• The swing set was a strange sight in the middle of the night. The cool metal creaked and groaned as the sleepy sounds of dogs and cars and the frogs by the pond accompanied it. One swing slowly swayed as a pendulum, carrying the hunched figure on a repetitive arc. She was crouched into a child's swing, feet crammed into the closed space as she shifted uncomfortably on the edge. She didn't look up at the sound of approaching feet, nor did she react when someone sat next to her.

    "Nice night," the man next to her commented, feeling obliged to break the silence.

    The girl did not respond. She slowly traveled her lonely arc for a few more minutes, before a faint sniffle interrupted the silence. Ignoring the startled stranger, she wiped her eyes and her nose on her sleeve and sniffled again.

    "Are you... I don't mean to pry but, are you crying?" the man asked lamely, struggling for words.

    "What of it?" The girl's voice was husky and half-choked with tears.

    There was an awkward silence before the man suggested, "Is there anything I can do to help?"

    The girl let out a small snuffle again as her swing gently brought her backwards towards the man. The lone streetlight nearby illuminated her briefly as she slipped out of the shadows, and the man realized that she was a teenager, not a child. "I doubt you can," she said finally, receding into the shadows once more.

    "Care to tell me your troubles? I've heard talking it out works wonders," the man offered with cheerful bravado that sounded hollow, even to him.

    "Where'd you hear that from, your shrink?" Her sharp sarcasm was unsurprising for a teenage girl, and the man guessed that she was closer to her twenties than her tens. She was quiet for a moment longer, before she finally said thickly, "I had another fight with my parents tonight. It was over something stupid and something that I started. We've been fighting more and more, and it's always something that I've done or that I've started. It's true, it's just tiring. I don't even know why I do half the things I do, I just do."

    "The epitome of teenage-dom," the man blurted and then hastily apologized. "Sorry, go on."

    The girl shrugged, a hopeless, half-hearted shrug. "I've just been so bland and so angry for the past few months.... It's like all my ugliness has come forward. I don't feel like me, and the way I've been acting, I don't want to be me." She stopped talking, and the man waited patiently for her to continue. After a shuddering, half-choked breath, she started up again. "My mom thinks I'm depressed. I don't really care to know if I am. She just wants me fixed and back to the way I was. She keeps going on about how I wasn't like that when I was a little girl." A bitter laugh burst out of her now, surprisingly dark for such a small creature. "I guess she can't see that that side of me died years ago."

    Silence swung between them now, curious and broad as it swept back and forth. As it passed them, conversation would briefly dart through, hasty as it tried to outrun the quiet.

    "Why would you say that you died years ago?" The man asked.

    Silence.

    "Have you ever been unhappy for so long that you forgot what contentment was? Have you ever had to think really hard about the last time you liked yourself?" Her voice was sharp and raw as she used the questions like whips.

    Silence.

    "No."

    Silence. It reigned longer this time, as if it had slowed down to inspect it's neighbors more closely before moving on.

    "Then you can't understand. I can't really blame you, it's not like this is common." She laughed, a watery laugh that sounded more like a sob. "And I doubt you went on this walk expecting to try to answer a messed up kid's questions of the universe."

    The silence sped up now, bored by the idle chatter.

    "No, I can't say I was expecting that."

    The silence was so quick that it seemed to create a wind as it sped by.

    "Do you believe in God?"

    With a noiseless crash, the silence flipped over the top bar and crashed to the ground, where it draped itself over the two swingers. It took a while to rouse itself before it finally crawled back on the swing and started itself back into the pendulum.

    "Yeah, I do. I believe that God is there, watching over us as we struggle and thrive in this world. I believe in creation and Jesus and all of that." The man's voice was contemplative, almost quizzical.

    Silence swung slowly, dramatically between them.

    "I don't think I do. At least, I don't think I do." The girl paused, allowing the silence to dart back down. "I used to, at least. But after all this...." The girl laughed and said bitterly, "I'll have to agree with Nietzsche and say that God is dead. And for me, he's either dead or AWOL."

    The silence drifted back again, before squirming in it's seat and preparing to leap.

