Home

So this was a dream that I decided to transform into a short story. Honestly, I don't think it justice. It seemed so sad and profound at the time, and I really don't think that came across well enough

New York was her very favourite place to be. At the mere age of four years, she couldn't form a list of all the things she liked about it, she only knew that there, she wanted to play outside. There, she had family, even more than near her house in Florida. So when it was time to leave, she threw a tantrum.

“No!” she screamed, flailing madly to escape her mother's arms, pushing her into a car seat.

She didn't fully understand why, but she didn't want to go, she couldn't go. She had to stay here. So she cried, and cried, and cried. She cried when the car pulled out of her aunt's driveway. She cried when they crossed the border into Pennsylvania. She screamed bloody murder as they crossed into Maryland.

“I want home! Home!” she just kept screaming.

With surprising patience, her mother would coo, “We are going home.”

This would pacify her temporarily, and occasionally she might even fall into a light sleep, but the screaming and crying was nearly constant.

For the whole drive, the whole two days it took to get to their house in Florida, she cried.

“Home! Home!” Nothing could subdue her.

Finally, after twenty-three hours of driving, and staying the night at a hotel in Virginia, they arrived at their house in Florida. When the girl realized that her mother was opening the door to retrieve her, she was happy, there was a sparkle in her eye.

“Home?” she smiled up at her mother, raising her arms to allow her safety belt to be unfastened.

“That's right, sweetie,” said her mother, relieved that the tireless screaming had finally come to an end. She raised her daughter out of the car. But when the girl saw where she was, she reverted to anger.

“No! No! Home! I want home!”

Her mother was baffled. They'd lived in this house since before the girl was born, where else could she possibly call home? She tried to console her daughter, but it was no use, she wouldn't stop wailing. So she carried her to the house.

But as they crossed the threshold, the girl began to melt, right there in her mother's arms. She oozed and dripped from her mother's fingers, onto the floor. She soaked into the floorboards of the house she hated, in the state she had grown to detest, even at such a young age.

The floor soaked the little girl up until there was nothing left, and the girl was trapped there, in the floor of the house she couldn't even call home forever.