A woman/man returns to her/his abandoned childhood home and finds evidence inside that reveals the keys to an unsolved family mystery. Make sure to develop setting, plot, character and conflict. Include a plethora of descriptive details, meaningful dialogue, and figurative language to showcase your mastery in creative writing.
Due to the Book Sale chaos, the story's deadline has been extended to Tuesday March 12, 2013. A minimum of 1000 words.
Independent Work
ReplyDeleteI sat in my closet. The door closed and in the darkness. There was absolute silence. No one was in my house and no one was in the town right now. Everyone was gone and I don’t know why. It’s almost like they got up and left. The only sound other than my breathing was that every hour there would be a loud screech that boomed throughout the sky. And I was just sitting there in my closest. I wanted to leave and investigate but I couldn’t bring myself to leave. I was too weak to investigate.
Then the screech came again. The closet door was thrown open but no one was there. I sat there for a second bewildered. I stuck my head out through the doorway and looked around my room. There was just nothing. Absolutely nothing, my bed was gone, so was my desk; everything. I walked into the empty room still astonished by the sudden disappearance of my furniture. I walked downstairs to find out that all the furniture downstairs was gone as well. Even the appliances like the oven and microwave. Everything was gone but my house looked so neat. Almost like a freshly bought house. There was nothing in it and it was spotless. At first I was just confused, but then I started getting mad. Everything that I owned was in my house and now it is gone. Everything that I bought was now gone, stolen from my own house when I was in it.
I stepped outside into an abandoned street. There were cars in the middle of black ground with no one inside them. Some cars were turned over on their sides and others were smashed into some telephone poles. Some bikes were laid down in the street and sidewalk as well, absolutely no sign of human life. I walked across the street of abandoned cars and to a blue house. The door was already opened so I just walked in. No one was home since no one heard me walk in. I made as much noise as possible to make sure no one was home. However, just like my house everything was gone. The furniture and appliances were all gone and even the humans that lived in this house. At that point I knew that something had happened to everyone. Everyone was completely gone.
Initially I looked at my scenario and was horrified. I asked the questions of why I was the only one left, or what actually happened to everyone. Then I thought of a more positive outlook. I started to enjoy the whole world. The whole knowledge of humanity was still on the planet. I began building my own appliances and furniture. The raw materials were still left on the planet, for now, so I might as well build something. I began with a nice couch and bed so that I could sleep comfortably through the night and relax during the day when I wanted to. Then I started working on harder projects such as building an oven. The oven would provide me a chance to make food other than using an open fire. All the animals were left on the planet. Well at least the undomesticated one. So I could hunt and provide for myself whenever I got hungry.
Then I noticed something. Days have passed since I was alone on this earth but the screeches have stopped. Those piercing sounds have ceased. And for the first time I noticed it. I stood up from tinkering with my next creation to look up at the sky. There were saucers coming down towards me. I didn’t know what they were but they were coming. Then all of a sudden the screeches started again. I tried covering my ears to deaden the sound but it didn’t work. It got louder and faster as the saucers approached.
ReplyDeleteThen everything went dark. I didn’t know what happened to me. But when I woke up everything was back to normal, and when I say everything I mean everything. All the humans were back and so were the appliances. The earth was restored to balance. But everything seemed too peaceful. I went around asking people if they remembered anything, or asking them where they were. They just looked at me with a confused look and went on their merry way. I eventually went back into my house where everything was back to normal. I went up to my room and slept.
Even though everything was back to normal I didn’t see it that way. I thought that the aliens did something with them. How do I know that they are aliens, because what other thing goes around in a saucer? They had to of abducted everyone and their appliances and just left me, but why? I woke up the next day still confused but I went on my daily routine before the aliens took everyone. I went back to the same old job and talked to the same old people. Although it was nice to have someone to talk to again. Living alone on a planet isn’t very entertaining since you are by yourself. I continued that for a couple of days. I went to bed one night and heard the screeches again. I jolted up from my bed and looked out the window. It was now morning and people were walking down the sidewalk or driving in their cars but no one heard the noise.
The next thing I knew I was surrounded by these purple creatures with six arms. They each had three eyes and they were all looking at me. I was strapped down to a metal table so that I couldn’t move. Then I noticed that each one of their arms had an instrument in them. A lot of them were sharp pointy objects that were meant for dissecting a victim. I was that victim.
I let out a large scream and woke up in my bed. It was all a dream but it felt so real. To this day I don’t know what went on or why no one remembers it. I hope someday I will understand.
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ReplyDelete“427 426 425 hey look 424 west brook lane!” I glanced over to the passenger side window and there it was 424 the house I once knew so well.
ReplyDelete“Well what do you know there it is.” We pulled up in front of the house and looked up to this building before me. It still had those white shutters and the light grey paint was starting to peel on the sides of the house. The steps looked as if they were about to collapse and the red painted door seemed much browner now. The mail box that I had put up with my father as a kid is now leaning to the side and seemed to be weather beaten.
“C’mon let’s go inside!” Emily said excitedly while pulling me toward the house. She dropped my hand and rushed forward running up the steps and sitting on the small swing near the front door. I slowly walked past taking in my surroundings and letting all of the memories flood back to me. I made my way to the steps and with each one I placed my weight on a small creek arose. I came to the door and rubbed my finger across the rusted numbers that once used to glimmer 424 in bright gold symbols. I took out my key and placed in the lock pushing open the door. A rush of dust hit me in the face making me lose my breathe for a few seconds. Emily went inside and started inspecting the bottom floor. I caught breathe after wheezing for a few minutes and followed her inside.
“I’m amazed that your parents just left all this furniture here like this!” Emily yelled from the kitchen.
“Yeah I know, but once Mom was ready to go she just made us all take off no questions asked!” I yelled back while looking at the family photos that were lined over the fire place and tables covered in dust and spider webs. Emily popped back into the living room and picked up one of the pictures looking at it closely.
“I didn’t know you had a little brother.” She said smiling while looking closer at the picture and then at me.
“I don’t know about little, but yeah I have a brother you already met Nick.” I said chuckling at her joke.
“Well duh I met Nick! I’m talking about this other little kid in the picture.” She said while giving me the photo. I looked at it closely and then saw who she was a talking about. It was a little boy who looked to be my age at the time and
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ReplyDeletehad black shaggy hair with grey eyes. He had his arm wrapped over my shoulder and had a large smile on his face.
ReplyDelete“Hmm I don’t know who that is, probably a cousin or something, but defiantly not my brother.” I said while putting the picture back down and then walking into toward the stairs to the next floor. I saw the hallway I used to run down for years. I walked past my parents’ room and my brothers’ , but then I finally reached the place I was looking for. I opened up the door to my room and found everything the way I left it. My sheets all sprawled out and closet thrown open. All my toys in the corners of the room and just an unfinished puzzle sitting near my bed. I smiled picking up one of my favorite cars and then started to get up and leave the room when I noticed something out of place. Lying behind me was a white teddy bear with a black bow.
“Now where did you come from?” I asked picking it up and then remembering how fond I was of it as a young child. I stood up and looked out of my window seeing the tire swing that was constructed for me and my brother years ago. I suddenly felt a wave of nostalgia hit me and then I remembered all the times I played on it. The strange part is that boy from the photo was in each memory. Though I couldn’t remember who he was he seemed to be an important person in my younger years.
“Danny, you good to go yet!” Emily yelled from the bottom of the steps.
“Yeah I’m coming down now!” I yelled back turning toward the door to leave. I stopped midway in my walk to the door when I saw a figure on my childhood bed. I turned toward it and it was a small child pale and shaking as if he’d been crying.
“Uhm excuse me who are you?” I asked staring at the child in confusion.
“Why don’t you remember? I just want to know why you don’t remember.” The child asked in a raspy voice.
“Remember what? Are you okay? What’s your name?” I started to get closer to the child, but he wouldn’t look up to me.
“Why would you leave me?” He asked again in the same voice except now he stopped shaking.
“What do you mean? Who left you?” I got in front of the boy when he lifted his face to me. I stepped back seeing that it was the same boy from my memories.
ReplyDelete“Who- Who are you?” I asked somewhat scared and confused.
“We were supposed to be brother’s Danny.” The boy got off of the bed and started walking toward me. “And brothers don’t leave brothers. They stick with you forever!” I quickly moved to the door in an effort to break out of this house. Before I could even make it through the opening the door slammed shut and I was locked in a room with this demonic child.
“Let me out!” I yelled at the child while slamming my fists into the door.
“Just don’t leave again. They took you away from me once they won’t do it again.” The boy said watching me make attempts to break the door.
“Who are you?! What are you?!” I yelled again, but then reality hit me. This child wasn’t a cousin of mine ‘nor some long lost brother. This is the person I had known to be my best friend as a child. The one person that I played with when I felt alone or always talked to.
“Why did you leave Derrick?” he asked again on the verge of tears again.
“I only left because my parents made me. They thought I was going crazy until you decided to show yourself. And it didn’t help the fact that you started trying to hurt my family.” I said trying to calm him down and also work the door open.
“I only did that because they were trying to stop us from having fun and anyone who gets in the way of our fun needs to be removed.” He said again with dark eyes.
“That’s not the way we handle things. What are you anyway? I would’ve thought by now you would be as old as I am.” I said slightly confused again.
“I’m a boy can’t you see. I’ve been a boy forever! And you could be a boy too. We could be brothers just like before. We could be brothers forever! And neither of us will ever die!” He floated up toward me and I flipped out. This wasn’t some boy this is an evil spirit. Now I see why my parents took me away so I wouldn’t go mad getting trapped by this thing. I ran through the door and grabbed Emily. I shoved her in the car and speed off down the street far away from that childhood house. I will never again step foot in that house on 424 west brook lane ever again. My family left there for a reason.
Ruby returned to the house she grew up in at 239 West Minsy Street. The house was across the street from a forest that had nothing to it but dead trees and garbage thrown into it. When Ruby was growing up, the forest looked a lot better. More trees, living trees, not trashy. It was a small forest that you kind of wanted to camp out in overnight. Ruby returned to her childhood house because she was told to, in a dream. Somebody told her to go back and explore her house to see what happened.
