Play on the Rainbow

Jenny was on her usual 7am run through the park. It was a chilly, misty morning and she had barely summoned up the energy to put on her running shoes and start her jog.

Near the playground the usual group of seven or eight dog owners were hanging around talking about dogs while their dogs (long, short, fat, skinny) chased each other in a mad swirl around their human masters. They were blocking the entire path. Jenny slowed her pace and tried to navigate through the crowd of canines and people. Suddenly, a tiny clump of dirty white fur resembling a mop ran under her feet, causing her to trip forwards onto the ground.

“Looks like little Maxi's having fun again,” said a woman with a voice that suggested she had smoked too many cigarettes.

Nobody helped Jenny up nor apologised. “I hate dogs,” she though. “And I hate people.”
The people seemed to be discussing something much more important than her accident. As Jenny stood up and brushed herself off she overheard their conversation:
“....discovered her little body last night....”
“...they found her in the sand, covered in blood.”
“....I heard she had been bitten.”
“....it was right over there in the playground. Under the swing.”

Jenny had never noticed the playground before. A multicoloured arched sign over the gate said “Play on the Rainbow.” In the playground, everything seemed normal. No blood. No bodies. Only one little girl was playing on the swing. A woman was sitting on a bench and playing with her phone. Jenny continued her run, with a bit of a limp...

The next morning there were no dogs in the park and the playground was empty, so she decided to take a look. She couldn't get to the words she had heard the day before out of her head. There was nothing on the internet about anything happening at the playground, so she decided she would investigate herself. She snooped around in the sand under the huge multicoloured climbing frame which was shaped like a rainbow if you looked at it from far away. She kicked around in the sand, looked left, looked right, up and down. Sand, bits of rubbish, bottles, cigarette butts...nothing unsual for a playground.

Just when she had decided to leave she saw it: something white stained with something horrible and red: a cotton baby's bonnet was laying on a swing. The strange thing was that the swing was moving a tiny bit even though no one was around. Or so she thought.

“Tragic! Tragic, isn't it?”
Jenny jumped. The face of a woman appeared. Her face was extremely pale, with deep dark rings beneath her eyes, as if the woman hadn't slept in a week. But she was pretty in a strange way and her long black hair was made up into a bun. The skin on her face was stretched back over her cheek bones.
“Hello.... what's tragic?”
“That no children play here any more....”
Jenny held the blood-covered bonnet in hand and felt a shiver. Then the thing just fell out of her hand.
“Errrr.”
“Do you have any children young lady?”
“Er... no. I am 19....”
“That's not too young....would you please sit a little while. I am quite lonely here.”
A voice inside her said, “No, this woman is weird” but Jenny was fascinated. She had never met anyone like this woman. They say on the bench and looked out at the empty rainbow playground.
“You know you look a bit like my daughter.”
“Oh, really. That's nice.”
“My name is Agata.”
“Jenny.”
“Jenny...nice name.”
Agata talked and talked about her daughter, whose name was Sophia and although it was early morning, Jenny felt her eyes grow heavy, she felt them closing.
When she opened them again, she was looking straight up into Agata's face. She had fallen asleep with her head in Agata's lap. She snapped up: “Um, sorry, I don't know what happened.”
“It's ok, you're a sleepy little girl.”
Jenny felt a horrible shiver go up her back.
“I better get going.”
The rest of her jog was really difficult. Her body felt drained and empty and slow, like all the energy had been sucked out of it.

After her morning shower, Jenny looked in the mirror. There were some strange red marks on her neck that she hadn't noticed before.
At her office nobody said anything about the marks, though. They looked like a giant spider or bug had bitten her.
That night she had strange dream. That weird Agata was in it. Jenny was a small kid and Agata was holding her hand and they were walking towards the playground. There was one little girl playing there. Hand in hand they watched the little girl swinging. She woke up scared and sweating, even though she couldn't remember anything else happening in the dream.

She jogged to the park and found herself running straight to the playground without thinking about why she was going there. She sat on the same bench she had sat on with Agata. A little girl walked into the playground and started swinging. Jenny stood up. An unstoppable thirst took over her body, unlike anything she had felt all of her life. As if she was a robot being controlled from somewhere else she walked slowly towards the girl on the swing. Everything became silent: the wind, the birds, the traffic, the dogs. No sound. No thoughts. Jenny took the girl's hand. Without saying anything, she lifted her up so that she was standing on the swing. Totally automatically as if under a spell, Jenny bent down and put her hand over the girl's mouth and sunk her teeth into the girl's neck. There was no scream. Just a muffled twitching of the body. Jenny drank and drank and drank until the girl flopped to the ground. Jenny took one look at her victim and calmly walked away through the usual crowd of dogs and people outside the playground. They hadn't noticed anything.

Jenny jogged home and got dressed for work. She felt amazing. She skipped breakfast and got to the office early. All day she worked without a break, achieving twice as much as she usually would in one day. The whole morning felt like a dream. “That didn't happen,” she thought. The memory of what she had done quickly faded away.

The next morning she went for her usual jog. This time, when she got to the group of dogs and people, she saw a policeman and a policeowoman talking to the group.
A woman shouted: “That's her! I saw her do it....”
The policewoman can up to her and immediately grabbed Jenny and put her wrists in handcuffs.
“I didn't so anything!!!” she screamed.
“It was her,” said another woman.
“Yes, I was definitely her. I saw her bite the child.”
All the dogs started barking at her. The police started taking her away. “You're going to come with us, young lady.”
Jenny was in a nightmare. And to make it all worse, she saw the strangest thing ever: a vision of Agata, the woman with the black straight hair standing in the top of a tree. She was laughing at Jenny. And waving....
“Welcome to the dark side, Jennny.... hahahahahahahaaaaaaa!”