Dave

Click and creak, click and creak and squeak. That's all I hear these days, with occasional rustles from the rubbish in the scrub, and birds in the trees which are emptying their singed-looking, soggy leaves over the unkempt grass, like burnt newspaper hastily put out. The sky is dark, as if it's daytime but the sky's choked up with smoke from some massive fire, and everything looks damp and overgrown and ruined. Everything is in shades of grey and black- doesn't look like all the colours have been filtered out or anything, just looks like nothing had any colour in it to begin with, know what I mean? And I'm wearing a white t-shirt and black jeans, so no help there. I sit on a swing and I rock back and forth.
In the early days I used to move about, still imagining my legs'd go to sleep if I sat in one position for too long. I can hear my mother's voice ringing through my... see that's why this internal monologue stuff's tricky; what am I supposed to call the place where my ears were, or my head? But sitting here on my own, it'd be easy to get into dangerous patterns, start talking to myself or goodness knows what else. So I sit on my swing, I rock back and forth and I switch off.

Before I used to get up and try and leave, try to walk to the road which I knew was about a hundred yards in front. The playpark is in a bowl made by stubby hills, with trees to the right, a rolling glen behind with an estate in the distance, a steeper hill with concrete steps leading to terraced houses to the left, and a boggy field in front with a road on the other side. I'd try to walk across the field but it'd get dark, terrible choking dark that seeped through the skin and weighed down like tar, until I couldn't move an inch forward. I'd turn round achingly, pushing through setting concrete, to see the dim shape of the swings, a rusted spring sticking out of a black asphalt mattress. And I'd know I had to get back there, to sit on that ragged rubber seat before I was crushed and set like a dinosaur in a tarpit. So I'd pull and haul and force my way back, and it felt like I was tearing muscle and pulling limbs out of sockets with every movement, although I know now that's not possible anymore. It'd get easier the closer I got to the swing, the concrete feeling dissolving and the light coming back, so that by the time I got to the murky damp it felt safe and warm and I'd have a go on the swings and feel alright for a while.

I only did that once or twice. I've thought about trying one of the other directions; once I even got up and walked towards the trees. But as soon as I stood up it got dark again, with a deep roaring sound, the sky full of smoky clouds boiling and twisting. I edged closer to the mangy trees, walking through grasses that bristled and writhed up to knee height before I'd taken a dozen steps. I got to the crooked barbed wire fence that runs round the forest, and I knew that on the other side was a lane, and if I took that lane I'd be home in five minutes, back to my warm house with my crappy little room and crappy little bed and crappy old parents. But I could see things through the trees, moving between the branches, jerking and swinging and slithering, with swishes and chitters and clicks. Then there were two glints like cat's eyes, and something dropped from the trees with a fluttering rustle. I could make out its outline, covered in a pelt of coarse feathers, as it approached the fence slowly, juddering like it was being electrocuted, skulking slowly on two legs. It seemed to flitter in and out, closer, farther, to left and right, like hundreds of different images of itself popping into view and blinking away out of sync. I could do nothing but stand stunned and watch it come, while from the trees behind came a rising bubbling roar of one note being held by hundreds of throats slightly out of tune.
The two glinting black glassy eyes were still, on a level slightly higher than my own eyes. The rest of the thing quivered and flickered around them in a mass of snaggled and gnarled feathers which shone oily like a rook's.
A crackling, choking sound came from it. Another crowd of voices from the trees gave a jeering cry, while the rest carried on the jarring roar.
It choked and growled again, but this time it managed to hold a growling note different to to the one the others were making. And in that growl I could hear it trying to form a word. It sounded like "back", but being said by something that didn't have both lips and a tongue, the consonant noises coming for the back of its throat, somewhere deep in that slick jagged feather coat. The rest of them slowly took up the chant, getting louder and louder and higher in pitch, and it was like I snapped awake. I edged backwards through the grass, which shrank back with every step. And with each step the things in the trees juddered more and more irregularly, until by the time I got to my swing again I wasn't sure if I could see them at all.

After that I never really felt like trying to go anywhere. I don't have a body throwing needs at me any more. I can't even really remember how I died, or where this park is, in the grand scheme of things I mean. Don't know how long it's been either, that I've been sat here. There's no day or night or anything, and I don't sleep to break it up. I know no-one really comes here anymore, and that's probably because of what happened to me. But I try not to think too much. Can lead to dangerous patterns. And the last person I want to fall out with here's myself.