ReplyDeleteRuby’s childhood house now looks like a rundown shack. When Ruby was a teenager, the house caught on fire. One day her dad made brownies in a metal container. To keep them warm, he thought about putting a plastic cover on top. The plastic top was just resting on the stove when mom lit a cigarette. The match burned quickly and mom dropped the match onto the plastic cover. It caught on fire and burned the whole house. Mom thought the best way to put out the fire was with cooking oil; which burst into flames causing the house to go up in flames. Ruby’s parents tragically died in the fire. After mom squirted the cooking oil on the fire, the flames expanded, and she put more and more on. Dad was upstairs getting ready for bed. He didn’t change the batteries in the smoke detector like he was supposed to; they were dead. Mom was caught in the flames in the kitchen and couldn’t get out. Dad had no idea about the flames, and went to bed. The television was blasting music, which is why he didn’t hear his wife’s cries for help. He eventually was trapped in the flames as well. Ruby was spending the weekend at her grandparents’ house when she got a call from the fire department. They called her grandparents saying “I have terrible news. Your house was set on fire, and your parents were caught in it…I’m terribly sorry.”
After that phone call, Ruby went boneless. Every bone in her body went numb. She couldn’t do anything but lie on the ground and cry all the tears out of her body. Since that night, Ruby lived with her grandparents. When she dreamt that dream to go back “home” without hesitation, Ruby went back. The town didn’t do anything to the house except let it stay in the same place for all those years.
It is not wise to walk inside the house, with the thought of the ceiling and walls will collapse. Unlike some people who are afraid to walk inside, Ruby walked in anyway. The house was built small, and it always had a warm welcome feeling to it. When Ruby’s mom would bake, the whole house smelt like a heavenly bakery with decedent sweets. Now it’s dark and gloomy and has a stench of ash.
Ruby approached the front porch at a slow pace. She hadn’t been to her house in fifteen years. Nobody would let her go by the house; she and the rest of the family couldn’t build up courage to see the house. Ruby stopped in the middle of the walkway and observed the weak-standing house. She walked up the front porch stairs in fear that they will crumble. But the courage was built up, and Ruby stepped in.
ReplyDeleteThe first step into the living room was painful. Ruby was in the doorway of the living room and pieced together where every item of furniture was placed. “There was the chair. The couch was placed over there. The television was right there. All the pictures were up against that wall. Mom and dad’s wedding picture, my school photo, and the rest of the family.” Ruby said in a monotone voice, pointing to every place the furniture was at. The staircase was split in half. Half was connected to the second floor while the other half was ash on the floor.
Ruby continued on walking through the living room. The next room was the kitchen. Ruby remembered what happened there and decided to not walk through. Instead she went to the computer room down the hall. “There’s the computer and the desk. The bookcase was over there but what’s that thing?” Ruby questioned. Under a pile of ash, there seemed to be a box. It looked like it was flame retardant. Ruby struggled to get to the box because of the ash, but eventually made her way through. The box was small and grey. Ruby opened it and inside was what looked like treasure. Diamonds, gems, pearls; even some gold coins were all inside that small flame retardant box.
Suddenly, it all clicked. Ruby realized what her parents were hiding from her this whole time. Years before the accident, Ruby’s parents did something bad; they robbed a bank. Ruby was out at a sleepover while her parents went out to “have some fun.” They decided to find the nearest jewelry store and take what they wanted, which they did. The news said the culprits drove a red Sudan, the car that Ruby’s parents drove. Ruby thought of it as nothing, just a coincidence. It was all over the news for a long time until the police gave up looking. Her parents kept their jewels in the flame retardant box to keep it safe. Karma got back at them years later, in a horrible way. It only took Ruby years to figure out why her parents acted strange around her, and while driving their red Sudan; hoping they won’t get caught.
Lucky for them they weren’t caught, but someone was plotting their awful demise. After all the sudden realization, Ruby didn’t know what to think. She would not have thought that her parents would be the ones to rob a jewelry store. Ruby stood staring at the box with jewels in awe. She felt her heart drop into her stomach. She closed the box, and walked out of her house with her head hanging low. She held the box tight in her arms with tears running down her face. Ruby walked to town and found the police station where she turned in the jewels. She explained the whole story, details and all. The cop just looked at her in shock. The cop gave Ruby a slight smile, but held back the big grin because of Ruby’s parents. Ruby walked out of the police station with mixed emotions fighting inside her head. She had no idea where to go, not having the mindset. Raindrops started falling from the sky; almost as if it were crying, feeling Ruby’s pain. Ruby left the police station and walked into the rain, thinking that no one can really tell that she’s crying with the rain coming down.
David stood there, on the grass he used to play on, he remembered how green it used to be, but now it is just a dead brown. The old fence that surrounded the home, he remembered how white it was, but now the paint is chipped and a few posts are missing. He could see the ghosts of his past playing and laughing, on that lawn, that horrible lawn. That lawn was where he saw his sister die, she bled out in his arms on that green grass, forever changing it from the vibrant green to the dried blood brown that it is now. The police say they found the killer, but David had his doubts. There was something to her death that struck him as out of place. His parents wept at the loss of their daughter, but there was something odd about his father. He seemed calm, like he knew it was going to happen, like he already wept for her. They left the home soon after that, nobody bought the house, and nothing was ever changed about it.
ReplyDeleteHe never forgot what happened, and he came back to find out anything he could. If there was anything that would give him answers, he would certainly find it here. He entered his old childhood home to find it covered in dust. He went to flip the light switch, and a spider crawled from a web that was attached to it. David flicked it away with his finger, and then turned on the light. With the lights on he could tell the amount of dust that built up in the house over the years. All the memories of his childhood came flooding back to him at that moment. He remembered watching TV with his father and sister. They used to laugh at all the nonsense that they watched. The memory of those happy times with his sister brought a tear to his eye, the sadness of her funeral flooding his mind.
He couldn’t stand there and remains about the past, and wallow in his sorrow, he had to search the house. He made his way down the main hallway and went to his father’s old study. If there were any documents dealing with his sister’s death, they would be there. He found the door, the old gold knob rusted over and covered with discarded cob webs. He turned the ancient looking handle opening the catacomb of dust that was his father’s former study. He flipped the light switch and quickly started searching. He first started leafing through all the old papers in the desk drawers to find nothing there. He found old records of his father’s finances; his father made a lot more money than he let on to others. Still there was nothing about his sister in those files, so he moved on.
He started skimming across the old books that lined the walls of the office. Mounds of dust flowed from the books as his hands skimmed their covers. He found one titled research and he tried to pull it from the wall but it only came out slightly. He heard a click then the sound of gears turning. The wall that he was standing in front of pushed out and hit him in the nose. David recoiled back and the book case started to slide to the side. The book case revealed a small passage way filled with old lamps that started to light up. David got up and started walking down the long concrete tunnel. He heard the book case close behind him, but he just kept walking. He was frightened by what might be at the end of the corridor.
Finally it came to an end with a white door. David knew nothing of what he would find behind this door, but his curiosity and need to know what this was about would not stop him. He opened the door to reveal a large lab within in. The lab was covered in white linoleum and the ceiling shone with lights. He walked forward to a TV screen and a button on a DVD player was flashing. He pushed the play button and an image of his dad came onto the screen.
He started speaking, “Hello, whoever is watching this; this will be my last video log ever. I am going to die in this place. The people I’m working for will not let me go home to see my family. I don’t remember how many day I have been down here doing the God awful experiments. Our government is making me do this against my will. We are finding ways to make soldiers psychic, to make them stronger and more deadly on the battle field. They did tests on my daughter; I was forced to help in them. The results were amazing; she had gained telekinetic powers from it, but she couldn’t control them. The government then decided it was best nobody knew about it, and they killed her, right in front of my own son. They are bringing in children to have us experiment on, and my mind just can’t handle it anymore. I just keep on thinking about what happened to my little Sophia, and I just can’t bear to think of what their parent is going through. I would expose these monsters if I could, but they won’t let me leave, they keep us locked in our rooms most of the day. I was able to get to this room and record my final thoughts on this. Maybe someone will find this disk and expose these people for what they truly are. I bribed a guard the other day and he gave me his pistol.” He shows the gun, pulls the slide back and releases it. “This will be my end; this is my atonement for all the suffering I have caused. David if you can hear me, Daddy loves you very much.” He places the gun against his head and pulls the trigger. His head explodes and the tape stops there.
DeleteDavid sank to his knees and started crying his eyes out. He then heard a click behind his head. He heard nothing after that; he just fell to the ground dead. A man in a suit walked away and spoke into the cuff of his shirt, “We need a body clean up.”
Suddenly, all Luc could see was black. He panicked at first, trying to get free from whatever was attacking him, and felt that much more embarrassed when he pulled what turned out to be a piece of black cloth off of his head.
ReplyDelete“You uh, you alright there, Luc?”
“Shut the hell up, Miz. What is this?” Luc asked as he held up the long piece of clothing in front of him. He looked at Miz and saw him tying the strings on his own cloak around his neck.
“It’s one of the cloaks that we wear almost every time we go out. We need them to get back in, too, that’s what this wall is for.”
Even though Miz gestured towards the black wall at that moment, Luc had been fixated on it since he saw it behind Miz. It was hypnotizing. The purest and darkest black dye in existence couldn’t een dream of matching this wall of nothingness. Abstract swirls of different shades of black appeared and disappeared in seconds, as if the very essence of it was unstable.
Luc reached out to it slowly, but something inside him screamed not to touch it. He couldn’t listen. Something was pulling him towards the wall, something dark, something…stained.
Miz grabbed his arm and pulled him away from the wall.
“Put your cloak on and look at the ground.”
Luc looked at Miz, fear in his eyes. Miz shook his head and patted Luc’s shoulder.
“And do not look up. No fear.”
