The Secret Garden of Pleasure

A refreshing Saturday breeze wafted into the gaping, half open car panel as we approached the Secret Garden for a Domino's picnic. Our cousins Yeoul and Loah had arrived days earlier. “Are we there yet?”, Jeein asked, his cheeks bouncing across his hollow structure. “Patience!” I said. Mum smiled at us. “Yes, we are here. Welcome to the Secret Garden!” 

We all piled out into the Secret Garden with a batch of pizza, just asking to be devoured revealing elegant dough embedded with silky streams of cheese topped with innocent sausages. A pizza eating competition began, me capping twenty-six, Loah eleven, Jeein nine, Heein five, and Yeoul two slices. The grass was now dripping with saliva dew and eyes twinkling. “Brothers and sister,” Loah spontaneously announced, “a picnic is incomplete without picnic games!” “Hear, hear!”

The first game was red light, green light. “Green light… red light!” Heein said. The lawn was filled with four fragile museum sculptures. One wobbled. “Got you!” Three, two, one players remained. Now the fate of the game was up to me. “Green light… red light!” A 50 metre death strip was in the open. The wind blinded me, but alas! The wind sprinted with me. Seconds later, I was being pinned by my family. Loah raised his hand. “Game two! Cops and Robbers!”

 I was a good cop. I chased straight left and right. No matter how hard I tried, I was unable to grasp just one person. Lucky me. I stopped dead and rested my lungs. Inhale. Exhale. I was ready. With all the mustered strength, I turned hypersonic as air whistled in my ears. I rounded up the sheep into the pen.

We plopped down on a picnic mat and each lifted a cone of fair vanilla ice-cream. This was the medicine required after a day's worth of activity. While we were on cloud nine polishing off the first ice cream, I looked to the heavens and enjoyed the peaceful sight of lorikeets scratching and rubbing their cheeks against each other. Plop. I looked at Jeein. A white and black was stained on the shirt. Heein giggled in a cry manner until his shirt went, plop. The day of pleasure had ended.