

The grandmother shrugged. 

The young woman shook her head. 

“Do not disturb me, I’m going to bed—” 

She flicked the door closed behind her to the now newly rising chatter, and turned to the left to crawl under the covers until her body reached the middle of the bed. She drew up the blanket over her until it covered her ears, and dragged up her knees so high they almost touched on her chin. With one deep breath in, finally, the young woman closed her eyes.