Miz threw the cloaks hood up over his head, pulled it down low over his face, and was swallowed up by the wall. Luc looked around anxiously. There was no way out of this, was there? He sighed as he threw the cloak’s hood up and stepped forward, letting the darkness encase him.
Luc shot awake with a start – this was happening way too often – and was once again face to face with Miz.
ReplyDelete“Morning, sun-”
“Oh, shut the hell up.”
Luc slapped his hands onto the ground and began to ease himself up when Miz’s fist suddenly cracked against his jaw. He flew back a few feet and slid across the floor of…wherever they were. He didn’t really care where they were, he was too surprised by his newly bruised jaw.
He sat up and noticed for the first time that the masked people were all gathered in a big circle around the both of them. Miz grabbed onto Luc’s arm and yanked him to his feet. One of the larger men that stood in the circle laughed and clapped his hands together.
“Well, Misery, you certainly brought us a show, at least. I was hoping you’d have your protégé trained a bit by now.”
Miz glared at Luc, but he saw something in his eyes behind the anger. It looked like…remorse.
“Sorry, Ten, he must’ve just panicked from waking up here.”
Ten strode casually next to Miz and laughed a bit more.
“Misery…forgive me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Luc here have brown hair when I last saw him?”
Miz stuttered for a second, scratching his head.
“Uh…I was wondering if you could tell me what that was about…”
Luc grabbed a few strands of his hair and looked to the side, catching a glimpse of some of it. At first he thought he was still dazed from his shock of waking up, but what he saw refused to go away, so he was presented with one question.
Why the hell was his hair white?
“ANYWAY,” Ten’s voice rang through the hall, or room, or wherever they were.
“Misery, are you positive you want to have Luc as your protégé? You know the rules, if you hand pick one early then the other will be assigned to you.”
“I’m sure, Ten, this one’s mine. I’ll take whoever you give me.”
Ten chuckled and began to walk away. “Very well. You’ve all seen it!” Ten stated, gesturing towards the circle of masked men and women, “Misery has taken on his first protégé! The rest of you without one can go to the arena and have a look at the others!”
The other began to walk away as well, some on their own and others grouping together. There were more of them than Luc had seen at his house the other night. There had only been maybe five of them at his house and there were at least ten of them in that circle. Luc shoved Miz and dusted himself off some more.
“What the hell was that about?” Luc yelled as he massaged his jaw.
“Listen, pal, I don’t give a damn if we have some banter when it’s just the two of us, but when there’s an audience of people that would kill me if they saw any sign of weakness just to get closer to the top of the food chain, it isn’t play time. Got it?”
Luc laughed and looked him in his eyes. “Maybe if you weren’t weak then I wouldn’t have any banter to give.”
The air in his lungs rushed out of his body as he was driven backwards and against a wall. Luc immediately felt dizzy and pressed his hands against the wall to steady himself. Miz held a dagger to Luc’s throat and drove a knee into his gut.
“This isn’t a game anymore. This is the equivalent of that big old castle back in your city, except everyone in here is three times as likely to kill you. I’m the only friend you have in here right now. The only one. You’d better get on that, ‘cuz my friends, the few that there are, don’t know you and don’t like you and don’t care what happens to you.”
Luc was, for the first time, genuinely kind of afraid of Miz. He’d already had a dagger to his throat multiple times, and almost all of those times it had been Miz holding the dagger. It was different this time, though. It wasn’t that he seemed genuinely angry, that didn’t scare him at all. The fact that he was so angry about this meant that he was genuinely concerned
It was time that I finally came back to my childhood house. It’s been about twenty years. I always said I wanted to come back but I never did. Well as an only child I think my parents should share their old life together in the house where we had so many memories. We laughed and always had family meetings outside in the porch when we were mad. The house isn’t in the best of shape but it’s old. It may be old but it is strong. It’s strong with all our memories that will never leave. Our memories stain the walls and it makes me smile. I never had a bad memory they all were about learning from mistakes and improving myself.
ReplyDelete“Hey, I haven’t seen you in a while.” I whispered.
I walked up to the steps and watched the porch. The floor was chipped and I saw the stain of paint. I remember that. When I was young my dad was painting and I was pretending to paint and I was backing up to see how the paint was looking. I backed up too far and tipped over the paint. I fell over and tried to wipe off the paint with my shirt. I thought that I cleaned it up but I really just made the stain even worse. I then sat on it and didn’t get up until it was dark. I forgot that I had to go and sit on it the next day and I woke up to my father yelling. I went and ran under my bed. I got pillows and began to put the pillows around me. I then heard my father stomping up the stairs and I curled up in a ball and began to giggle. He got me in trouble and my mother also yelled at me for trying to cover up the stain by wiping it with my clothes.
I walked through the doors and saw that everything was the way it was when I was young. The walls were chipped but it was time to modernize the house. It was filled with dust. The last family that lived here was two years ago and they moved because a family member from Italy died. My parents sold the house to get money for I could have the chance to go to college. The day we all moved out my mother cried her eyes out. It broke my heart. From that day on I promised myself I would get her the house back. Now I have the money and I got it back to her. It’s time to give this house a complete makeover. I want my parents to have the best last years of their life with a house that they love. I went to my old room.
I walked in and the lights were out. Everything had dust on it. It looked so different from when I was young. Of course it was going to be different I’m no longer twelve years old. I saw that the old owners had never threw out the stuff that we had left. In fact I think they knew that I was going to buy the house back because everything was the way I left it. I smiled gently and walked and sat on my bed. I heard the bed squeak and I remember how I used to laugh and jump on my bed thinking that my parents would never hear me jump. I heard the bed squeak. I finally sat on it thinking that I was no longer that young kid anymore. Then I heard the bed crack. I held onto the bed. I heard wood slowly give out. I couldn’t believe that I actually broke a bed. The rest of the bed took about two minutes to finally crack. I sat on the bed thinking about how I broke a bed. I knew my parents would be mad but I also knew that they couldn’t get me in trouble. It wasn’t my fault that the bed was old and rusty. I got up and looked at it. I knew that I had to fix the bed just like the rest of the house.
“Oh God I don’t want to kill my parents. The point of buying back the house was to make them happy and enjoy the rest of their lives. I don’t want to kill them. I think that I should clean up the place before I show them.” I whispered to myself.
I picked up the mattress. I saw the wood and it broke in half. I broke the rest of the wood and threw it out the window. I saw at the bottom books there were books I used to read. It looked like the old owners never used this room. I picked up each of the books and wiped off the dust. I smiled at each book and looked through the pages to make sure that there was no spider in it. Looking through one book I saw that there was a note inside an envelope. I put the book down and sat down. I looked at the envelope. It looked old. It looked like the note has been there for more than ten years. I opened it and I saw that it looked like my parents writing.
DeleteSweetie,
I know that we can’t tell you this face to face. I know that this will hurt you. I don’t want to see you cry because it will break our hearts as parents. I want you to know that no matter what we will always love you. We couldn’t tell you before being a teenager. I know that if you were young and we told you that you would cry and say you would run away. It would break our hearts if you never wanted to see us again. So please know that this is the easiest way to tell you. You are not our child. You came to our hands because you used to get beat. We aren’t able to produce kids. Uncle Tom that is in jail is your father. He used to beat you and didn’t want you. Somebody found you on the street waiting for someone to run you over. They brought you to us. We told the police and they said that your father was put in jail for losing his child and they couldn’t find you. We took some DNA test and they came out positive. I’m sorry we love you though.
Love,
Your parents
I looked out the window and felt a tear go down my face. This house is no longer the same for me. I heard rain and thunder it just made the mood perfect. I laid on the ground and just cried.
I stared out my bedroom window into hers. We’d lived only twenty feet from each other out entire lives. All I ever had to do was yell out my window to her and she was there. She was always just there, but today was different; today she was gone.
ReplyDeleteI stood in front of my window and stared into her empty room.
I’d spent countless nights sitting at my window while she sat at hers. We’d stay talking for hours. Every day when I woke up or came home I could look right into her room and see her there; playing on her computer or dancing to unnecessarily loud music and she’d always look back at me and smile.
Now there was no smile, there was no music, there was no computer, and there was no Emily Greene. There was only an empty room where all of those things had once been.
I didn’t even get to say goodbye to her. I just came home and she was gone. I didn’t get to hug her or kiss her or whisper in her ear that I would find her, no matter where she was.
She was gone. There was no warning, she was just gone, and it was all my fault. Her father took her from me because of what we did. He took her because he was afraid of losing her too.
I felt like the world was frozen. I couldn’t move and I didn’t want to. I just hoped that if I continued to stare into her window that she’d appear there. I wanted to see her just one last time. I wanted to hold her and tell her that no matter what, I would always love her.
10 years later
“Jack for the love of God, would you just go upstairs and finish packing?” my mother said walking into the living room.
I rolled over on the couch towards her and rubbed my eyes. “Yeah, I’ll get around to it.”
“Jack you’re twenty five years old. Your father and I haven’t had the house to ourselves. Please I’m begging you, pack up your stuff and get out of my house,” she was trying not to laugh but she couldn’t help letting a smile crack on her face.
I stretched out and ran my fingers through my hair. “Oh come on mom, you know you’re gonna miss me.”
She kept smiling and crossed her arms. “Yeah, you might be right,” she paused, “but I can’t miss you if you don’t leave!” she said and turned out of the room.
I laughed to myself. She pretended to be excited that I was finally moving out, but I knew that if she could keep me here and take care of me forever she would.
I groaned and got off the couch. I knew I should probably get some packing done.
A Journey to Find Emily Greene
ReplyDeleteI can still remember the very first time I thought I’d lost Emily. We were five years old and we were put into two different kindergarten classes. I know that may not seem like a big deal, but to me, it was the end of the world.
Emily and I had been inseparable for as long as I could remember. Our parents were next door neighbors, our mothers had been pregnant together, and we were born only a month apart. During their pregnancies out mothers had been close friends, but unfortunately Emily’s mother didn’t make it through the delivery. Emily’s father never seemed very nice to me, but my mother said he wasn’t always so bitter, just that he took his wife’s death very hard.
