I found myself walking past the freshly bought house as I would just go out for long, long walks into the forest just to get away from the house for as long as possible and to avoid people as long as possible too. I sat on a huge stone opposite of the house, a few feet off of the side of the road as I had my headphones on and leaned my back against a huge tree. The moving trucks had been there sense the night that sold sign showed up.
That house: 1642 South Ivy Lane. In this nondescript, nonspecific Americana town, it was that weird strange spot that ever town seems to have, that one creepy thing that makes everything about that Americana ideal seem extremely uncomfortable and unsettling. This massive mansion set on a sweeping hill, the hill’s back sweeping down into the forest, the home’s back to the forest as it looked outwards into the large grounds looped in the matching forest. The entire outward side of the hill was looped in this supposedly natural lake that some people claim was man-made by the original builders of the house. The entire house’s grounds looped in maybe ten foot tall thick dark stone pillars studding the wrought iron fencing, every other post adorned with a fur-de-lis, the stone wrapped in overgrown ivy, vines and bramble, the driveway which was gravel for decades was now freshly laid dark gray/brown flagstones, the expansive grounds were freshly mown and absurdly dark green, the overgrown gardens ripped out and cleaned up as if the family moving in was going to be avid gardeners. The house itself loomed like a jagged, rotten tooth in the ground’s, this very, very large gothic mansion that sprawled out along the hill, the base of the house being four stories throughout the body wrapped in dark, dark wooden siding on sections, other sections being these dark coffee/chocolate colored masonry or dark gray cobblestone along other areas, multiple chimneys along the walls with freshly cleaned brushed copper tops, matching wood/stone pillars along the walls, all the roofs overly tall and overly steep as they deeply sloped outwards with a concave face covered in freshly lain tar shingled roofs as I saw a few people walking along the roofs putting down new shingles. There were also…setting up gargoyles and things along the roofline, ones that didn’t match the house in white granite stone and other pale stone as they were affixed properly along the roofline. The large iron framed windows being replaced with fresh window-panes, the sound of power-washers blaring as they cleaned off the siding and stone, a huge dumpster filled with furniture that was being thrown out of the huge open windows along the various floors, the crunch of wood and glass met with ripping leather and fabric. The ripping sound of wailing floorboards along with matching punching sounds of new ones being put down.
I still remember how that house used to look: the garden’s overgrown, every window broken inwards from people throwing stones to see who could throw the farthest or who could break a window from the street, sections of the garden walls broken in and the iron bent sharply from people throwing rugs over the sharp points to climb overtop to bypass the huge, thick gate that was usually locked with heavy chains and padlock. Groups of kids would break into the house to throw parties without having to be bothered with cleaning up and with a plethora of stolen or illegally purchased alcohol, the kids would just trash the place. I remember being in a few of those parties, the sound of shattering glass as people threw chairs through windows, witnessing someone swinging from a chandelier among…many other crazy things that would happen despite the fact my high school class was maybe only four-five dozen people, there always seemed to be far, far more whenever one of those parties happened. It really made me understand why they’re called ragers.
I just let my music drone out the sound of the construction as I saw the trucks move about, I didn’t recognize the company on them whatsoever, the trucks were painted a familiar stark white, but the logo on them was a wide red line through the middle with a large black almost dinosaur footprint in a large circle, right behind the cabin.
“Careful with that!” one of them shouted as I saw a few people walk out of the back of a trunk holding a very…very shiny black grand piano, “Alright, according to the family, that is going on…oh, fuck, that goes on the third floor!” he added, making me softly laugh at the chorus of groans from the people carrying the heavy piano. “There should be a box of sheet music too!” he added
In what was maybe the span of an hour or so, there was way too much work done in that span of an hour that I was watching them, they windows were all covered in butcher paper to protect the freshly set panes, the sections of wall that had fallen were back up and I could see fresh poured concrete starting to cure in areas. There were one or two guys who were wrapping straps around the wrought iron sections of fence before pulling hard on the straps wrenching the iron back in place before using various heat/cold guns to set the metal back in place. There were a few people rolling out new bundles of sod as they stamped down new grass where what was left was too dead to recover. Someone walked down the driveway stamping down the newly set pavers as someone followed behind cleaning the excess concrete between the stones. I saw people doing…kind of everything about the grounds getting the house back into a proper working order.
I tried my absolute hardest to avoid my parents, but I could hear the clatter of glass when I got home followed soon by the sound of ice tumbling into it and liquid sloshing into it, the smell of stale cigarettes heavy on the air making my throat burn and itch as I tried to clear my throat as quietly as possible as I went down the hall towards the stairwell.
“Well…look what the dead cat drug up” Mother’s slurred and annoyed voice spat as I felt that overbearing presence behind me, but I didn’t look behind me or anything as she stood in the center of the kitchen where I was off to the side.
“Something wrong, you out of vodka…your P.A get you the wrong type of cigarettes?” I asked before leaning my head over and rose my hand, already accustomed back to this song and dance that my mother and I play as a tumbler glass full of ice and straight vodka landed in my hand, spilling over my fingers as it soaked the carpet. I sighed as I set the glass down and started walking again, using the pocket of my jacket to dry off my hand. I did catch a glance at Mother as I turned to corner to the stairwell, drowning her demons by staying a step away from putting a bendy straw into the bottle’s neck, a little taller than me, the same ginger hair I have, but cut short to her shoulders in bouncy curls and blunt bangs, haunted, dull and dead icy blue eyes, pale and narrow built, dressed in a floral dress with long sleeves and high collar probably to cover a bruise or something from her and Father’s arguments, kitten heels still on her feet though she treated them like stilts with how she faltered with every step, horn rim glasses angled wrongly on her nose as she was unbothered to correct them. Soon after I closed the door to the stairs behind me, the heavy thud of a shoe or an empty bottle against the wood followed suit. The sound of something being thrown at me was usually my dismissive bell that my parents used to tell me they were done with me. So, I went my way back upstairs to my room.
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