A House; A Home

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  An uncomfortable silence pervaded through the rooms of the home where he grew up, the house he occupied now. It was a choking silence, the embodiment of absence. All rooms were dark, except from the one he occupied. The white light shone on nothing in particular, it illuminated space, a vacuum - it recoiled, ran from the white walls. There was a solitary sleeping bag on the floor and a few clothes stacked neatly in a corner. An electronic alarm clock counted stagnant seconds, empty. 

  Was he here for refuge? Was he here to remember? 

  Looking out of the windows, certain memories did jump out at him. He remembered the nightmares he had in this bedroom. The one were he had hidden from his mother - jubilant killer, a mouthful of vicious teeth. He remembered the glimmering knife in her hand and the sound of her passing the wardrobe he was hiding in. That sensation, the pounding of his heart because she knew where he was hiding and gleefully pretended not to, just to build the anticipation... play with your prey. It was a bitter memory, a poor companion by his side on this lonely evening.

  He walked down the staircase, each step creaking, groaning, pleading. The carcass, shell of a kitchen was cold. The low, faint hum of the mini-fridge (the kitchens only appliance) drew him near; clasping the handle, he opened the fridge and surveyed its contents. His human, aged hand, coarse and wrinkled - somehow slender and still oddly young - reached in and grasped a beer. Red cap, arrows indicating you turn the cap anti-clockwise. You move backwards in time to access the amber liquid which quenches no thirst but it does stir memories, heightens sentiment. 

  Melee... well, more of an adolescent scrap. This room, the room he stood in. He had screamed at his brother in here. Denied their familial bond. Burning with a hot rage, yelling into the ears of that ignorant, thuggish, something. How he had grabbed him and how he had wanted, with all his will, to see the life draining from his face in that moment. How he couldn't have cared less if his head had been cracked open, fragile, like an ugly vase and spilt that red liquid, generously, onto the carpet. The absolute shame of that venom that had occupied him.  

  Then the living room, next stop on this night time tour. As summer transitioned into autumn, he had sat on the windowsill, the gentle cold pouring through the window. Many nights he had looked out into that black abyss, space, with white diamonds at dizzying heights, so, so far away. And he'd think of the girl two doors down from him and how far away she was too. Earthbound, yet of a different species... They were destined to orbit each other, know of each others existence; certain laws, social rules, always binding, always as present as the rules of physics, would prevent that longed for collision. 

  There had been love here, though. There'd been that girl, in the glasses, delicate and small. She would drift in through the doorway, bundled up in a dressing gown and her eyes would be fixated on him and everything else in the room would cease to exist. She would stare at him from behind those glasses. They had no secrets from one another. Well, as time went by, he obtained some secrets... maybe she did too. 

  He kind of wanted the whole thing to collapse now. The sturdy walls seemed defiant, unapologetic. They didn't care about the good, the bad, the things that simply just were. They stood, watching, knowingly. He would sink into the earth too, they told him. His bones would linger, a ruin, a clue maybe, yes he preferred that. His bones would be a mystery, dug up by some successor civilisation. And they would extrapolate from those bones what his age had been when he passed, what his height was and they'd know his gender - he'd be deciphered. They would jigsaw him back into the present - using advanced technology they could render a likeness of him. He could be a holographic image. 

  Fantasy, it was all he had now, in this old, empty house, which was a home. 

  Silver skies stretched out over him the next day. Walking beneath them, camera in hand, he remembered the man who had spent some time with him when he was a boy. He remembered listening to all those lessons about what it meant to be a man - you're supposed to carry yourself this way and you're supposed to read this/listen to that. You think. You don't stop thinking. And you work. You don't stop working. If you hold your camera out over this little patch of our planet, you can preserve this murky bog and the dead trees protruding out of it, desperately reaching out, wanting so much to be alive again. Can you see the blue King Fisher, laughing, violently flashing into existence only to disappear just as fast.

  Growing here, in this infertile land, had been an odd sort of privilege. It had made him humble, aware, a little sensitive. For every comment that had battered him made him a little weaker and the weaker he had become the more he cared for the meek and the defeated. And he wanted to always do his very best to help those people. 

  Leaving had not really been hard because it had been a kind of gradual process. He had to travel when he was young to go and meet his love, his sweetheart. He went off to a foreign land that couldn't have been more different to the one he occupied. There, the summers burnt and cooked - the sun with all its anger raining down, blinding and brilliant. The winters were colder too and more full of snow. Then he had gone to that cathedral town, old, quaint, yet full of life. The place with the busker who played nothing but Bob Dylan, cloaked in denim, guitar constantly twanging, clanging. Each chord trembling into the present, following you. Then he'd gone out to that northern city, chaotic yet warm. And he'd worked while time went by and he missed his family. 

  Standing in that empty house was hard. He stood there without them. He stood there alone.