We are thrilled to share another piece from one of our writers who submitted to the annual WGI Invite to Write Challenge!
For this year, we asked our talented cohort to create a new piece on this prompt: Write a story where the end is also the beginning.
Next up, we will share TR Whitney’s piece entitled, “Going Home.” Stay tuned, as we will continue sharing the submissions throughout the fall!
You can learn more and find TR’s writing at her Amazon Author Page! She has also published a mystery novel, “Fatal Secrets.”
Going Home
Should the past be left to exist only in memories and old photos? I pondered this as I drove down a long-forgotten highway. It had been twenty years since I returned to my hometown. There was no reason to return. As soon as I left for college, my parents bought an RV and began to travel the countryside. Every few months, they would stop and visit me wherever I was living.
I slowly drove down the main street and around the square. Parking my car, I got out and looked around. Not much had changed except for a quaint brick cottage sitting near the back of a lot that once housed a small barbershop. I wondered who built it and when. It reminded me of the cottages I had seen on my travels overseas. But here it was an anomaly amidst the wood-frame houses dotting the countryside.
Glancing around, I decided to move closer. Peering around the side, I found a window where the shades didn’t obstruct my view inside. I don’t know what I expected to find. I guess it was more curiosity than expectation. The aura reflected the decay of a dying town. Hopes that once prospered for a rich life were put to death by the lack of jobs for future generations.
The house was quiet and empty. The only sound was the birds chirping in the trees. A sense of sadness seemed to ooze from the brick façade. A sense of abandonment, like the owner had gone away, never to return. The glass was cold to the touch in the frozen silence.
I pressed my face to the window of what appeared to be the living room or parlor. The furniture was covered with sheets. Once pristine white, they were now dingy with dust and despair. The walls were bare. No family pictures, no books, nothing to show of the family that once inhabited its interior. Nothing to indicate the happy times or even the sad times the house may have sheltered.
I stepped away from the window and shook my head. The loneliness of the house matched the loneliness of my heart. My parents had passed away within the past year prompting this trip back to my youth. I returned to my car and turned down the road to where I had once been sheltered in love and family. Yet the seemingly tender care that someone had taken to close the once-loving home properly gave me hope that the same had been done to my former home.
I drove slowly again through the town, remembering the old and marveling at the few new homes and businesses that had appeared during my time away. We lived a few miles outside of town on a small two-lane road. Two lanes was a bit of a misnomer, since passing each other required cars to move as far to the right as possible to do so safely. A banked curve cut through the trees, giving me a clear view of the area around.
Upon my approach, I stared in horror at the wind-beaten home of my youth. The once-manicured lawns were gone, replaced by lake waters lapping against the foundation. Their murky depths caused the once-stark white manor to list sideways, like the Tower of Pisa. The roof, once a bright, crisp forest green, was speckled with the pearly white droppings of the pelicans now using it as a perch to rest after a good day of fishing.
I stumbled along the rocks leading to the front door. A door that once opened to many neighbors, family, and friends is now forgotten and lost to time. To the echoes of my mother’s yells to quit going in and out and to stop slamming the door. That same door, once lovingly slammed shut, now hung limply on its hinges. Swinging freely in a gust of wind, it opened to a musty room darkened and dampened by the storms battering its façade for years.
The smell of rotting wood permeated the air, a result of years of the framework being dampened by rain. Hesitating to enter, I slowly stepped through the doorway. The interior was as desolate and bleak as the outside. Debris was scattered around the floor, giving evidence of usage as a nest for animals. Empty bottles and cans were a sign of humans looking for a place to hang out without fear of being caught.
The nightmarish scene blinded me to the once-happy times shared with family and friends. I stepped back outside and once again surveyed the starkness surrounding me. At that moment, I realized Thomas Wolfe was right. You can never go home. The past is best left to exist in memories and old photos.
