It's a Chuck-E-Cheese. Or, the wizard version of that. Chuck-E-Cheez-Wiz. Whatever. The memory owner can't recall the name. What's important is, you've walked into a childhood wonderland that, through the eyes of an adult, could really use some disinfectant. The smell of bad pizza hangs in the air. Arcade machines both muggle and magical in design fill the space, for the most part they're all just generic light and noise, though every pinball machine comes through very clearly: The Weird Sisters, The Mummy (brenden frasier edition), alien invasion-themed, a Mummy-themed magical pinball machine, The Lost World: Jurassic Park.
In the center of it all is a massive ball pit where a dozen or so children bounce around and play, diving in, jumping out, tossing the balls around.
"Oh, I do not love this, you know?" muses a familiar, prim London accent as the memory owner regards the scene before her.
Ordinarily, Melody Kwan is all about a bit of fun, but her four year old daughter looks like she's drowning in that ball pit. The other children are so much larger. Is that a six-year-old, or a sixteen-year-old pelting the other kids with grimy plastic balls. And, yes, also bad: those plastic balls are sort of disgusting. The little hollow spheres scuffed, smudged and dented, their bright colors a little dingy.
"It's fine," says a man standing on Ms. Kwan's right.
"Mm," says Ms. Kwan. The sort of sound a woman makes when she's just waiting on the lawyer to call her back and let her know that the divorce papers are in order.
She turns to her husband — soon to be ex-husband — and he's smiling at her. He is tall and handsome and charming in a divorced (no pun intended) academic sort of way, but through Ms. Kwan's eyes all of his worst traits are magnified. Leering eyes, shave job just ever so slightly uneven, and a bit of spinach in his teeth.
And then there's a shriek, and a heart-clutching sob.
Ms. Kwan whips her head around just in time to see the six-going-on-sixteen-year-old pluck the doll from her daughter's hands and yeet that thing into the disgusting ball swamp. "Hey!"
MEMORY: Ballpit
[CRITERIA: find the linchpin]
It's a Chuck-E-Cheese. Or, the wizard version of that. Chuck-E-Cheez-Wiz. Whatever. The memory owner can't recall the name. What's important is, you've walked into a childhood wonderland that, through the eyes of an adult, could really use some disinfectant. The smell of bad pizza hangs in the air. Arcade machines both muggle and magical in design fill the space, for the most part they're all just generic light and noise, though every pinball machine comes through very clearly: The Weird Sisters, The Mummy (brenden frasier edition), alien invasion-themed, a Mummy-themed magical pinball machine, The Lost World: Jurassic Park.
In the center of it all is a massive ball pit where a dozen or so children bounce around and play, diving in, jumping out, tossing the balls around.
"Oh, I do not love this, you know?" muses a familiar, prim London accent as the memory owner regards the scene before her.
Ordinarily, Melody Kwan is all about a bit of fun, but her four year old daughter looks like she's drowning in that ball pit. The other children are so much larger. Is that a six-year-old, or a sixteen-year-old pelting the other kids with grimy plastic balls. And, yes, also bad: those plastic balls are sort of disgusting. The little hollow spheres scuffed, smudged and dented, their bright colors a little dingy.
"It's fine," says a man standing on Ms. Kwan's right.
"Mm," says Ms. Kwan. The sort of sound a woman makes when she's just waiting on the lawyer to call her back and let her know that the divorce papers are in order.
She turns to her husband — soon to be ex-husband — and he's smiling at her. He is tall and handsome and charming in a divorced (no pun intended) academic sort of way, but through Ms. Kwan's eyes all of his worst traits are magnified. Leering eyes, shave job just ever so slightly uneven, and a bit of spinach in his teeth.
And then there's a shriek, and a heart-clutching sob.
Ms. Kwan whips her head around just in time to see the six-going-on-sixteen-year-old pluck the doll from her daughter's hands and yeet that thing into the disgusting ball swamp. "Hey!"
Everything freezes.