    "So what would you call yourself?" the man asked.

    It prepared itself to jump, but then the silence seemed to second-guess the release time.

    "An ex-Christian? Nah, if anything, right now I'd be an Nietzschean nihilist."

    On the way back, the silence was sure it would be ready to jump.

    "Sounds like a team name. So what game would the Nietzschean nihilists play? Military agnosticism?"

    It jumped.

    "Suicide."

    And the silence crashed down between them.

    "When?" The man choked out after the shock had worn off.

    Even the girl's voice seemed to shrug with her. "I'm visiting a close friend sometime soon. Maybe that will convince me to play the game of life. Otherwise, probably in a week."

    "Tell me before you do?" The man asked, his voice hushed and pained.

    The girl laughed, harsh and delighted. "I don't see why you care so much, but all right. I just hope you'll be here for me to tell."

    "I'll come back every night," the man promised, and his voice carried the stubborn will to do so.

    The girl was quiet for a moment, and the silence finally stirred, got up, then walked away. "I don't really see how any of this will help. I don't even know why I'm telling you, a complete stranger, any of this. But thanks anyways." With that, the girl wriggled off of the swing and walked away, waving her hand over her shoulder in farewell.

    True to her word, the girl was not back for a week. And true to his word, every night after darkness fell the man would walk back to the swing set and wait for the girl. Every night he would sit, swinging in synchronized movements with silence as he mulled over the angry, harsh words that the girl had uttered. Every night his confusion grew with his resolve.

    A week and a half after their first meeting, the girl came back to the swing set. She seated herself on her old seat and began to swing with the man again. "I see you kept your word," she noted after the silence swung past them."

    "I said I'd wait, and I keep my word. How was your visit with your friend?" he asked.

    The silence swung between them again.

    "It was nice. We did everything we always do. We watched movies, stayed up too late and ate too much candy." Her voice was neutral, and the man's heart began to sink with the silence's descending arc.

    "Are you still going to...." The words stuck in his throat as the silence whisked upwards too quickly.

    "Kill myself? I'd like to. But like I said before, I was raised Christian. Catholic, in fact. And the one thing I took from that was that it's a sin to take your own life." Her body was calm, but her voice shook slightly. "As much as I want to die, the idea of hellfire doesn't exactly make me feel great. Still...."

    "You still want to die?" the man asked quickly, blurting it out before the silence could choke him again.

    "Yeah." The girl seemed a bit bolder now. "As much as the idea of my soul burning in hell for eternity sucks, I'm not too keen on hanging around here either."

    The silence swung again and after it passed the man took a deep breath.

    "I could... help you."

    "I'm not interested in therapy," the girl said with a derisive laugh. "I'm not going through that again."

    "Not like that. I could help you... go." The man didn't look at her as he forced the words past his lips.

    Nearly losing it's balance, the silence took a long time to recover and start up again.

    "As in... Killing me?" The girl asked, dumbfounded.

    Silence; the man nodded.

    "Aren't you worried about your own soul?" She asked him, still stunned.

    The man shook his head as silence shook the swing set.

    "What about jail time? Your life? Or... I mean.... How can you say that so easily?" She asked, bewildered.

    The silence flew off the top bar, and the man started to ramble.

    "I'm not worried about my soul. I'm not killing you out of malicious intent, I'm killing you out of mercy. God believes in mercy, so maybe he'll have mercy on my soul. I'm not going anywhere in life, I have no real talents and I don't have any family ties. And I don't know how I can just say it. I came here every night you were gone, and I kept thinking. I looked up Nietzsche and I thought it was all heavy and dark and cynical. And if someone as young as you could think it's true, well, it just made me want to do something."

    Silence crashed nearby, briefly cutting off the man before staggering away.

    "And if there's anything that could offset your theories and prove you wrong, it's if I did this for you. Nietzsche's theories were that everything is for self-gratification and that humans are all about helping themselves. If I allowed you to kill yourself, it'd be true, because it serves your purpose and keeps my hands clean. But if I stop you, then I'm saving both our skins. But doing this, killing you... I'm helping you. Not me."