Because Emily didn’t have a mother, she needed someone to look after her while her father was at work. As a favor to Emily’s father my mother looked after her. We were together every day.
When we were three we were sent to the same preschool. I spent almost every day by Emily’s side for the first five years of my life, so it’s understandable that I wasn’t too happy when I was told we were going to be separated.
I remember walking into the school together. I was holding my mother’s hand and she was holding her father’s. Everything was fine until Emily and her father turned down a hallway and I was still going straight.
“Where’s Emily going?” I remember asking.
“She’s not in the same class as you, sweetie,” my mother answered.
I was horrified. The thought of having to spend the whole day without her was more than I could handle. I shook my hand loose from my mothers and ran. I turned the corner and I could just see Emily at the end of the hall. Before I could get to her my mother caught up to me and grabbed my arm. She began to drag me back in the other direction.
“Emily!” I yelled to her.
“Jack!” she yelled back.
“I’ll find you!” was the last thing I said before we turned the corner.
After spending what felt like an eternity without her, school finally let out. When I walked out I saw my mother and Emily standing by the playground. I ran up to her as fast as I could and grabbed her hand.
“I found you,” I said. She looked up and smiled at me with her deep green eyes, and to this day I swear my heart skipped a beat.
I stood at the base of the hill, looking up at the house that I swore I would never return to. That house is full of memories, many that I would rather forget. The pain and suffering that I went through in that house was unbearable. The only thing that could drive me back here is for family issue, and even then I was somewhat reluctant to return. The house stood at the top of a hill, as if it was plucked right out of a horror story. The white siding was starting to fall off after years of poor caretaking on my mother’s part. My mother did not do much to keep the house in a, presentable, condition. And now that she is gone, we have to clean up the mess she left behind us. But it is not because of the ugly exterior that draws me away from my childhood home, it is what happened behind the disheveled doors that made me swore never to return; the painful memories of my mother being beat and of what she did to my sister. It was never clear why she did what she did; maybe going through some of my mother’s old things will expose the truth about my sister and the action my mother took against her. I was the only surviving member of my family now so this will be a task that I will have to go after myself. The first step I will have to make is towards the wicked house.
ReplyDeleteThe floor boards still squeaked, just like the last time I walked through the doors. Everything was in its place, just the way my mother liked it. One would never expect the inside of the house to be in such immaculate condition if they saw the outside of the house. I feel like the house represented my mother perfectly. To outsiders, my mother was a mess. She was always in torn up clothes with bruises on her arms and legs. She rarely wore makeup and kept her hair short so that she would not have to care for it. She would bring us down the park during the summer months and sit on the bench smoking her cigarette. The other mother’s criticized her because she appeared as if she did not care for herself or for her children. It was only my sister and I that knew what my mother was really like. She was the most loving women I have ever met in my life.
. She would always insist that we took our shoes off before we entered the house because she did not want to make her house look like a herd of wild hogs lived there. Her book collection was her prized possession. She would read a book a week and she would rarely throw any books away. She and my sister shared a common bond in their love for reading; I never found much interest in it.
ReplyDeleteFor my mother, books allowed her to escape. She was able to explore the jungles of Africa or the ancient city of Rome with simple words. She told me once that her books meant the world to her and it was the one thing that no one could take away from her. She would say that her books kept her secrets. It would be the first place that I will search. The door to my mother’s library was decorated by her when we were children. She painted scenes of fairy tales and classic stories on it. But now, that paint is chipped and it is difficult to make out the scenes, except for the Snow White scene. It was always my sister’s favorite drawing. The image of the witch covered in her black cloak hunched over in the window offering her poisonous apple to Snow White.
The door creaked as I opened it and walked into the poorly lit room. The book shelves were covered in dust. The sunlight struggled to shine through the dirty window. I started filtering through the books and the memories came flooding back to me. The image of my mother sitting in her purple arm chair with my sister sitting on the floor below her. They would both have their books open and my mother would read aloud. We had two of every book in the library. I opened a book that my mother started reading just before; well she started reading the book a while ago. A note fell out and dropped to my feet. I picked it up and started reading.
My jaw dropped in disbelief. The note was hand written by my mother just days after she and my sister got into their accident. Tears started to accumulate in my eyes.
When she told me that her books contained her secrets, I thought she was just kidding with my childish mind. But this letter brought truth to my mother’s words.
DeleteI didn’t mean to do it, I promise. I often look back to that night that I killed my daughter and just sit in silence. It was just a typical day for the two of us; we were on our way to the grocery store. It had just finished raining but the sun was out and the gray skies were staring to disappear. I never liked the bends in the road by the house, they scared me. The roads were a bit slick from the rain and I guess I just lost control of the car. It probably did not help that I had a cigarette in one hand, it’s such a nasty habit, and I should really try to quite. The car started to control itself and before I knew it, we were smashed into a tree. The front windshield was shattered and my daughter sat motionless next to me. Blood was running down her face. Her body was the last thing I remembered about the accident. Next thing I knew, I was laying in the hospital with a team of nurses around me.
It was my fault, my daughter died because of me. A stupid decision on my part and a twist of faith took away the person I cared most for. She was able to escape with me from the world of abusive husbands to the magical adventures of books. The library feels empty without her laughter.
I had a pretty boring life. Went to school. Had a few pets. Lived in a nice, big house on top of the hill. My parents were normal parents. They had jobs and had their responsibilities. I played a few sports and instruments. Nice, normal, relaxed childhood. I enjoyed every moment and loved it even more when I went to college. The sun beat hard and warmed my skin the day I left. I left my simple parents in the simple house on the simple hill. I parted from my simple life completely and went far away to an extravagant, lively future. I didn’t leave because of my parents and how unexciting they were. I left just to experience something new. Something more promising. Unfortunately, I didn’t find that something at college. I found it in the most unexpected place. In the house on the hill.
ReplyDeleteI returned for winter break and my boring life commenced. I came back again for spring break. But my discovery didn’t occur until the summer of my sophomore year. Like any college, I got out for summer break weeks before the local schools. That was the time of my parents’ anniversary and they were still on vacation, the first one without their loving daughter around. I didn’t know where they had gone but I didn’t care. I was a college girl, home alone in a house I never felt connected to. So I decided I would get connected.
I started by simply walking around, observing anything I had never noticed before, trying to find anything to give me an answer. I actually didn’t know what I was looking for or if there was even something worth uncovering, but I looked for days nonetheless. Inside. Under old, moldy couches. On top of dusty shelves. Inside cabinets and boxes. Then I moved my search to the property outside. There wasn’t much to search since it was all on a hill. Behind bushes. Under rocks. In trees. Still nothing.
A boy on a bike at the bottom of the hill stopped and dismounted his ride. He got ready to throw something and ran to get a better launch. The paper spiraled through the air and landed just high enough on the hill that it wouldn’t roll back down. I laughed at the sight and walked to the newspaper as the boy rode away. Instead of flinging the parcel with the others I had collected since my parents’ leave, I unraveled the gray pages. I only read the title of the lead article and took a glimpse at the picture. “Discoverers of Threatening Meteors Revealed, But Found Dead,” it read.
I knew the article would talk of The Unknowns. Actually, their title was The Unknown Heroes but everyone just called them The Unknowns. Nobody knew anything about them. We just assumed it was more than one person by all the things they had accomplished. We didn’t know if they were male or female, young or old, or even if they were human. But they were the ones that discovered minute but indestructible meteors that threatened the very existence of life on Earth. Without The Unknowns, there would be no more Earth. But apparently they had died. So I guess they were human after all.
Mom and Dad didn’t come back for days. The days turned into weeks. Pretty soon it was almost the end of the summer and they still weren’t back. I tried calling them, but they never answered. I notified the police but nothing turned up. I didn’t worry too much because that had happened before. They left on a trip and came back three days after they were supposed to. I, a 12 year old girl alone in her house, sat for hours by the window waiting, never having received a call that they would be late. When they came back smiling, as if nothing had happened, I decided I would never worry again.
So I didn’t worry when they didn’t come back that summer. I packed up my college stuff, getting ready for the new semester, not even knowing how I was going to get to my distant campus. All my bags were in the front room when I remembered my laptop in my parents’ room. I intended to get it and leave, but something caught my eye. It was my mother’s jewelry box. Small and carved with birds and leaves in its red-stained sides. The lid had a picture of our family stapled onto it.
ReplyDeleteI stared at it, remembering I was never and would never be allowed to touch it. They never let me for some reason. And at that moment, the question hit me. Why? It was so beautiful and harmless. How was I to stay away?
“I’m a college student now. Practically an adult,” I thought to myself. “Whatever’s in here, I should be able to know by now.”
So I set my laptop down and lifted the lid of the tiny box. I didn’t know what I was expecting, but all I saw was rings and chains. They were all sparkling gold…except one. It was a sterling silver ring with fantastic gems and glitter on it; nothing like what my mother usually wore. All the others were so simple, so plain. But that ring was so extravagant, so out of place…that I had to touch it. So I did. And the whole house started to quake.
My natural instinct told me to run. I listened and darted out of the house, my arms shielding my head and face as books and pictures fell around me. When I stepped out and felt the hill shaking too, I was convinced it was just an earth quake. But I looked to the distant town below, and it was not shaking.
I looked back to the house in time to see it split in two. I thought I had lost my house, until I noticed the clean cut at the split. It was as if someone had cut my home with a chainsaw. I didn’t have time to think about it, because at that moment, I saw a red point coming from the hill, in-between the two halves of my abode. It kept rising and rising until it took the shape of a whole rocket. A space shuttle! Coming up from the Earth where my house usually stood!
It began to all make sense. Why my parents wanted me to go to a distant school. Why we lived on a hill, isolated from the town by trees. Why I was never allowed to touch that box, which was the key to my house’s transformation. I knew all this because on the side of the rocket, it was written “The Unknowns” in my father’s handwriting.
