"Ready?" Carrie asked, then flicked the spinner. "Left hand red!" Marcia, Anne and myself all lunged forward.

I've always been a little pudgy, and not very athletic. I am however, more flexible and agile than my body type would indicate. As Carrie called out the colors we became enmeshed.

Music blared through the apartment. I don't remember what was really playing. In my memory, it was Echo and the Bunnymen, singing "Villier's Terrace": 

People rolling 'round on your carpet
Biting wool and pulling string
You said people rolled on carpet
But I never thought they'd do those things

The lyrics are appropriate, but too coincidental to actually be true.

Anne fell by the fourth move and crawled off the mat, leaving Marcia and I in an awkward position. Our bodies pressed together in ways far too intimate for strangers, and I had to wonder who had designed this game for children. Each random move seemed a deliberate attempt to recreate the Kama Sutra. Marcia matched me move for move. She smelled of beer, and a slight musky perfume, and some other scent that I can only describe as girl. My cheek pressed against her ass, and a moment later her face was rubbing very close to my crotch. For one magic moment I was able to see down her blouse, and one perfect small breast filled my world. If I had an erection, no one commented on it.

Out faces came close together and the chant of "Kiss! Kiss!" rang out. Our eyes met for a moment, then Marcia collapsed onto the mat. I had won the game, but I felt I had lost something as well. Someone put a hand down to help me to my feet and in a throng of cheers I rose. Marcia stood and congratulated me, then went to refill her beer.

The party continued and the game was forgotten. Someone threw up on the Twister mat, and there was a lot of commotion as it was dragged to the back door and tossed into the alley behind the apartment. I don't know when Marcia left, but I was very aware that she was no longer there.

Eventually the apartment began to clear. Someone I didn't know was asleep or passed out on the couch and I could hear the sound of retching in the bathroom. I went to my room and fell onto the mattress that used to be hers. It seemed a weird coincidence to me. I knew that other students had lived here before me, of course, but it had been just an idea without reality up until that point. This had been Marcia's room. She had lived here, changed clothes here, slept on this bed, fucked on this mattress. The tiny overlap of my life with this stranger felt momentous, somehow. I fell asleep after I masturbated, thinking of Twister played with a lot less clothing and a lot more penetration. Hard cock pink!

I'm sure I saw her again after that. There were enough parties, and enough common friends that we must have run into each other that semester. But, if we did, no memories survive. Whatever we shared on the Twister mat existed in my head only. She was a momentary girl whose name I would no doubt have forgotten by now.

Except that she died.

The details are pretty vague. It was over Christmas break and she was at home. It was an embolism, or something like that. She woke up with a headache, and by the afternoon she was gone. Some genetic imperfection that had hidden in her head for years finally decide that enough was enough.

It was probably two or three weeks into the spring semester before I even found out. Anne was in mourning of course, but I didn't see her for weeks, not until the fire. Word spread slowly. Death had no place in the Playground.

© 2004 Wayne Wise