Neighborhood

A Story by czech

An experimental piece based on childhood

This is my neighborhood. That is one of my neighbors houses. I remember one Halloween I ran up to get candy and in my hurry pushed my little brother down on the way. It's weird what emotions can do in deciding the vividness of one's memory. That was the last Halloween that we went together. That next house there is an odd one. I used to have dreams about it. It was a ramp into this wooded factory with beautiful sloping hills, wondrous brick structuring from the dawn of time, and ghosts. On the other side there is one of my old friends houses. He used to grow raspberries and I would eat them until there was no space left between my teeth for the seeds to stick. That was the worst feeling ever, no matter how hard you bit down, those seeds would never break. It was like they positioned themselves this way on purpose. I loved them so much though, that no matter how hard I tried I could never stop eating them, and as wonderful as they were, I enjoyed the wild ones more.
That section over there is where a lot of them grew, and although I picked them there often, it still seems foreign. I lived here my whole life and I never got to know anybody there. only once you go a ways up does the woods begin to look familiar. Over here is my favorite place in the world. This path leads right to the river, I used to spend whole days down there. I remember swimming out over the constantly changing river floor onto this giant rock that was perfectly even with the surface of the water on low, heavy days. I could stand on it and really feel above everything, almost immune to life itself. That house there got torn down and rebuilt. I never really liked the second one. It used to be pretty fun to hang out there too.
This hill up here was always a challenge. I had a little joke about it when I would go running. I would say “It's all downhill from here” Because my route would end right on the top. I think I heard my dad say that once.
one of my best friends used to live in that one on the hill. They left a while ago, but I still see them sometimes, though light never really conveyed an accurate description We used to pretend that we were in different worlds and on different adventures, though now that is the place my mind tends to falsely occupy the most. That house on the right there has a great view of the river in the fall, I have only seen it a couple times, but I remember it clearly. That is mine up there on the left. They painted it a couple times but I tried not to pay attention to it. That house was right across from my window at night, and it's so odd that I have seen it so many times, but still have absolutely no idea what it looks like on the inside.
Behind my house was my favorite time. That's where I came to. Without the people it seems different, but it's nice to finally say goodbye. You can see my best friends house from here. I must have walked through those yards a thousand times, and yet I still have no idea what the houses look like from within. This woods was torn down for houses. I remember it being bigger. No matter where I was in the neighborhood I could come here to escape, in the middle of it all. It was a very comforting platform that I could always fall back on.
If we keep following this street we will end up at my bus stop. A while up there is the house where we had our Halloween party one year, when everybody still went together. Many different people have lived in the houses around there. They would move just as I learned their names. If you go up a little further and go down that dusty road There is a horse. Nobody ever took care of it really, so we would bike down there and feed it the clover that grew on the side of the road. eventually I stopped seeing it as I drove by.
In the woods up here we used to make so many forts, and fires, and we would dig for worms to take to the river. I spent a lot of time here just sitting too. My brothers stopped coming in here after that Halloween, but I don’t really think I can ever leave. There is a pond through those trees there that we used to swim in, but the algae took over and it grew shallow. There used to be so many frogs there, I guess that they left it when it lost its health
There is the bus. I’m not quite sure I want to leave. I would rather just go back into the the woods for awhile more. Just go into the woods and go back.