Down memory lane (standard:other, 1472 words)
Author: Lev821	Added: May 18 2012	Views/Reads: 2861/1913	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Returning to his childhood home after all these years. Is everything as it seems?

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

rooted in the past, as though progress had upped and left, and spread 
across everywhere else except here. 

He gripped the handle, and slowly pushed it open. Apprehensively
stepping in, he saw that a thick layer of dust covered everything, and 
daylight forced its way through the grimy windows. Everything was as he 
had expected. There were no signs of anybody having been here in the 
forty-five years since he'd left. It seemed that he was the last person 
to leave the house. His mother was still in her favourite chair, 
dressed as she was, knitting needles in hand, pattern on the arm-rest, 
with an unfinished cardigan. Her skeletal features had a thin layer of 
flesh stretched across them, everything else having decayed. Any 
permeations she would have excuded had long gone. He didn't know how 
she had died. Yet, he was with her when she did. One day she had been 
complaining about how she was convinced the electricity company were 
overcharging her, and knitting at the same time. How she could 
concentrate on both he never knew. She was certainly practised in each. 
He had looked up from the TV then because she had fallen silent. She 
seemed to have fallen asleep, so he continued to watch his programme, 
and only later did he discover that she had died. Without tears, 
without any frantic calls for an ambulance, he thought it would be 
easier for him to leave. He was leaving anyway, but didn't think it 
would be quite that early. Somebody else would see to her, he had 
thought, and maybe discover how she had died. His disappearance though, 
would probably have aroused suspicions, and maybe even a murder hunt, 
but he had decided to take the risk. Little did he realise, even at 
that time, that around the village, things happened slowly, if at all. 

Perhaps the locals knew about her, knew that her son was incapable of
murder, were not aroused by her absence, and decided to leave her 
there, entombed as she would perhaps have wanted. Her final resting 
place in her favourite chair with her favourite pastime, in front of 
the TV in the house she had always lived. He wasn't going to change 
that. There was no point in disturbing her, so he left, not bothering 
with the rest of the house, feeling no need. He had seen what he had 
returned to see, and had his beliefs confirmed, about this place being 
a relic of the past, where you could leave your door open and no 
burglars would enter, where people trusted each other, everybody knew 
one another. He liked it, liked its parallel reversion of modern 
society, and wondered if he ever might come back to live here. Yet, he 
also liked the challenge of the big cities, where everybody looked 
after number one, even if it was to the detriment of other individuals, 
where money ruled, and people strived to make more and more of it, 
where stress and hostility thrived. He was used to it, and didn't 
really know anything else. Perhaps one day he would return, if 
circumstances permitted. He was sure everything would be as it was. 

Back out onto the path, he walked back to the gate and took one last
look at his childhood home, smiled a humourless smile, and turned and 
walked back into the village where his car was waiting. He drove back 
the way he had came, watching the village recede in the rear-view 
mirror, where all his childhood memories were. After a few minutes, he 
was back on a main road, and because he maintained the speed he was 
driving at along the lanes, a car behind him beeped its horn, the 
driver wanting him to speed up. Welcome back to society, he thought, 
stepping on the accelerator. 


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