As I approached my childhood home, the wind blew my hair in my face. The bruised sky was adorned with fast moving clouds and the grass of all of the houses had grown tall and was unkept. Boards covered windows and graffiti decorated the outer walls of the houses my neighbors had lived in, but my house didn't have boards over the windows or where the door used to be. The wind was violently blowing the curtains that still hung in the windows. It was as if they were hands waving me to the house. My heart began to feel heavy as I walked through what used to be my front yard. The air was cool like before a fall storm. I felt chills wave over my body.
As I entered I noticed that the walls had been painted black and graffiti had been written on them. The whole scene felt surreal, as if I was floating to this place. I couldn’t even figure out how I got here or what I was looking for. Something was pushing me down the hallway to my old room.
The door was still on the hinges and completely untouched by spray paint. It looked brand new. I ran my hand along the door as I entered the room. A few of my books lay on the floor. I bent down to pick one up. It looked worn and the pages were no longer a fresh white, but a dull yellow. I felt a strange connection to this book. I knew it was mine, but didn’t remember the title or if I had ever read it.
A gust of wind came through the room almost knocking me over. With the gust, a wave of all the feelings I had ever felt here came over me. I had gone through the majority of my life in this room. The tears, the laughs, the long talks, and growing up all happened here. The air was thicker in this room than anywhere in the house.
The thunder clapped outside and the rain began to pour. I walked over to the window to watch the rain like I had done so many times before. It was funny. When I cried I could sit in this window and watch the rain and everything would be better. Today all of those feelings of pain and tears rushed over me and looking out the window made it better. It was the ultimate feeling of comfort that I hadn’t felt since I was a kid. I stood in the window for a while and took in all that was left of this place. I got lost in a different time and almost didn’t see it as it was today, but as I saw it so many years ago. The view from this window has changed so much and not just the landscape, but the naïveness that I saw the landscape with has left.
A presence in the once empty room woke me from the trance of the rain and memories that had been flooding me as I looked out the window. I turned to find a shadowy figure with it’s back to me scribbling words on my perfectly white closet door. I didn’t feel comfort or safe anymore. I had felt the depths of my life in this room and it had never phased me, but this shadow of a man left me breathless with fear. I stepped closer to the closet trying to read the words he wrote. He turned to me, faceless, and I froze. The pen he wrote with appeared to be a knife now. I couldn’t make out any features on his face, but I could feel his mocking smile as he stepped closer to me. He stabbed me repeatedly in the stomach whispering, “You did this,” over and over. His hand was on my shoulder supporting me as I hunched over. I screamed in agonizing pain. I could feel my breath escaping my body. Each stab felt more aggressive and the black slowly started to close in on my peripheral vision until I couldn’t see anything at all. I could still feel the tears running down my face and hear my lungs gasping for air. It was then that I realized that I had ceased.
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