When I finally pulled up to my mother’s house in Brooklin, it was 10:00 at night. I had arrived from Pennsylvania at about 7:00, which had to be the worst idea I had ever made. The traffic on the road was horendiss, and the it started to pour buckets, which made the drive impossibly slow. Of course, the rain had stopped as soon as I arrived, so I didn’t need an umbrella when I climbed out of my car and walked towards the house I had spent my childhood. My mother had the tendency of keeping a vast amount of unnecessary items that would eventually accumulate into clutter. I had warmd my mother that I would be coming and we’d clean everything out, so she would most likely not be surprised when I said we’d get to work.
ReplyDelete“Susan,” my mother greeted me at the door, pulling me into a tight embrace. “I thought you’d be here a few hours earlier. How are you doing, honey?”
“I’m doing all right,” I replied. “Other than the traffic and the lousy weather, everything’s fine. You should be lucky I came here late, you have more time to prepare for tomorrow.”
“Yes I know,” mhy mother laughed. “a lot of cleaning to do.”
“A lot was just an understatement. The living room was filled with boxes that were filled to the brimm with junk, that I was almost afraid to walk in a normal pace. Who knew what else there would be in all of the other rooms? The last thing I wanted was my mother to be on “Horders, buried alive,” and there be a dead rodent wrotting somewhere. The day we started cleaning though, I found something crazier than a dead rodent.
“Ok Mom,” I said, trying to sound all business. “We’re starting in the living room. I see a lot of things here that can leave.”
There were boxes upon boxes of cookbooks with pages falling out, old photo albums that were collecting dust and old novels and incyclopedias that were on the verge of breaking. Cleaning the house with my mother was like pulling teeth. Every time I suggested to get rid of something, she always came up with an excuse to keep it. “I might use that cookbook eventually,” she would say, or “this incyclopedia is still good.” Meanwhile, the incyclopedia is from the early 1960’s. There was no way either, that my mother would ever pick up any of them, and she didn’t care about trying new recipees. I made a decision to just take whatever I felt needed to go, and decide what I would take home with me, or just dispose of.
“These records,” I announced. “The Lead Zeplin, Ac DC, you never listened to them. They’re going. I don’t even know where they came from.”
“I want to keep them though. I might want to...”
“Mom, you can’t stand Ac Dc,” I argued. Rummaging through the box a bit more, I added, “You don’t even have a record player anymore. There is no way you’ll ever take these out. I’m throwing them away.”
And so, the day dragged on. There were so many boxes of crap in each room, it was possible to hold about 100 garage sales. My mother’s bdroom was no exception. Near the dresser, there were boxes with old tax papers and bills. There were newspapers from the early 2,00’s, which I planned to throw into the paper shredder. In the midst of all that, there was a box beneath the bed. with just one name on it: Jason.
“Who’s Jason, mom,” I said with a smirk, trying to lighten up the mood. “Someone you dated
ReplyDelete“No one important,” my mother replied rather deffensively. From the look on her face, it was clear that there must be something she knew that I didn’t. I opened the box and discovered stacks of letters adressed to a Jason Michaels. What was strange, was that Michaels was my last name. Was Jason my father’s name? I’ve never known my father, only that he had been abbusive to my mother and he had left her when she became pregnant with me at 38 years old. If my mother left him, then why would she be writing letters to him? When I picked the first one up, I noticed it had “Return to sender” written on the envelope. As I took some others out, I saw they had the same thing written on the envelope.
“Mom,” I said suspiciously. “Have you been keeping a secret from me for all these years?”
“Susan,” she shouted unexpectedly. “ “I told you once and I’m only telling you one more time! It’s nothing important!”
“In case you don’t remember,” I spat back. “we used to open up to each other all the time! Where did that go?”
My mother sighed. “Susan, I don’t think you need to know about Jason. All I’ll tell you is he’s not your father.”
“All right then,” I decided. “I’m taking them home with me.”
Before she could argue, I scooped the box up off the floor, made my way down the hallway to the front door, and called out, “I guess you’re not going to open the door for me!” Slamming the carboard box on the floor, I swung open the door, and picked the box back up to bring to my car. When I returned back to the house, I found my mother in her bedroom hunched forward, her head in her hands, and I remembered seeing her like this many times in my life. Once when I was about ten or eleven years old, I caught her sitting in the living room with the same posture, a piece of paper in her hands. When I asked her what the matter was, she provided the same answer as now; “Nothing important. I don’t think you should know.” It seemed to really bring her down, and I was dying to know what it was. I remember her checking the mail every day, looking especially hopeful. When she didn’t find what she was hoping for, her face would fall for a few seconds, but then she would act normal again. That one day though, I remember her face lighting up as she found a certain letter. With a spring in her step, she had rushed to her bedroom to read the letter. She almost looked like a high school student, in love. The next time I found her, was when her posture had been abnormal.
Now, as I looked at my mother, sitting there, I was at a loss of what to do. I didn’t know whether I should be angry with her, and tell her to stop sitting there, or try to see what the matter was. Part of me felt guilty for being so harsh and screaming at her like I did. Yet I couldn’t help feeling hurt, that my own mother would lie to me about something when we supposedly had a tight-knit relationship. Finally, I stammered, “I um.. don’t know what to do right now. I just don’t know. I can’t believe you lied to me about something that’s really hurting you. Maybe if you told me, I would have helped you and you wouldn’t have this hording problem.”
ReplyDeleteI turned around and stepped out of the house another time without looking back. Opening the trunk, I retrieved the Jason box,opened it again. Reaching in, I took out one of the envelopes. My hands trembled as I wripped it open, and I braced myself for anything I might find out. I looked around to make sure there was no one staring at the crazy woman sitting on her mother’s driveway with a large box near her, reading a letter. When I found no one there, I pulled out the paper inside and began to read.
Dear Jason,
I hope that you are doing ok and you are living a wonderful life. It hasn’t been the same without you. I miss your liveliness and sudden outbursts. I even miss you playing AC DC on full blast, and your constant sarcasm. I’m very worried about you and I hope you are not getting into any trouble. You hadn’t written or called me at all, and I’m hoping to hear from you every day. I know I give you the same szpeale in the beginning of each letter, but I need to know what is going on with you. You could be somewhere in Europe for all I know, and I’ve ben writing to the wrong adress all along. Or worse, you could be dead. If yu don’t respond soon enough, I will ask Vincent where you are, if you two still keep in touch. I mean it, I’m very concerned about you...
The letter went on and on, saying the same exact thing in different words. If this Jason was my father, and the truth was that he was the one who left my mother, then I didn’t blame him one bit. After all, he was her husband, not her child. He couldn’t possibly have been my father. Did that mean then, that I had a brother I didn’t know of? When I opened the second letter, there was the same speech as the first one. I was thinking of throwing it aside, but there was something that caught my eye:
As for me, the baby is almost due. I’m thinking of naming it Susan if it is a girl, after your great grandmother. If it is a boy, I will name it Gabriel after your grandfather. I left your father a few months ago and baught an apartment. I know, it’s about time, and I know I should have left him 20 years ago when you were born...
The paper fell right out of my hands, onto the ground. My mother had been pregnant when she was eighteen years old with a boy she named Jason. He had apparently left home two years before, which I figured out from the dates on the letters. It seemed like he might have been furious with my mother, since every single envelope said “Return to sender,”. I went through more of the letters and found one envelope that lookedd significantly different. Fore one thing, it didn’t say “Return to sender,” and it was adressed to my mother. This one had to be from Jason. I wripped it open and noticed that this letter was much shorter than the ones my mother wrote.
Mom,
I guess you didn’t get the message, so I’ll just give it to you straight out. Do not ever write to me again. My life has been perfectly fine without you in it, and I don’t need your letters to interfeer with my life. I don’t want to think about the hell you’ve made my childhood, and how dare you stalk me by contacting Vincent. I’ll tell you one thing about my current life; I’m not getting married and having children anytime soon. I wouldn’t want anyone to feel my pain. That includes Susan. All I can say is good luck with raising her and hope she doesn’t turn out like you or me. That’s all I have to say.
Good riddance,
Jason
I gathered the box of letters again and returned with it to the house. No wonder my mother was starting to have a hording problem. I promised myself I would help her cope with this burdin she had carried with her for so long, and I wouldn’t let her keep another secret.
As I drove down the street that I grew up on, memories flooded my head. Passing by the houses of my neighbors and the sidewalks that I had once played hopscotch on triggered detailed recollections of my childhood. With a sigh, I veered into the drive of my old home and cut the engine. As I sat in my car, I pictured the driveway and lawn cluttered with toys that I had once played excessively with alongside my siblings. I then quickly vanquished the image from my mind and tried to focus on the task at hand. After twenty-five years of living under the same roof, my mother had finally decided to move from the house to a sunny, neat bungalow in Florida. I knew I had no right to blame her for wanting a change of scenery, but I couldn’t help but feel melancholy that a member of my family would no longer be living in the dwelling in which I had spent the first eighteen years of my life in. I had been summoned by my mother to help her clean out the house, as there was too much clutter and junk that she would never be able to do it alone. Although I had no desire to spend my Saturday in the moldy basement or the stale attic, I knew that I had to help my only parent. When I knocked on the door, I heard the light steps of my mother as she traveled down the stairs. I pasted a smile on my face and opened my arms to receive the hug my mother provided.
ReplyDeleteHer shrill voice sounded in my ear as she quickly released me and I tried not to visibly cringe. “Hello dear! I’m so happy to see you. You can go ahead and get started in any room you like. I just have to make a few errands. I’ll be back soon.”
Before I could even utter a response, she had already retrieved her purse from the floor and was out the door. With a heavy sigh, I closed the substantial oak door with a thud and sauntered into the kitchen to grab a bottle of water. I began to survey the work that had to be accomplished and almost groaned out loud. My mother had not even made a dent in her packing. From what I could see, all she had accomplished was packing the china from the breakfront and vacuum sealing all of the pillows and cushions from the living room. I loved my mother but she tended to procrastinate, a quality that I found especially annoying at that moment of time. I ventured upstairs and passed my brother’s old room to see that it had been left untouched. I smiled as I observed the rooms, as I realized my mother had not changed anything since my siblings and I had graduated from high school and went to college. She never could throw away anything. I walked into the room that my sister and I had once shared and unconsciously released a slight laugh when I saw the marks on the hardwood floor from the many nail polishes we had carelessly spilled onto the floor.
