The Woman in the Park

The woman was walking along the path, right next to the railing, when I noticed her. She appeared to be suffering from a terminal case of boredom. You know the kind - glum vacant stare, each morning wondering why she bothered to get out of bed at all. Possibly suicidal, although I wasn't sure.

It was a school holiday. Kids were swarming all over the park, laughing and shouting. No glumheads they. The damn little tykes are virtually indestructable, most of them no doubt from sturdy blue-collar stock. Ten or fifteen years from now they'll all be busy producing clones of themselves. The woman, by contrast, looked like the end product of generations of overbreeding: thin, pale, fragile, as though you could knock her over with a leaf.

Definitely the end of her line. Bored stiff and desperately lonely, her forbidding manner nonetheless discouraged advances. She noticed me and looked positively fearful that I would try to strike up a conversation.