Down the road

Down the road

 

I used to live in a small broken down town in northern California, When I was a child me and my friends would spend our time entertaining each other by walking on railroad tracks, and throwing loose gravel at small targets. The town used to be prosperous when it housed a large USAF base Just outside of it, but since that closed down most of the businesses dried up and left. We lived there because it was a better alternative then being homeless. I spent a lot of time thinking about other places, going places in my mind, places I didn't think anyone else had ever been, Just trying to be any where but there, that place, after awhile, had become like a prison to me. I yearned to be anywhere but there. It happened one summer that just down the road, the wife of one of the towns preachers had shot him dead because he had cheated on her, after that more and more things started to go awry, something always felt off in that town, like it was a teakettle with to much steam built up inside waiting to spill over. Two months later just down the road my brothers best friend, Courtney, was kidnapped, raped and murdered, it was a tragedy. Whats most strange to me, is that after all this time I just now remembered this, this year to be precise, I had been to her funeral, I had seen her grieving parents and siblings. I suppose that seeing and being surrounded by all of this at the age of nine was just too much for my young brain to reconcile, and I just tried to forget it as best I could. I feel strange whenever I go back to that town now, I feel like a ghost, walking through its former life that can neither return nor dissipate into the ether. I moved down the road to another city, but sometimes I feel like that town is trying its best to call me back.

 

By 21drameus

 

You can check out more of 21drameus’ work here; http://www.writerscafe.org/21drameus