Day 2,210

 I recently drove past a fast food joint I used to go to as a kid, the ones that had those big plastic playgrounds surrounded by a cage of colourful mesh. It brought back a lot of memories, mostly good but overshadowed by the last time I was there. The last time I saw my best friend.

There's always something a little off in those playgrounds, always the faint smell of piss mixed with industrial strength bleach and you never knew which was making your eyes water but either way you were determined to climb about until a parent dragged you back to eat.

We were there for his seventh birthday along with a few others from our class and as soon as we crawled through that first opening and into the main cube - something felt off. The ground had always been a little damp in places and there as the bolts keeping the windows on were rusted to hell and back but that time there was a thin layer of dark water on the floor and the air didn't smell right.

Thinking back on it I know it was blood and I know why there were no other kids there despite all the parent yelling for them to come out and eat. I know why the staff refused to send anybody in there until my best friend died - until it was finally full and couldn't eat the rest of us.

The papers said a serial killer had hidden in one of the upper rooms overnight and went on a spree as soon as the place was busy enough to cause a delay in anyone noticing. They're all damned liars who didn't see a thing - they didn't see how inhuman it was or how you could see all those kids trying to climb back out whenever it opened its mouth to speak.

Maybe that's why the adults all thought there was a person in there - because it gave them a name and there was a human in the area with that name who was arrested a couple of days later. While his trial was going on someone "accidentally" drove a car into the playground and it had to be demolished for health and safety reasons.

I hope they used that as an opportunity to kill the monster and free those kids but I reckon it escaped. Since they've rebuilt the playground they made it a little wooden-slat-castle-shaped climbing frame with a proper roof and walls instead of plastic mesh.

There's no reports of children going missing from there but I can't say the same for the rest of the city.