And here is Jenny- her name has to be Jenny- an average kind of girl’s name. She spilt the milk while having cereal this morning. It was how things went wrong. She looked at the mocking patch of white on the lacquered table top with absolute horror. Wasn’t it the greatest failure in her life that she couldn’t even pour the milk right? Still staring at the milk, petrified, it took her few minutes to get back to reality. No, there was never reality. Jenny’s world was all but nightmarish fantasies. The walls started talking. She heard them and she tried to shut them away by backing off, hoping she might collapse into something comforting, like a huge floating glittering bubble that would engulf her. She found nothing but a doorknob. She turned it and escaped. She ran like she did in all her dreams. She was pursued by horror itself: the sight of the spilt milk. The spilt milk. Spilt milk. Split. Milk. She wanted to scream out loud and she knew her face must be so distorted with fear, for joggers passed her by with cautious glances and drew themselves further apart from her. Her legs as if possessed were walking on their own. The sun was blasting out fire, licking her bare white skin. Her screams turned into gasps; her horrified eyes dripping frustrated tears that scurried down her sun burnt face and her hands, which occasionally cared to wipe them away.
She imagined herself walking to her death, for death is one barren desert for sinners to stagger and stumble eternally. Soon she would be dehydrated in the heat; the walk would exhaust her. She imagined herself walking in the desert, and finally collapsed in the scorching sand. Her skin scalded and peeling, her lips white and cracked, her kneecaps stuck out like birches of a withered tree. She knew she could not end it by mortal hope. She has to keep walking, for it was her sentence. Walking, until heavenly mercy granted her a miracle to live again, or to die. Then she looked at the road where cars zooming by like magnified humming bees. The thought of having torn body part or half crushed skull grossed her out of that thought. Besides, what if she did not die.
A greenery awkwardly emerged out of the construction site that skirted the sidewalk. There are children running in the play ground, plump women and old men walking their dogs, a bunch of young beautiful girls sitting under the tree. I am not kidding. It might sounds like a textbook illustration of a typical park, but I did see all these. She sat on one of the benches that laced the playground. The conversation of the girls under the trees was barely audible, but one can tell the laughter was boisterous and carefree. She looked at those legs that swung and kicked merrily under the benches as they talked. White and soft, full of youth, in a way just like hers. She wanted to sit with them and chat, to be cliché and talked about anything that might be funny or dorky. She knew she cant, they would shut her up with those mascara gazes and huge sunglasses, and those pouting lips that shone with juicy lip-gloss. The familiar hopelessness comforted her, reminding her what she already was, and with that she did not change into something worse. The serenity of it reminded her again of the eternal silence. It was heaven. She was watching heaven like a reality show, in a dark room alone without the remote control.
The evening breeze sent a chill through her blouse. She braced herself and immediately pictured herself homeless, permanently homeless and resided at this very bench. From now on this was her home and nowhere else. She caught a sight of something at the far end of the park. It was a swing, typical swing in wooden frame. She hesitated, but she walked to it anyway as if the swing was some kind of salvation. She sank herself in the rubber crescent that hang down by the metal chains. Then she pushed herself backward, the swing lifted her up, with a little inertia her body was flung forward while the swing retreated to the rear. It was like being carried by a wave, or wind, or some rhythm of nature that she couldn’t control but enjoyed all the more. It was like flying. She was enchanted by peace; for a moment she realized her eyes were dry for once in the past few hours. She pushed herself a little and swung higher. It felt like a cradle, the rocking motion that we loved when we were infants. She tried not to retrieve the image of her mother for it would upset her, but she tried to relive the sensation of being cradled. She thought of the children that were running in this park, the child she once was that ran in some parks that probably no longer existed. Maybe she did not run at all when she was a child. She swung in the crib of wooden frame and metal chains, humming to herself some nursery rhymes she used to love. Then she entered a trance, the tranquility that she yearned for in the barren desert of eternity. The walk went on--she closed her eyes.