"Is it alright if I sit?"
The stranger startled Laura a little; she'd been out of it, staring at the evening sky and thinking about nothing in particular.
She turned her eyes away from the clouds. The stranger was a gentleman in his late thirties, maybe early forties; his hair was iron-grey, his beard neatly trimmed, and he wore a stylish business casual suit. There was something familiar about him, but Laura couldn't quite say what.
Not wanting to be rude, she nodded, and the stranger sat next to her on the bench. He wore cologne, but it was faint, and Laura didn't dislike it.
Almost a whole minute passed in silence, and Laura's mind slowly returned to its aimless wandering. Again, though, the stranger's voice urged it to focus.
"Do you know what brought you here," he asked, "on this lazy Sunday afternoon?"
Laura thought that was a weird way to phrase the question; more than the phrasing though, it was those last three words that stuck out to her. They were oddly familiar, and seemed to carry a meaning that eluded her.
So distracting was that hidden meaning, that Laura forgot to answer - the answer being, of course, that nothing had
brought
her here. She'd found the little park by chance and had decided to sit, was all.
Not that the stranger seemed to care. "No, you don't know," he said, "or rather, you don't
remember
. And why would you? It's a lazy Sunday afternoon."
There it was again, that phrase, spoken in an almost reassuring tone, as if the stranger meant to say that it was okay for her to have forgotten whatever it was he thought she'd forgotten. Laura focused so intently on what that was supposed to be, that she forgot to notice how odd the situation was.
"Yes, Laura," the man continued, "you've forgotten, like you do after every lazy Sunday afternoon. Are you starting to remember?"