I continued on through the hallway and peered into my mother’s bedroom. With relief, I saw that she had completed the majority of packing in at least one room. At the end of the hall loomed the presence of my father’s study. I couldn’t help but feel bitterness and contempt as I scrutinized the mahogany door. Our father had left us when I was only twelve years old for no palpable reason. This had hurt my mother immensely and I secretly acknowledged the fact that this house held too many memories of our once perfect family. The real reason for her moving was to escape the reminiscences that taunted her daily. Every time I went to visit her, I could notice visible signs of distress and sorrow. I was glad that she was finally able to summon the courage and strength to remove herself from the place that was causing her so much pain. We had once been the perfect family that was filled with happiness and love; however, it all changed once our father had left us and we were never able to recover fully. I already knew that my mother had not even touched the study, as it caused a swell of memories so she never dared to enter, afraid of the emotions that it would induce. I too shared this same fear but eventually my rational thoughts overrode my sentiments. I knew that it had to be packed and that the sooner I finished this feat, the sooner I would no longer have to worry about it.
DeleteWith newly acquired confidence, I drew open the door and stepped inside. As I had predicted, the den had been left untouched. I remembered how when I was young and could not sleep, I would pad down the hall to the study and timidly knock on the door. My father would open it and carry me to his chair where I would comfortably lounge on his lap while he read me stories. When I was lulled to sleep, he would scoop be back up and replace me to my room. Tears threatened to swell in my eyes as a lump developed in my throat. Stifling the cry, I mentally reprimanded myself for showing weakness. With quiet severity, I psychologically reminded myself that he was not worth shedding tears over. I had spent years trying to solve the mystery as to why he had had left and had developed a multitude of possible reasons. Perhaps this was my way of coping with the grief from the loss of my father. I made my living solving problems and fixing things so it greatly frustrated me that the one mystery I was never capable of deciphering was why my dad had abandoned our family.
I steadied myself and my emotions with a deep breath. I made a quick inventory of the small room. The dark wood that composed the elegant desk and matching bookshelves dominated the room. The intricately carved details in the wood added character and an air of superiority to the small space. The heavy weight of the air seemed to press against me and I developed the overpowering urge to remove myself from the area. I resisted the juvenile and immature impulse to shatter the framed picture of my father and me in a happy embrace that rested on the edge of his desk. I went to the bay windows and parted the curtains to allow the bright sunlight to penetrate the dim room. The light shined on the wood and casted golden and amber highlights that streaked across it. As I stood there memorized by the beautiful timber, the rays of sunlight allowed for the observance of minute dust particles that floated in the atmosphere. I ran my index finger along the edge of the bookshelves and scattered the excessive dust. My father had always been an avid reader and I admired his collection of books as I read the titles.
After taking the time to analyze my surroundings, I grabbed a cardboard box and began to methodically remove the books from their shelves and organize them into the container. As I shuffled through the endless novels, I came across the book that contained a collection of children stories. It was the one he used to read to me and I felt a lurch in my chest as I looked down at it in my hands. The rush of emotions that infiltrated my mind was overwhelming. Absently, I began to page through it until it opened to a page due to something that was lodged in the binding. I found myself looking at a photo of what appeared to be a family. My gaze traveled over the picture and I gave a sound of shock once I noticed that my father had his arms around some woman that I had never met while his other arm was slung causally over two young boys that looked to be brothers. There were ridiculous smiles on all their faces and in the background I saw the outline of a large, white house. I was positive that I had never seen the people before in my life and my anger began to intensify. It appeared that my father had kept many secrets and the idea that he may have been lying and deceiving us filled me with an incorrigible rage towards him. I threw the book down and then ravaged the office, desperately searching for any more clues that indicated additional secrets. I rambled through the drawers and scattered papers on the ground. I searched furiously and I noticed my hands trembling as I paged through the endless paper. I came across old phone bills that denoted a significantly high payment. I scanned through the calls and saw that the majority of them had been made to an address in Pennsylvania. While growing up, I knew that we had no associations with anyone who lived in the state and the calls puzzled me.
DeleteI put the phone bills aside and continued to muddle my way through the many drawers. I came across one that was located off to the side and discovered that it had been fitted with a combination lock. This setback did not deter me from taking a paperweight and smashing it repeatedly on the padlock. The blunt force eventually caused the lock to break and I smiled with satisfaction as I deftly removed it to reveal the contents of the previously protected drawer. I looked inside and lifted out a checkbook, some cash, and some legal documents. I couldn’t help but feel a stab of disappointment in my abdomen as I realized that there was nothing of significant value to be found. I was about to close it when I perceived a group of what appeared to be greeting cards that were laid up against the far back. I reached in and drew out the bundle and quickly opened it to find that it was an anniversary card. The card was addressed to my father and signed by a name I didn’t recognize. A cold sweat formed on my forehead as the card slipped from my clammy hands. Realization dawned on me and the newly found information that I had required nearly made me scream. I clumsily leafed through the rest of the cards to find them all addressed to my father. One bright blue one with a multitude of intense, superfluous balloons caught my eye and as I opened it, I could feel the color drain from my face. Inside were childish drawings and scribbled handwriting that read, “Dear Dad! Happy Birthday! Love Andrew and Kyle.”
I had great difficulty in translating what I read into something that was conceivable to my mind. At first, a wave of denial rushed through me as I refused to believe that my father had an entirely separate family from our own; however, as I stared at the wavering cards in my hand, my defiance slipped away and was replaced with an incorrigible burn of rage that spread through me until a moment of lost self control overtook me. I impetuously reached for the framed picture on the desk and threw it on the ground with much force. The glass shattered into infinitesimal pieces that splintered in different directions. I felt a sharp pain in my hand and glanced down to determine the cause. A small piece from the broken frame had lodged itself in the the tender skin of my palm. Wincing, I gingerly removed it and wiped the blood on the material of my pants. A little surprised by my violent outburst, I struggled to pull myself together. As the reality of what I had just unearthed settled in the contours of my nebulous mind, an overpowering sense of sadness became evident on my features. I became completely aware of the fact that my father had left us for his other family. After so many years of wondering the reason for his abandonment and searching endlessly for the key to the mystery, I had finally exposed it on a Saturday morning in a locked drawer.
DeleteIf my mother or my other siblings ever found out the truth, I knew they would be crushed in a way that would be irreparable. I struggled with the natural impulse to inform them of my findings but the more rational aspect of myself argued that telling them may be treated as more detrimental then beneficial. Yes, they had a right to know but they also had a right to continue living in relative happiness. I opted to preserve their peace of mind and spare them from the pain that I was now suffering from.
Unable to prolong my stay in the den, I attempted to reduce my despondency by going outside to take advantage of the fresh air. After cleaning up the disorderly mess that I had created, I closed the door and slowly made my way to the porch. As I leaned my head on one of the white columns, I listened to the sounds of the neighborhood and allowed the sun to warm my cold fingers and dry my tears.
The taxi dropped me off at around 12 noon. I asked the man to drop me off on a street corner because I felt the need to walk through my old neighborhood before I got to my house. It wasn’t what it had been before I left. When I left the streets were packed with kids playing in the street, but now they are stacked packed with for old For-Sale signs and half ripped open garbage bags. It was sad for me and it made me wonder what my old house was going to look like. But when I got there I wasn’t fully disappointed. The front door was still intact, even if it had a few scratch marks and paint chips here and there. I knew no one had lived there because when my parents died they still had the house in their possession. Even after they moved away it was in their possession. It seemed to me like they could not let it go and neither could I, for that matter.
ReplyDeleteThat’s what brought me back to my old house, in a way. Not that I couldn’t let my old home go, but that I couldn’t let something go. When my parents died, I was devastated. They were instrumental to the person that I have become and the fact that they were gone was difficult to bear to say the least. It was the day after they past and I went to their home in Florida to help pick most of their things. When I looked at a box in a corner of their closet, I found something that shocked and surprised me. The box contained papers, documents and filing folders; almost all of them with my father’s name on them.
The first thing that comes to mind when you find something like this is one of two things: what did I just find? Or I wish I never saw that. For me, it was a little bit of both. My father was a policeman for 35 years and he had a wife that stood by him for almost twice that amount. But before I opened this box I thought of them as normal parents. After, they were two completely different people. Not bad people, but different.
The papers had pictures of my father, stories about my father and they were almost entirely from the 70’s. He had pictures of him in Vietnam with his entire Platoon. A Platoon that I never knew had existed. He was in an airborne division, but unlike World War 2, they weren’t jumping out of airplanes, they were riding along in helicopters. These were the units that saw the worst of the Vietnam War. They had to carry the wounded back miles away from the battlefields having to listen to them yell and scream for help. He saw the worst of the war and I never saw this side of him, even though he was a policemen. He had a way of keeping all of his emotions from work and previous experiences within himself. Apparently he was a lot better at keeping things hidden than I originally thought.
After I read through all of the papers I kept digging through the box. At the bottom of the box, under all of the papers, I found the two things that really made me wonder. It was two medals, the Silver Star and the Purple Heart medals. The two of these medals meant that my father was not only a soldier, but he was an exceptional one. Not that it was surprising, but it did make me instantaneously proud of him and everything that he did for our country. However, it also made me miss him a lot.
ReplyDeleteThe finding of this box in Florida is the reason why I returned to my old house today. I had found a new part of my father and also a new part of my family that I had never known about and it made me wonder if there was more. I had a feeling that I knew where it would be, but I would have to work up the courage to go inside and look for it. I walked into the house and it was what I had expected: empty. And I welcomed that because I was nervous that there would be an unfortunate trespasser that I would have to shoo out of the house. I walked upstairs and there was an attic that I had helped clean out years ago when we initially left the house, but I remember a trunk that we had left there, untouched. I walked over to it and I opened it. Inside there was a M1 Garand and six folded American Flags. In it was another picture of his platoon. There were seven men in the picture and suddenly my mind did the math. My father and six other men manned the helicopter and there were six folded Flags in his trunk. Now I knew why I had never heard anything about his time in Vietnam.
