Finally, light. Only the sound of the cicadas. That hypnotic, perfectly rhythmic, accurate sound. Almost electronic.

Katie breathed. She felt it was the first time that week.

‘When was the last time you actually breathed?’

Everyone needed something from her. Since when had she been so essential to all of them? All of them doing their thing, except her.

She realized she was close to the edge of something. A limit. She had flung her phone across the office space and had left, her face a frustrated frown.

‘Now, everyone just disappear - including you.’ she thought, looking up at the building where she pictured her boyfriend, John, loitering inside, his face permanently buried in his mobile phone, as always.

Finally, peace now. Birds, children playing. The breeze. A feeling of relief, caressing her forehead, but also questioning her choices. The enormous park was only a few steps away from her apartment. Why didn’t she ever take refuge in this wonderful place?

She felt the softness of the ground on the back of her head. The blades of grass embracing her toes. The wind, carrying the scents of early summer, whispering in her ear. Gentle messages. For the first time in days her lips curled into a smile. A smile for herself. For no one else.

Blackness. Freezing wind. An icy stickiness scratching her back and waist. Katie shuddered and stood up.

She had fallen asleep in the middle of the park. There was no one around.

It was freezing now. And very dark. How long had she slept? She instinctively reached for her phone to see the time. But it wasn’t on her. Of course, she had dismissed it on leaving the office.

‘It must be past nine,’ she thought to herself. The park had probably closed by now.

Around the vast clearing where she stood there were thick woods. And behind them the city. She could see the taller buildings along the sides of the park, a mere few hundred yards away. But the trees were so dark. She could only make out a blurry mass.

Her glasses! She couldn’t see clearly without them. They weren’t on her forehead any more. She turned around, but she had moved a few steps away. She frantically felt for them on her knees. Then a crack. And the feeling of something piercing the skin of her left foot. The pain enhanced the feeling of cold. She had disintegrated her spectacles.

Like a liquid spreading slowly through her veins, dread began to engulf her.

The park had closed. There was no moon. She could well be a thousand miles from where she was.

John’s face, unsolicited, abruptly appeared in her mind. A grinning, distorted, mocking grimace. An expression designed to transmit instant guilt-complexes. Demeaning. ‘How could anyone be so stupid as to get lost a block away from home?’ the face in her mind barked.

Whispers. Then eyes flickering. Katie was out of breath in minutes. Trying to figure out in which direction she should go. Everything was so blurry without her glasses, and her ferocious myopia and astigmatism teamed up at night, to wash out all colour. Except for the red eyes she thought she noticed just now, inside a swaying bush.

She started running away from the centre of the clearing. The tall buildings, soaring above the blackness of the treetops, seemed to look down at her, somehow displaying satisfaction with her distress.

They felt insulted. She had dismissed them in such an arrogant way. She had wanted to get rid of them, and of the city and everyone in it. The lit rows of windows, like an audience, watched the arena in which she was now trapped.

Katie reached the edge of the central field. The trees were breathing loudly in the wind, the leaves eerily fluttering, almost a muffled laugh.

‘The rock garden!’ Katie could finally tell now where she was. She dashed in the direction she figured was correct, the pain in her foot making her limp. Then she tripped on a large stone.

The gazebo. A figure was sitting there. Katie froze. This couldn’t be. A cloaked, dark figure in a mask, sitting perfectly still in the darkness. She couldn’t believe her eyes. She turned to the direction she came from and froze again. There was the rock she tripped on, only now it was closer.

She held her breath. Was this an animal? She had begun to back away, when the rock turned to her.

‘You don’t want to cross their paths…’ it said in a deep voice.

Katie’s eyes widened.

‘Whose path…?’ she said.

‘Those that you see are memories,’ the rock said, quietly. ‘They wander around the park during the night, trying to fade away.’

‘Fade away?’

‘Memories of regrets, of burdens, of violence.’

Katie looked up towards the gazebo. The masked figure was moving towards them now. It seemed to float silently, blending with the damp fog.

The rock plodded away, murmuring,

‘People leave them here. There are many.’

She turned and noticed more and more figures, slowly trudging through the park, accompanied by the mist. There was a great sadness hovering above the glade.

Katie no longer felt any fear at all. The darkness of the park was now warm. As it had been before she had fallen asleep.

She thanked the rock and moved towards the silent crowd. As she came closer, she sensed the thoughts hanging in the air, welcoming her. More and more figures turned towards her as she walked towards the park’s west gate. Many more of them came together, until the crowd was so large Katie couldn’t make out where it ended.

As she moved through the trees followed by this strange grey army, she smiled to herself, and looked up in the direction of the looming buildings, looking forward to the encounters which would soon take place.