You Always Had To Watch Out For Snakes21:51 Jul 03 2024
Times Read: 220
When I was small there was an old abandoned house not too far away, two story and modest size. It was surrounded by a small patch of forest...tall grass, weeds, old and new trees all growing near the front porch and back door...there was no yard to speak of...the house had no visible path or walkway that would have welcomed a person, it had all been long over grown...it was as though that house had been plunked down in that little forest without disturbing nature at all...
The house had been painted a dull grey by time and weather...many of its windows broken...smashed...entrance doors slightly warped and ajar, what was once possible color pealing off in strips...matching window frames, floor boards on the porch twisted here and missing there, weeds escaping up through the cracks...all weathered and time worn...no one had lived there for a long time...there was a silence around it that only a house like that can have...forgotten...lonely...
Many times I had made the journey...across fields, over creeks, stepping between trees big and small, feet tamping down tall grass, watching out for snakes, you always had to watch out for snakes...getting close enough to peer in a few of those broken windows...listening...I think I even stepped up onto the porch a time or two, but in that silence any small creak sounded loud and would send me running, heart pounding...I don't know how many times that scenario played out...how many times I had made that pilgrimage only to run away.
Then came the day that I finally found the courage...quiet and careful...first my head and then after a short hesitation...I stepped through the broken front door.
I can remember standing there and listening for a time, looking down a hall and into the kitchen...it had to be the kitchen because I could see yellowed linoleum on the floor, torn, dirty, corners warped up, littered with scattered bits and shards of glass from the broken windows. An old wooden table still stood in the center...rays of sun light crossing it...dust shone in the air...hot...silent...
I slowly inched my way into another room...I looked up a falling stairway to the second floor and wondered who had climbed them, a family? Just an old man? Could they have possible imagined one day someone would be standing in the death of the world that was once theirs...that was once alive and breathing...a world that once had a future and possibilities...what did they climb those stairs to? Climb for? If I closed my eyes and listened, I could almost hear footsteps...
It was the walls that really drew my attention...drab and beaten, punched out plaster lath eyes...they stared at me...it was as though the walls had retained every moment of life that house once held...moments captured by them...as though they were bursting with countless memories and wanted to release them...overflowing...they knew who walked those stairs and they knew why...they had witnessed everything...seen everything...heard everything...a raggedy dirty old blanket lay crumpled in a corner...
Something moved in the kitchen and that did it...I lost my nerve and bolted back out that broken front door, into the tall grass with the mixture of old and budding trees, those plaster lath eyes now watching me through shattered windows, running for home, dodging between trees...racing home to my own stairs and walls...watching out for snakes, you always had to watch out for snakes...
COMMENTS
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Vampirewitch39
19:11 Jul 08 2024
I always was drawn to old, abandoned places. Took lots of photos outside, safe. After my father died I got brave and started going inside. Today I am careful but see them as a sort of theory.
Vampirewitch39
19:11 Jul 08 2024
On life. Beauty in the decay.
MeanMeanMrTu
22:10 Jul 08 2024
I understand...