It all started that one summer. I had just come back home from my first year of community college I still had to travel a good distance too because how middle of nowhere I am from. The sound of cicadas screaming among the sounds of playing children, whirling sprinklers, the sounds of passing cars and the various other sounds of summer; the pattering rain on the windows, the crackle of people’s backyard fire pits or the roaring wall of sound of people laughing from block parties a few streets over or all of the various other sounds. I’m just from a super small town Americana “classic” area in the middle of Michigan, we’re hours away from Detroit and the closest “big city” to us is this city called Lakeshore, which is probably a fraction of the size of Detroit among even smaller cities, it’s where the college I went to was, there was an apartment complex about a block away specifically for students from the surrounding sprawl of toxic suburbia.
The only claim to fame my hometown house is…that fucking house. At the edge of the town: for as long as anyone can recall and for as long as the town’s history has gone on, that house has stood there…abandoned for probably longer than the town has even existed for. There’s stories of it being absurdly haunted, in high school there were always stories of people getting in trouble for sneaking onto the grounds and daring people to get as close as possible to the house due to the strange happenings that occurred around it. That one morning when I was walking back to my family’s house…there was a “Sold” sign outside of the house’s huge sprawling gravel driveway.
“I hope whomever bought that hellhole flattens it and puts something else there…such an eyesore” I heard a voice say making me look over as I saw a few moms power-walking with their strollers, wearing unexplainably expensive athletic clothing: designer leggings, sneakers meant for fashion rather than use…things like that.
“You know, I heard from Glen down at the salon that whomever bought the house never even showed up to see it, they just bought it out of the blue.” The other mom said, sipping on an unhealthily huge iced coffee that had been in the cupholder of her stroller.
“Probably just for the land” the first mom added before the two seemed to finally notice me across the three lane street and instantly started whispering to themselves as they started walking a bit faster. I’ve…I wouldn’t say, I’m a pariah, just…parents would tell their kids not to be around me, that I was not the kind of people they need to associate themselves with. Not that there’s anything wrong with me or anything, my parents are seen as like the people to beat in having that “perfect Americana family”, but probably when I was seventeen-eighteen or so, people just started treating me differently, probably because that’s when I started acting out, but still. Even if that was a handful of years ago, the town is small enough that one little whisper is the talk of town for decades. It was probably either the fact I see a therapist that got the moms whispering about how their kids shouldn’t be around me, I still catch them giving me side-eye while whispering to their friends about how I see a therapist or that I take anti-depressants.
There was maybe a quarter mile or so of just thick forestry between the house’s grounds and the town proper, it was off the town to the east along this twisting and sprawling road with no lights on it, just bottomless, thick evergreen forestry, the fog clung to your knees as you walked and even in the dead of summer, it felt like the end of fall in that stint of forestry. My boots crunched through the twigs and fallen leaves as I walked off the road and into the forest, even though there shouldn’t be fallen leaves, the ones that did fall for various reasons were baked crispy by the sunlight, the thick scent of the underbrush filling my nose with that pleasant smell of just thick forestry. I preferred to just walk through the forest rather than along the side of the road as I walked back towards the town, the sheer bottomless quiet that felt smothering and deafening the quiet was so thick on the senses. The sound of the crickets, the various birds and other aspects of the forest loud in my ears as I walked, my hands in my jacket pockets as I walked, just listening to the clash of the music in my headphones and the ambiance of the forest around me.
