Laughter in Hell’s Playground

It rang out, issuing into the blue sky of the day. Wisps of white clouds painting the blue with colorless puffs and streams. It rang across the treetops, skimming the gold and browns and yellows of the autumn leaves. Across the buildings, who’s roofs were of a deep, dreary gray and the fencing that held it in. No cars zoomed past in the streets, no wind crisp fall wind stirred the day. Nothing to waver the joyous laughter that spilled forth from the playground. Yes, such free-spirit and carefree laughter it was. The laughter of innocence and equality, the laughter of children. No one stood on duty, watching them as they played. No faces shadowed the tinted windows of the classrooms or pegs to hold open the doors. Just the laughter, spilling from the depths of the playground without a care in the world….

Crisp browned grass snapped and smashed into the cool earth as the stampede of many feet trampled across it’s surface. Children running from the merry-go-round to the swings, racing each other on short legs. The legs of children no older than 7 and as young as 4. Waddling across the playground with hysterical fits of giggles and calling back to one another in somewhat slurred speech as they collided with the swings.

6 black swings, suspended to the poles by rusting chains, the bottoms of 6 children now occupying their seats and sticking their tongues out at those who, ‘lost’ the race. Those unable to snare a swing huffed out at the teasing and after a verbal bicker, walked off pouting deeply. Some wore thin jackets to take the chill from the air, others wore thick coats that made them appear several times larger than they were. All ‘plotting’ against those able to snare a swing before they themselves could reach one. Plopping down upon the merry-go-round, and yet. The dispute would shortly be forgotten, lost to memory as something more interesting captured their attention. Enrapturing their childish minds with curiosity and awe.

And so, the creak and clink of rusting chains bearing the weight of children joined the chorus of giggles and laughter and voices. Chattering away about something with no point and no purpose except to satiate their need to talk. Shoes ground into the pebbles that created an island around the large array of ladders and slides and stairs for the children to climb upon. None questioned the silence. The lack of supervision. The unmoving of time, as they knew nothing to do such. And so, their laughter would ring. Ring forever here in this space between time. Frozen in this state of absolute glee for eternity, unto eternity. Their song of laughter and voices ringing out through the cavaties of darkness, bearing the prelude of agony…

There were no teachers to supervise them, so what did they care that a stranger now stood in their midst? May he be there, it mattered not to them as their antics of childish pleasure drove the stranger from their minds. Drove the warning and the screams from their minds. The sirens and tears of mothers. Dears and screams that came from a place deeper than any heart could think of going, beyond simply love or care. Beyond any state of mind that any mortal could comprehend, to belch forth into the air with an agony that not even the screams of hell ensued upon it’s souls. The looks of authority as their eyes found anything but the sight before them to look upon… As husbands, as fathers fought to restrain the wailing screams that rose form some cavity of feeling, as their eyes glistened with tears that would stain their cheeks for an eternity…. And as night would fall and the laughter would ring out, and the voices and the creak of rusting chains would sing it’s chorus to the moon. Sing it’s prelude of death. Of despair. . . .

The sky would forever shine blue with wisps of white clouds painting it’s surface. And the autumn trees would sway to the chorus of laughter and voices. And the roofs of buildings would fail to alter as the creak of rusting chains accompanied this song. As the innocent laughter of children would forever ring from the playground. And the merry-go-round would spin it’s infinite circle, now stained with a vivid, putrid crimson. Littered with hands which bore no arms, bruised with twisted fingers and dirt stained skin. Skulls that bore a face and yet to back, sliced in half just behind the ear. Eyes, once alive with childish passion now dull and blank. Frozen forever in a wide-eyed gaze of horror, a silent scream transfixed to the bloodless skin. Bruised and bloodied, coated in dirt and mud and caked together with the congealing blood of friends. And the swings would forever sway back and forth, back and forth. Creaking their song of rusting chains, their seats stained with blood that would drip and string to the ground. Pooling beneath the seats of black with naught but shoes remaining in the pools of red.

And the equipment would forever echo with the hiss of clothing against slides, laughter and taunts and the clatter of shoes as a child scurried up a latter or across a bridge. And the crunch of pebbles beneath childish feet. Now creating a bed to a pond of blood, the earthen tone stones laying as the ground as the vivid red glistened in the sunlight above. As blood stained the slides and ladders and bridges and grass. Bone and body parts that had no matching counterpart lay askew in this field of eternity.

Now, the laughter of children and the swish of the merry-go-round and the creak of a swing would echo for eternity. Into the blue sky, across the autumn tree tops, the never changing roofs of the buildings. And the cries of mothers and tears of fathers.

For now, these souls were lost. Lost for eternity unto eternity, here. Trapped, within the laughter that rang from Hell’s playground.