Hey Alecto, film this!” she called out. With the slide being as tall as a two-storey house, it felt slightly risky being up there. “On second thought, why don’t you come up here? It’s a blast being up here.”
“I don’t really like to be in high places,” said Alecto as he filmed her, the camera lens reflecting the entire playground, which was partially secluded by tall trees that cast otherworldly shadows dancing across the ground.

“If you don’t like being in high places, then why’d you take so many drugs in the seventies?” Mandy questioned jokingly.

“Do you want me to go up there and push you off the top of that slide?” Alecto threatened coldly.

“You’d never do that, we’re best friends!” Mandy pointed out. She reached over and picked a bright red maple flower from one of the long branches of the trees, tossing it down to him. “Even in this failing 21st century, where people are cell phone addicts and crude humor and violence is the norm, even when society falls apart and drowns in its own mistakes, we’ll still be best friends!” She looked incredibly eccentric, never mind the fact that she was an adult woman wearing a trippy rainbow Pucci dress from the 1970’s, standing on top of a slide at a children’s playground. Alecto didn’t seem to mind, he just continued to film her with his camera like she’d asked him to.

Rebecca McNutt