Misery, Missouri is a magical town. Magical, not as in miracle happen, but because the death rate of the town is extremely high. In the past forty years, fifty people died from car accident. Twenty died from rolling down the hill at the center of the town. Twenty babies died at birth, and more than half of the time, the mother died with the baby. Despite it being two square mile town, the population was less than a five hundred. The town is three hundred years old, with walls of the houses and the buildings cracking, without a chance of being repaired. People give up on this town. Once the kids are old enough, they move to the rural cities. The old people retire to the town because it is where they grew up; it brings nostalgia to them. That town is expected to become a ghost town in the next ten years.
ReplyDeleteTiffany Trace used to live in this tragic town when she was a kid. Her family had live in Misery for hundreds of years. In fact, the Trace family was one of the founding families of the town. They lived near other old families near the cliff on the edge of the town. Two years ago, Tiffany’s parent died because their house in Virginia burned down. Tiffany was twenty- two at the time, studying her last year in Cornell. The weird thing about the death was that no body was found. According to the neighbors, Tiffany’s parents had clearly entered the house, but after the fire was put out, the firefighters or the police did not find any traces of a body. Some thought that the fire completely burned to the bones, but it was impossible. The fire was not powerful enough to do that.
Finally, when Tiffany arrived at the scene, she found an underground tunnel while she was poking around. She entered the tunnel, and arrived at the forest surrounding the town. For the past two years, Tiffany used any resource she could to trace her parents. At last, she found them. She found her parents in their family house in Misery. This time, Tiffany came back to Misery, to find answers.
The Trace’s family house composed of three floors with an attic and a basement. From the outside, the whole house is a really light, almost a white, blue. The roof if painted tan brown, and the front porch was painted a light, rosy red. Walking up the stairs to the front porch, Tiffany relived her childhood. She remembered how she used to sit with her mother in the front porch while her mother read stories to her while the sun was setting. Then, the delicious smell of Italian food would come floating through the air. Tiffany’s favorite remains her father’s pasta with home- made meat sauce.
Tiffany felt a smile creep up her face. She had not had her father’s food since she went to college. Then, her father was presumably dead. She loved the family times that had not happen in six years. Since she went to college, the family grew apart. Tiffany was busy, and being in a large rural city did not help. After arriving at Cornell, she met some of the most interesting people she had ever met. Her own little social circle formed. Her calls to home went from every night to once a week, and her visits went from once a month to every other month. She was devastated when she received her parents’ death notice.
She walked up the steps and arrived at the front door. Putting her hand into her pocket in her jeans, she pulled out a silver, polished looking key. When she opened the door, a nostalgic smell instantly grabbed her mind. It was the same smell of her father’s pasta. She fastened her pace heading toward the kitchen. She saw the familiar back of the man everyone thought was dead.
“Dad?” asked Tiffany, afraid that he is not his dad, but this thought diminished once the man turned around to face Tiffany. Tiffany got her chocolate brown hair and nose from him. Her father grew old in the past two years. You could vividly see some of the original brown hear turning gray, and some turning white.
ReplyDelete“Hey baby girl,” replied a voice behind Tiffany. She turned around and came face- to – face with the person who used to kissed her a good night kiss. Christy Trace, was standing there, with her arms open, expecting Tiffany to jump on her and gave her a big hug. Expectedly, Tiffany did just as Christy had thought. Tiffany flew to Christy with tears struggling to be freed from her eyes. Her mother had not showed any signs of aging. If you were to guess Christy’s age, you would probably guess twenty five, and not the real forty. Tiffany’s icy blue eyes puffy lips are the exact twins to Christy’s eyes and lips. Tiffany was slightly taller than her mom, standing at 5’5.
Christy told Tiffany that she knows that Tiffany had a lot of questions, and she would answer them in the living room. The two walked to the living room, while Paton Trace remained in the kitchen to finish his cooking. Their living room is basically the family library. The wall shelves were packed with books. They were all hard cover books with a fearful amount of age to them. All of Tiffany’s books were in her own room.
Christy sat in the rocking chair while Tiffany slouched in the sofa across from it. It was comfortable to be at home again. Tiffany looked at Christy straight in the eyes, waiting for some answers. After a five minute staring contest, Christy finally spoke up.
“Stop looking at me like that, girl. It’s really creeping me out.”
“Mom, what in the world happened? I knew you guys weren’t dead. I’ve been searching for you two for two years already. I need answers.”
“Okay, okay. I get it. I’ll tell you what you want to know. But let me get this first.” Christy stood up from her chair, to get a huge picture book from one of the shelves. The metallic cover had turned rusty, and it had curving on it. It was similar to a full moon with a wolf in the center of it. Christy opened the book to the very first page, and it was a picture of a woman in her late twenties. She was beautiful. The picture looked like ones that had been taken in the 1800s.
“Mom, who is this?” Tiffany asked.
ReplyDelete“This is our ancestor, one of the founding members of the town. She was also the famous thief around this area called the Wolfareign for her fierce and fast speed at night. She stole from the rich and gave it to the poor. She was a real hero back then.”
Wolfareign was a normal girl, named Sharlw Mcdimler growing up in the scum of the city. She was used to stealing. Then, the previous Wolfareign invited her to join him and to train her to become his successor. After the previous Wolfareign died, Sharlw took over and continued his job. She was never caught. Eventually, she started her own family, and she passed on the title to her kid.
“So mom, are you the Wolfreign now?
“No. Unfortunately, in today’s society, if I tried to steal from the rich, I’d probably get a life sentence for it. My grandmother stopped doing the job in her generation. The Wolfreign was also passed to the Sliverstone family in Rhode Island.”
“I see, but what does that have to do with your accident?”
“The Sliverstone took over for Wolfreign, but the job changed. They would steal from anyone, and they keep what they steal to themselves. Your father and I found out about this, so we wanted to reveal their identity to the police, but they tried to kill us before that. Luckily, we had an emergency escape tunnel. But everything is settled now. The Sliverstone had been arrested last week”
“Then why didn’t you contact me to let me know you’re still alive?”
“The Sliverstone gave us away. Now the police know about us. Me, to be specific. That’s why we hid in this town.”
“Mom, I miss you so much.”
“I miss you too honey.”
“Hey, it’s time for dinner,” Paton called from the kitchen. Tiffany and Christy stood up and went to the kitchen to eat, together.
I couldn’t take it anymore; I needed to find out what broke this family apart, why did my mom leave us why she didn’t tell us where she was going, and why? I’m a twenty year old man who had a mystery to solve. The mystery was why my mom leaved me and my little sister. I and my family were living happy and blessed, we had everything that you could think of, money, shelter, mother and a father, and the most important thing we had was love. Sometimes my parents argued but don’t every couple argue? Well I thought it was normal I didn’t mind it because couples love each other and they argue about the smallest thing they could find. So life was going good but then things started to get weird. My parents started to argue every day and every time they saw each other. I and my sister were so little we didn’t understand what was going on but the arguing and the screaming was getting over hand. One day that I wouldn’t forget; my dad came home late one day and my mom started to scream at him because he was walking weird. I didn’t know what was going on but I think he was drunk because he couldn’t talk or know how to walk straight. But my mom was yelling at him because he came home late I guess but then all I saw that scarred me for life was my dad hand going toward the ceiling and drops down on my mother’s face. I didn’t know what to do because I was just scarred and I didn’t believe what I saw. My mother nose bleed all night while my dad past out on the couch. My mother came to me and my little sister room. My little sister was sleeping she didn’t see what had happened and I thank god she didn’t. I tried to comfort my mother but she cried and bleed all night, she told me when I grow older I would realized why things went down this way and she told me to take care of my sister. I thought my mom was going to sleep but the next day I woke up and I didn’t find her. No one knew where my mom went but I couldn’t live with my dad anymore because he grew old and was on drugs and alcohol. Also the government kicked us out because my dad didn’t work or pay any payments for the house. My uncle gave me tickets to go to the United State to live with my other uncle, so I did. But when I got to the United States everything was in my mind where has my mom gone and why she left us.
ReplyDeleteI took a plane to DR to see my old house. I arrived to the old house that brought back a lot of good and bad memories but mostly bad memories. I saw the house but I didn’t see anyone living in it, it was the same from the day we left it. I decided to walk in and search for clues. I walked in the house, the door was open. I walked in with tears in my eyes; the house brought back the memories when I was always in my mother arms. The living room was empty but the couch my mom bought was still there. That made me tear up the most because she used to sleep on it and I used to come and sleep next to her and kiss her good night because she used to go out and work all day just to bring money and feed us. My mom did the most in my house, she used to clean, cook, and work. My mom was a hard worker, me and my sister used to wake up in the morning with breakfast on the table but no sign of mother, because she used to get up at five o’clock and go to work. My mom used to work at a supermarket in the city. I walked up to me and my sister room, as I walked in the door creaked because no one has opened it and the dust was all over it. When I walked in I saw the bunk beds that I and my sister used to sleep on. My heart felt like it was crushed, the last room I had to go to find what had happened for my mom leaving us. I walked towards the room, I opened the door slowly and there it was, my mom’s bed still in good condition and the bed was made nothing had been touched. The bed was so clean that no dust was on it, the reason behind that is because my dad never slept in the room but as I was looking around I saw a phone on the middle of the bed. I went to reach to get it and the phone looked familiar, it was my dad’s phone. I had no reason to go through it but something in my head told me to go through the text messages and the phone calls, so I did. All I saw was names of girls that my dad had saved. I went through the text messages and all I saw was my dad texting girls and texting drug dealers. I started to tear down because I just found out why my mom had left us. She grew up around drugs and she couldn’t take it anymore. So my mom was upset because my dad had cheated on her but she knew I was a strong man and she left me money to move out and find a better life for me and my sister. I sat down on the bed for almost four hours. I got tired of just sitting there so I wanted to leave. So I made my way to the door, I opened the door and there was my mother.
