A crowd of small children flooded the playground, leaving no space for the door to close. There was a rush of noise that swamped the area despite the fact the kids had now spread out to cover more ground. They split into their usual groups, making conversation and swarming to the monkey bars as they usually did. And in the middle, there stood two girls talking quietly to each other, roaming a bit but never acknowledging anyone else.

“Weren’t we going to play kitchen today? I thought we agreed on that in the morning!”

“I don’t wanna play kitchen anymore, Sammy.” One girl, with dark brown hair and eyes, shook her head and frowned.

“But you said we could!” Whined the other girl.

“I know what I said, but I don’t wanna anymore. We could play frisbee, though.”

“I’d just get hit in the face! Something else.” Sammy brushed a stray blonde hair back with the rest.

“Well, that’s all I can think of.”

“I don’t have any games, Alyssa! I just wanted to play kitchen.”

“Then we’ll come up with something better, right? What if… We were cats?” Alyssa let out a ‘meow’ for effect.

“But our parents would get angry that we were crawling in the grass! We could ask a teacher, maybe?”

“Fiiine. But otherwise I still vote for cats!” The two skipped, together, to the nearest adult. The brown-haired girl was meowing with every step, and when they stopped, she began to repeatedly lick the back of her hand and rubbed her forehead in an imitation of a cat cleaning itself.

“We don’t know what to play!” Sammy clung to the teacher’s legs, hugging them determinedly, to get her attention. She pushed the child off and then leaned down a bit. “We’re so bored.”

“Why don’t you two go and see if you can swing across all the monkeybars? If you can, try it again, but pretend you’re actual monkeys.” The teacher feigned happiness with a wide smile, but her impatience and annoyance was obvious. “If not that, climb up a slide. Or try getting down one without sliding.” She straightened out a bit, satisfied that the girls had been appeased.

They had not been appeased.

“The monkey bars are too full, and both of us can’t get across them, and Sammy doesn’t even like monkeys. We can both already climb up all the slides, every single one, and we can just climb down using the sides. There isn’t anything at all to play!” Alyssa replied.

The teacher sighed and motioned to the near-empty basket a few feet away. “Play with something in there. Come up with a new way to use something. Go inside -- you don’t have to be outside, you know -- and keep the little kids company, or maybe even help out.”

“No, we need something else!” Alyssa and Sammy complained in unison.

The teacher stood fully, frowning, her frustration clear on her face. “Listen, girls. I have lots of adult stuff to do, and you two are very creative. You’ll find something.” With that, the teacher quickly walked to the door and went inside.

“One vote for cats!” Alyssa cried out immediately, raising her hand high. “Two votes!” She raised her other hand.

“Wait!” Sammy shouted, forcing both Alyssa’s hands down. “Wait. Wait. Look.” She pointed to one of the slides on the playground. “Look at that.”

“What?”

“It’s a face, Alyssa! The slide is the neck, and it’s smiling really big, and those big metal things are the eyes! It must be a giant or something. See? Do you see it?”

“No -- Ooooh, wait. Now I see it -- Do you think it’ll eat us?”

“It does look pretty hungry…”

“But its smiling.”

“A mean smile! Run, Alyssa!” The two friends took off sprinting.

“It’s right behind us! Don’t turn around!”

“That only makes me want to!”

“I can’t go fast enough!” Alyssa suddenly stopped in her tracks and Sammy spun to face her.

“Keep going!” Sammy commanded, faking desperation and fear, even though she was unable to hold back a smile at the amount of fun she was having.

“I can’t! It has me!” Alyssa began walking backwards slowly, climb up the stairs to the playground. Her friend jumped forward, grabbing her arm and then holding her ground as the brown-haired girl pulled against her. Eventually, though, her arm slipped free and Alyssa ran up to the slide. Sammy followed close behind. “Heeeeelp!” She laid down on her stomach, feet first, in the slide and latched onto the platform. The other girl grabbed one arm and attempted to pull her up as she scrambled to climb out of the slide. “It’ll eat me!”

“I’m not strong enough to pull you up! Climb! Climb!”

“I’m slipping! I can’t hold on!”

“Noooo!” Sammy cried out as Alyssa slipped out of her grip and went down the slide, slowly because of the friction.

“Go on without me! Save yourself!” Alyssa shouted dramatically, climbing off the slide and laying down with her limbs spread out to fake being dead. She stuck out her tongue as much as she could and closed her eyes.

“I can’t run away! It got me, too!” The blue-eyed girl slid down on her stomach, clawing at the side with her short nails as she did so. Somewhere along the line, she flipped so she was going headfirst, and so ended up almost crashing into the ground. She splayed out next to her friend. “What now?”

“Is there another monster in the stomach of the monster that ate us?”

“...I guess so. Will it eat us?”

“Probably, but is it alive?”

“Yes, it’s moving!” Sammy sat up and shook one of the unsteady poles of the playground so that the slide rumbled and squeaked. “I think it sees us! It’s looking straight at us! We need to hide somewhere!”

“It has me! Not again!” Just as Alyssa began climbing back up to the slide, she heard a much too quiet bell ring out, signaling the end of recess. The two grouped back together, pushing back inside, and then sat down on the one carpet in the room. When a daycare teacher began loudly issuing instructions, they leaned towards each other and began whispering.

“Continue next recess?”

“Yes!”

“Are you gonna change your mind again?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“I hope you don’t. That was really fun -- And you’ll have to get out of the monster before you can play something else!”