I, however, was not looking forward to getting back to home. My boots against the sidewalk panels like nails being driven into my spine making my back go tense and my shoulders go taunt, I just…don’t like being home. As I walked through the neighborhoods, these endless lines of repeated cookie cutter suburban homes with white picket fences and various houses painted pastel candy colors, pristine gardens that looked like they were a magazine cover, everything just…an almost unnatural looking slice of time around me as I walked. I sighed deeply as I turned a corner and stood at the entrance to an average sized cul-de-sac, a few just ever so slightly larger homes looped around the large ovate block of pavement, picket fences seamlessly merging between the edges of the lawn’s boarders, house’s painted matching pastel colors as various plants crawled up along the walls and about the areas. I twisted the inside of my jacket pockets as I walked along the sidewalk towards the house at the center, at the back of the cul-de-sac, a wide and rather squat ranch style house, painted a pale cream color with barely lighter white wood framing and adornments o the house, wide angled roofs with dark tar shingles as natural for the area because of the weather, window boxes stuffed with flowers Mom always has to pay to have replaced due to the fact that she cannot stand being outside and despises working with the gardens and plants even more, trellis covered carport adorned with crawling ivy.
I sighed as I got one of my keys out and opened the front door, I could already hear the blaring trash TV in the living room and despite the fact it was barely past noon, I could smell cigarette and vodka on the air. I was always glad the house was as closed off as possible, so I didn’t have to see her. She often would be passed out drunk on her armchair in the living room, half-burning cigarette in her hand as some stupid trashy drama was on that made you feel your brain rotting. I just walked off to the right as I opened the door to the “second floor” which was really more along the lines of a renovated attic. I’ve never had a room on the ground floor, the second bedroom of the house was always Dad’s study and when I left for college the first time, the study became a second bedroom that Mom lived in while Dad commandeered the master, I’ve just always had the entire attic to myself. The stairwell was solid wood, the stairs softly creaking underfoot despite the newness of the home, stairs extremely steep and just as narrow, another small doorway leading into a small landing with a door to the right and forward, the right being my own bathroom and the forward opening into my house which was kind of the entire roof area of the house. I lowered my headphones as I walked into my room, the posters still tapped or tacked to the particle board, signs saying Keep Out or things like that still on the outside. My room is this long and narrow room, the walls angled due to being the inside of the roof, the few dormers on the front of the house serving as small little bumped out areas where I had things like a desk or a dresser. Dark gray carpet and white painted walls with sections still plastered in posters untouched from when I was last in my room due to the fact that sense I was old enough to go up and down those stairs, I was in charge of keeping my room clean, doing my own laundry among the huge list of chores I had to do every day. The windows of the dormers and the far wall being the only windows letting light in, the only lights being a single large light fixture in the center of the room and flanking sconces at the far side where my full bed was nestled snug into the end of the room, the sides flush to the walls of my room and looking almost built into the structure of the house. I could stand in the middle of my room and touch both walls with additional arm to spare because of the thinness of the room, the slightly dusty twang on the air due to the fact I’m in the attic, the soft creak of the timbers as the wind outside blew as the house settled or the fact that my footsteps seemed to echo through the timber as I walked like I was walking on springs. The windows covered in those black-out curtains making all of the light inside artificial as I was used to, the corkboards flanking the desk set into a dormer adorned in old photos and pictures from concerts, ticket stubs, movie tickets or those posters that they used to slip inside the book sleeves along with some of my own dark, creepy drawings I drew on ripped out blank pages of school books, notebooks or even a pad of post-it’s that adorned the side of a board with a rather graphic depiction of someone falling off a building into a wood chipper.
I just leaned on my door as locked it behind me, just…wishing that I didn’t have to come back, I didn’t have to come back…ever again, that I would never have to see all of these people again, that I wouldn’t have to see those streets again or…anything along those lines. I just…I wanted out of this town. I know it’s…rather stereotypical, “Oh look, the small town kid hates where he’s from. Is he in a punk band where he just screams about how much his life sucks?” and honestly, yeah, I kind of was like that in high school, but…then I just began to…kind of resent everything. Parents would scream at me because I hadn’t been to church sense I was young enough where they could physically drag me, that I was bringing Satan into the neighborhood with the way I dressed, the makeup I wore, the music I listened to or anything along those lines. At least, that house being bought means some new people will be seen…hopefully, they won’t make me want to walk off into the forest and vanish into nothingness leaving nothing behind me except a note that would plainly say, “Fuck you.”
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