DeleteI took a plane to DR to see my old house. I arrived to the old house that brought back a lot of good and bad memories but mostly bad memories. I saw the house but I didn’t see anyone living in it, it was the same from the day we left it. I decided to walk in and search for clues. I walked in the house, the door was open. I walked in with tears in my eyes; the house brought back the memories when I was always in my mother arms. The living room was empty but the couch my mom bought was still there. That made me tear up the most because she used to sleep on it and I used to come and sleep next to her and kiss her good night because she used to go out and work all day just to bring money and feed us. My mom did the most in my house, she used to clean, cook, and work. My mom was a hard worker, me and my sister used to wake up in the morning with breakfast on the table but no sign of mother, because she used to get up at five o’clock and go to work. My mom used to work at a supermarket in the city. I walked up to me and my sister room, as I walked in the door creaked because no one has opened it and the dust was all over it. When I walked in I saw the bunk beds that I and my sister used to sleep on. My heart felt like it was crushed, the last room I had to go to find what had happened for my mom leaving us. I walked towards the room, I opened the door slowly and there it was, my mom’s bed still in good condition and the bed was made nothing had been touched. The bed was so clean that no dust was on it, the reason behind that is because my dad never slept in the room but as I was looking around I saw a phone on the middle of the bed. I went to reach to get it and the phone looked familiar, it was my dad’s phone. I had no reason to go through it but something in my head told me to go through the text messages and the phone calls, so I did. All I saw was names of girls that my dad had saved. I went through the text messages and all I saw was my dad texting girls and texting drug dealers. I started to tear down because I just found out why my mom had left us. She grew up around drugs and she couldn’t take it anymore. So my mom was upset because my dad had cheated on her but she knew I was a strong man and she left me money to move out and find a better life for me and my sister. I sat down on the bed for almost four hours. I got tired of just sitting there so I wanted to leave. So I made my way to the door, I opened the door and there was my mother.
ReplyDeleteThrough the years mothers and fathers have abandoned their children. It does effects the kid emotion and mental stages through the years that they grow. There was this kid by the name of Ruth “cuddy” Gonzales and he was one of the best little 5 yr. old kid you will ever know. He used to play every sport basketball, baseball you name it he used to play it. His mother Mildred was the most wonderful person you will ever meet. But the father was a different story even though this guy used to come home drunk and drugged up he used to beat on Mildred but she never change she was the same person over and over again even if she had a black eye. But one day was the end of all the beating and the mistreatment that Welford gave to her. Cuddy didn’t know what to do he used to cry over and over again he didn’t even go to his practices anymore because of the situation that was happening in the crib. But Mildred was tired of it and she fought back of course Welford beat her ass up but she left the house and didn’t came back that night. Cuddy was crying and crying that she left she didn’t came the next day or the next. Cuddy was stuck with his pops Welford and he wasn’t even in good terms. Mildred never came back for cuddy and he stopped doing sports he was an angry child ever since that day she left she was his happiness. Cuddy was 15 entering his freshman year in high school bad ass too did smoke weed and he used to party every weekend and skip class. His father Welford was the same as well a drug addict and a drunk. Cuddy didn’t even mention sports in his sentences it was only party, party and some more party. Through the years even though cuddy won’t admit it but every night he used to wait on the door and see if his mother will come but she never did sometimes he still does even if he says he is “all grown up.” Cuddy always thinks about his mother Mildred and wants to understand why she left I mean he gets the hitting part from Welford and everything but why she didn’t took him with her.
ReplyDeleteHe just wants to know that from her. Until one day Mildred sent a letter to cuddy and it wasn’t even sent to him at his crib he got the letter from his school. The letter said hijo meaning son she said that she loved him a lot and he means the world to her but there is something’s that she could not handle at the time and that he would understand when she sees him and that is all she said. Cuddy got happy but at the same time did not understood he was glad that she was good but he wanted to know what was going on and why she really left him. Cuddy went to go talk to Welford and told him about the whole letter his face turned red and he got all serious. The only thing he said was “oh” and went back to the couch and just stared at the television like if he was in thinking mood. Cuddy knew something was up and so he sent a letter back to her and said let’s talk than and so just like that they met up in the national park of California in san Miguel. To make a long story short Welford threatened Mildred because supposedly he heard that Mildred was having an affair with another guy. Cuddy asked her if it was true and she said sadly “ yes” but it was because she felt no love for Welford no more because of the beatings she had receive from him how can you love a man like that she said to cuddy. She continued with her story and said that she didn’t took cuddy because she find out that he was going to kill her and that if she took cuddy with her that he would of killed him too because when he was drugged up he would do anything insane. Cuddy was mad so mad that he left and went for a cig. Mildred looked at him with a face that she couldn’t believe that lil boy that was always happy and giggly turned into the man he is now and smokes drinks and takes it all out on that. But cuddy accepted her apology and he promise her that he will change and throughout the weeks he did but then he started noticing his father changing his attitude was worse and he drank even more. Come to find out Welford was planning to kill cuddy and cuddy didn’t believe and he did actually stopped him. Welford burst and said that he loved him a lot but cuddy said “than why kill me”. Welford said because your mom isn’t what you think she is and BOOM!
ReplyDeleteIt was a long ride into the mountains of Idaho, a long ride to be sitting in the hard leather seat of a car that was not her own. The car reeked of fast food grease as the FBI agents who sat in the front seat before her. Outside of the car, the world was changing from summer to fall. The mountains were on fire with leaves of yellow and orange. She could almost feel the air outside, crisp and cool, she was sure. And she knew it would be clear, there were no cities to pollute the air.
ReplyDeleteShe remembered the interrogation room she had spent time in, cold and gray. The man questioning him was dark. Dark skin, hair and eyes. Dark questions.
She was glad to be away from all of that, out in the open once again. She had spent almost all of her life in these mountains. Although she knew they should not, they held a certain sense of home for her.
“Do you know how much further we have?” The one in the passenger’s seat asked, as he wiped French fry grease from around his mouth.
“Not too much. It’s here in these woods.” She muttered.
“I feel like I’ve been driving forever.” The man in the driver’s seat interjected.
It was not an inaccurate statement. The commune they were travelling to lay seven miles from the nearest town. The nearest city, which they were coming from, seemed days away. It was in the middle of the woods on the mountain, entirely fenced in and surrounded by signs designating it as private property.
It was no longer a secret, though. They were no longer sheltered from world by the thick forest, no longer safe from ridicule. Their world had been invaded one cool summer night just months before. Cars with flashing lights had raced down the dirt road and federal agents brandishing warrants had burst through their doors. They had all been taken away, loaded into police cars. They were carried in the speeding convoy all the way to the city. All sixty of them were held in custody, interrogated.
She was not prepared for her first glimpse of the buildings. There was a large cluster of simple white cottages, the kind shown in story book illustrations, pleasant wild flowers bloomed in scattered patterns across the lawns. There was one building larger than the others, it was longer and wider and painted red. She could remember when it had first been painted, it had shone so brilliantly under the sun. It had faded dramatically since then. They used to have meetings there and her father would read his daily sermons with violent passion.
“My father was a preacher, a devout man all his life. When my sister was ten she came down with an unexplained fever. He thought that prayer could cure her, but my neighbors didn’t think so. They called an ambulance for her. She died later that night. The doctors told him that my sister was very sick and she would have died no matter what. He didn’t want to hear that, he wanted someone to blame.”
Then man jotted something down on the sheet of paper that lay before him, “This is when he isolated your family?”
He was so impersonal, she didn’t know how to feel about him. His voice was so monotone, so emotionless. His face never changed from its blank uninterested expression. Didn’t he know it was her entire life that he was discussing with such detached boredom?
“Yes. He slowly began to gain a following of people experiencing similar grief. People who lost someone they loved, people who were also looking for someone to blame.”
The car suddenly came to a halt, tearing her from her flashbacks. She felt the two front doors slam as the men left the car, the sound ran through her. She felt a sudden fear at the thought of leaving the safety of the vehicle. She could not explain it.
ReplyDeleteShe looked out of the window, they were parked in front of Mrs. Blake’s house. She had been the first to come to her father. She had lost her only son to a rare form of cancer, he died a week after being diagnosed. Mr. McGregor and his family lived in the cottage next door. His brother was left in a coma following a terrible skiing accident and after ten years their parents removed him from life support. Mr.McGregor believed that if they had prayed enough his brother would have been revived. She looked down the road, at the rest of the home surrounding her. All of them had held people with similar stories.
The door opened unexpectedly, exposing her to the cool mountain air and a well-dressed man. “We’re going to need you out here, miss.”
Outside the sun was very bright, its yellow blaze blinded her momentarily. The autumn breeze tousled her hair. It all felt so familiar.
“The grave yard you spoke about? Could you show us where that’s located, exactly?” The same man spoke to her. He was not cold and impersonal, but rather kind and sympathetic in his mannerisms. She nodded with difficulty, her neck felt so stiff, almost like it was frozen. She slowly became aware of her surroundings. There were other sleek unmarked cars and well-dressed people, there was also a backhoe and men swarmed around it like flies.
She wandered, as if in a trance, towards the site that the agents had found particularly interesting during her numerous interviews. The burial site. She led them between houses and into the woods, they followed her just as the funeral procession had followed her father throughout the years. She stopped when she reached the clearing, decorated with long wilted flowers and stone markers of the graves that lay below.
Elena Wilson was buried to the left of where she stood. She died of an infection after she cut herself while cooking. Mrs. DuPris and her baby, still inside of her, unable to be born, to her right. And all the others who had fallen ill or victim to some complication during their time on the commune were buried before her. Victims of their blind allegiance to her father’s word.
“Do you believe that your father’s organization could be considered a cult?”
She looked down at her hands which were folded tightly in her lap, “Yes.”