Playscape
By Diana Peterfreund, first published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
After a local child goes missing, a mother watches her own child with caution and examines her relationship with the mother of the missing child.
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Plot Summary
A woman watches the TV and sees that one of her neighbors’ children has gone missing. The neighbor mother says that she was at the park and that her child disappeared at the top of the slide, but everyone begins to think that she killed her own child. The woman had been to the neighbor mother’s house and was acquainted with her because their children were around the same age, but she doesn’t consider her a friend. She watches online as people begin throwing accusations around calling the neighbor mother a monster for killing her child or negligent for not watching her child carefully. The woman remembers their conversations about their children and thinks she can recall the neighbor mother saying sometimes she wished she didn’t have a child. The woman has some issues with her own son, but knows that he is actually a good boy. She decides to bring a casserole to the mourning neighbor father who sends her away quickly after seeing her son. The woman decides to bring her son to the park after a few weeks and watches him as he runs up the ladder, across the bridge, and down the small slide over and over again. She doesn’t take her eyes off of him and sees that there isn’t really any way for someone to lose their child in that park. Her son says he is done going down the slide and makes his mom carry him off the playground. As they are walking away from the park her son says that there was a hole in the slide. The woman is told by her own mother that the neighbor mother is a monster and the woman says that she doesn’t believe that the neighbor mother killed her child. She goes back to the park and her son wants to go down the bigger slide that is shaped like a corkscrew. She says he can go, but then realizes that there is a spot where she won’t be able to see him. She panics and imagines the life that the neighbor mother has for herself. Her son safely gets to the bottom of the slide and she picks him up and briefly sees a hole at the top of the slide.