    Silence staggered back, punch-drunk from it's crash landing.

    "What about my farewell notes?" the girl asked after a little while. "They're meant to be suicide notes."

    "Do you have paper?" the man asked, and the girl handed him a spare piece, along with a pen.

    The silence collapsed on the ground nearby, eclipsing them but unable to dull sounds of the pen scratching on the paper. Drawing a small plastic bag out of his pocket, the man sealed in and handed it to her. "Put this somewhere where it'll stay without falling out," he told her. She tucked it deep in her shirt between her camisole and her skin. She looked at him curiously and he briefly said, "It's a confession. A murderer's signature. Something to disprove suicide." She nodded, and he said, "Follow me to the pond."

    Passing the silence, the girl followed him to the pond. It was next to the little park, separated from them by a fence. Wordlessly the man carried her over the fence, clumsily but purposely creating dents and other signs of struggle. He carried her until he was waist deep in the water. The lamp behind them threw a curtain of yellow light onto the surface of the water.

    "Is the bag still there?" the man asked before gently lowering her into the cool water.

    The girl checked her camisole and made a sound of affirmation. The girl did not wince when she entered the water; it was summer and the air was sticky and hot. The water actually felt nice, and for the moment, the girl imagined that she was being baptized.

    "If you want me to stop and pull you up, grab my wrists," the man instructed her. Tears choked his throat and he sent a prayer to his god that she would change her mind. "Can you do that?"

    "Yes," the girl said, tilting her head back so her hair fanned out in the water. She was calm in his arms, relaxed as she enjoyed the feeling of the water on her body.

    The man lowered her in the water until his hands found leverage on her shoulders. "I hope you find peace," he said, tears gathering in his eyes. "May God guide your soul to a happier place."

    She nodded and let her air out in one slow breath until her lungs were empty. She nodded again, a signal to proceed.

    The man pushed her under the water. For a while she was still under the water, eyes closed and her face seemed peaceful under the still pond water. Her torso convulsed first, crumpling as it automatically tried to surface for air. He pushed her farther under, keeping the air out of reach as he said loudly and clearly, "Grab my wrists if you want me to stop! Grab them if you want me to stop!"

    She heard him and stuck her arms behind her back. Her torso convulsed more violently; even through the ripples he could see the concentration on her face.

    "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by Thy name," the man began.

    Her legs kicked wildly, splashing his face with the cold pond water.

    "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in heaven." He prayed that this was his will. Then he prayed that she would grab his wrists.

    Her arms moved farther beneath her as she bucked. Her fingers dug into the mud at the bottom of the pond, searching for anything for them to hold on to.

    "Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us," the man intoned, praying frantically for this poor girl.

    Her legs kicked spastically as if they were possessed. Her flailing body churned the water, but still she stubbornly kept her hands down.

    "And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from from evil."

    She breathed in water then, her mouth wide as it searched for oxygen. She started to choke, and she kicked and squirmed wildly. All the while, she forced her arms down.

    "For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever."

    Her kicks subsided and her body began to relax. Her arms released their hold on the sticks and weeds below as the water began to fill her lungs. They rose up and floated on the top of the water, splaying out on either side of her.

    "Amen."

    In her last moments, her lips twisted in a brief, pained smile before her face smoothed over into a blank expression.

    The man continued to hold her under the water, even after her body had long been still and the warmth had left her limbs. His breath came in deep, shaking gusts as he viewed the girl, her eyes half closed and mouth devoid of any emotion. The man wondered if she had found peace.

    He stayed by her body until the sky began to lighten. He couldn't bring himself to leave her to be found by some stranger. He waded to the shore and hauled himself over the fence and back to the swing set where his small pile of belongings sat. He dried his hands on the grass and picked up his phone and called the police. He told them that he had just killed a girl in the pond. Then he hung up and walked back to where her sprawled body laid in the water that was turning pink with the sunlight. The sirens began to sound within a matter of minutes, and he sat with his feet in the water as he watched her body float in the red water, arms outstretched and welcoming the sunlight that it would not feel.