I’m in a soft play

A child is screaming something about rebuilding a wall. I don’t know who the child is; he’s not part of my unit. One of my children runs past, sweat dripping down its face. Somewhere there’s a noise coming from a child that sounds like a squealing guinea pig. I can smell piss.

I fall back to my coffee; I’ve lost most of my unit. I think I can hear them screaming still. The wall child is back ordering me back to the pointless wall. It doesn’t matter. We can’t hold the wall. It just gets knocked down.

In slow motion I see one child climbing up the slide; the other tries to escape down it screaming: they tangle like puppets at the bottom screaming.

Time blurs back to normal. Someone is screaming about a poop hat. Guinea pig squeals kid is still going.

The plastic balls fly everywhere. Head, arm, legs are hit. The whistle & smack of war all around me. I can hear a high pitched whining noise coming from ostensibly a still living child. I can now smell shit. It might be me.

I return to the wall. It’s the only place that makes sense now. I find tattered sweating remnants of my unit. Someone is singing a tuneless song. Another child just bonks it’s head against a sandbag repeatedly. This is pure madness.

There’s a roaring noise in my ears. A child runs past me as if it’s on fire. Two other children have made a bunker out of soft play cushions. I try to crawl in with them but they scream & jabber at me senselessly.

A child, I don’t know who’s, screams & jabbers at me. It’s glistening in sweat. I don’t know if it’s happy or terrified. It says something about a wall. For a second things make sense.

A yellow child’s safety helmet suddenly bounces off me. I check to see if the head is still inside it. I laugh. It’s all I can do now.

A child seems to appear from nowhere and drop from a great height. It doesn’t move: in this madness it all seems fine. I nudge it with my foot to see if it’s one of mine. It’s not. I move on.

I find myself back at the wall. Someone is yelling about it needing a roof. In response there’s a hail of plastic balls. Someone keeps yelling about the damn roof. The kids cower in their foxhole for a moment

Everything smells of sweat, piss, shit & adrenaline. A limb protrudes at an odd angle from a pile of soft play blocks. I no longer check to see if I know it.

Someone is screaming a name. Elsewhere another cries for its mummy in a long squealing voice. The guinea pig squealer is long since dead.

“Sausages I’ve got sausages” a child screams. I can’t look. I don’t want to know what it means anymore.

“We can build a wall. A big wall.” The child is alone. Tears in its eyes. The wall is all that makes sense to it now.

“Where are you going?” It implores, the big eyes looking for reason in the madness. There’s no reason or logic here kid; this is the soft play. This is all there is. Screaming, madness, piss & play time.

We pose briefly for a photo. We smile in the madness

The wall, the wretched wall, the only anchor in all the madness. It stands. It stands like a beacon in the madness & the shrieking.