The Lost Playground

Prompt from DailyPrompt.com

It all started with the old cars hidden in the woods. As kids we didn’t think much of it. They were just a playground. Different makes, different ages, all stripped of licence plates and devoured by vines and shrubbery.

We climbed on and in them. This one was our fort, that one was the bad guy’s lair, that kinda thing. We sunned ourselves on their roofs, turned their tyres into swings, took apart the engines for toys.

Whenever a new one showed up it was exciting. An extension to our playground. A combination of new territory and new friend. We wormed inside and got to know them. The mouldering old faithfuls momentarily forgotten in the glee of intact seats and the mystery of what lay in the glovebox and boot.

Then a grownup found out about it. About our playground. About how cars had been appearing there for decades.

Nobody told us there was an investigation. But we knew something was up because suddenly we had new cars most weeks. Sometimes a couple a week.

That was weird. Usually we got one or two a year, if that.

When the police got involved we were told to stay away from our kingdom. Our only haven. We were left wandering the town looking for a truly vacant lot. But they all had squatters, or bigger meaner kids. It was a sliding scale honestly.

So after a few days had passed and our parents were once again sick of us and willing to ignore where we were, we went back to the woods. Expecting to find our playground ripped out, a gaping wound which would never heal.

It was all still there. Just as we’d left it.

Except we had cop cars and some heavy machinery now.

It was a real playground after that. None of the stuff had gas but a few of the cop cars would run their sirens for a while. And the digger and bulldozer and all were great fun to climb on.

We never wondered why there were no tracks showing how the vehicles got here.

We never wondered about how they fitted through the dense trees around this spot.

We never wondered what happened to the operators.

We were just kids.

And now… now that I’m an adult… I watch packs of kids roam into the woods and I know better than to try and investigate.

I’ve got a car now, after all.

Prompt was the first sentence.