Blades of wet grass slide softly across the bottom of my feet as I stride across the rain slicken yard. There, barely ten feet in front of me sits an echo. A small boy with goofy looking black rimmed glasses, and thin brown curly hair, sits planted firmly on a makeshift rope swing twists around and around, winding the swing up, than spins in circles as the tension in the rope is released. Smiles, and laughter play out in the shiny day. Innocence wearing its sweet face. The unknowing a better fruit then the bitterness of truth.
I turn away to see a shaded landscape filled with vine trees. Their thin string things whipping back and forth in the wind. Another echo haunts my heart. The young boy, no longer bespectacled runs, jumps, and grasps a handful of vines. He swings in and out of a fantasy world. He is alone in a world crowded with imaginary friends. Pirates swashbuckle as he and the lost boys of Neverland fight and fly. Now the tree rots from the roots tilting at an uneasy angle, and is slowly dying.
A dog barks out into the evening sky as the last bit of the sun’s rays disappear. The new night is marked by the howls of several other canines. They feel like mournful howls. My mind slips back to younger days and I recall how I would rise at five in the morning to walk both of my dogs. Such sweet shaggy friends, very wary of strangers but oh so loving to me. They are both dead now.
I slip a photo out of my wallet and stare at the crumbled visage of my grandpa. Dark glasses cover his old eyes, but there is a playful smile edging its way across his face. This is, was the face of a happy man. Now, he too, is just another dead thing. I am just another dead thing.
One step becomes another as I make my way to what is left of the old two port garage. Its dulled colors seam to match my mood perfectly. Cracked windows and grey broken siding marking its age like the rings of an old dying oak tree. Small and large rocks painfully embed themselves into my toes and feet. This was easier when I was lighter or at least wearing shoes. I stare at the decimated building imagining the way it was before time ate it all up; standing sturdy with a dog house to the right of it and a car, tools, toys, and other potpourri parked safely inside.
Then, I remember the sawhorses. Those old things with white paint chipped or chipping away. I rode them like unsaddled horses until my **** and ***** ached. Swinging light brown cardboard swords like I was a hero fighting monsters, never realizing the real monsters were human beings.
They took this from my family, those stupid bankers with their stupid mortgages. There is so much history here. Shades and shadows of the past to interact with. Sensations to stir passing passions. A tear coalesces, followed by a stream. I struggle to suppress it.
Squeezing my sore toes together, I pick up mud in between each digit. The cold sludge feels good on my dry skin. Suddenly, I realize that this is it. This will be the last time I ever come back here. A part of me wants to cry some more, but I refuse to yield to that part. These feelings are merely specters of a past long since departed.
The specter of the small boy stares at me from a distance, and I can’t tell if he is looking at or through me. Can he sense my pain or see my disease? My stomach is swelling while I’m stewing in a sea of sewer smelling tumors. I can almost feel the cancer eating me up from the inside. White cells massing like a mad army to march on my various organs. Each ***** slowly consumed until enough fail and I fall. It makes me so ******* angry. While greedy business men plague the world with their wicked intent, extending their lives with wealth and perpetuating human suffering, I have to die.
I slap myself. The stinging warm pain prevents me from becoming too immersed in my own grief. I refuse to yield to this depression. I go back to the vine tree with a glint of mischievous intent in my eyes. Hands outstretched I charge forth fast and furious. My fingers grasp several thin slips of dried and dying vines. It is only a couple of feet off the ground but for the briefest of moments I fly back in to Neverland. Then the vines snap, I crash into a small ditch, busting my ****. A jolt of pain passes from my posterior to my neck, jarring my spine. When the pain passes I laugh, my face filled with a childlike smile. I guess I’m not dead yet.