Visiting Home

The heavy air blanketed the neighborhood, seemingly suffocating everything around it. The humidity made it hard to breathe, forcing me to inhale much more than I’m used to. Despite the conditions, only a small amount of fog had formed. Although it wasn’t much, it was enough to give the surroundings a strange atmosphere.

It was worse that I was already here under strange circumstances. My friends and family found the idea dangerous, but I’m not particularly known for being cautious. Recently, my childhood home had been declared as an abandoned property. The house hadn’t been kept in great condition, and so it was left unbought for over half a decade. The real estate agents determined that it wasn’t worth fighting for, so they left it there. A little house by the train tracks, quiet and alone.

The windows were dark. It wasn’t surprising, but it felt wrong. Instead of feeling like a home, it felt cold and empty. A place that used to harbor so much warmth and simplicity is now a husk of what was once there. The uneven beige bricks that line half of the front wall are dusted with dirt, and the flowerbed that lines the porch sits barren and dead. An eerie feeling washes over me as I grab the front door handle. It’s odd; as long as I’ve been alive, someone has lived here. Even after we moved out, someone bought the house almost immediately. But now, I’m the only one here.

The door creaks along with the floorboards as I enter. The light from the sunset illuminates the hardwood through the curtains. It gives an almost calming sensation, which almost directly juxtaposes the fear I had of entering this place. I was afraid of how shocking it would be to see the emptiness around me in comparison to the life that filled the house only twenty years prior. But it feels almost like home again–not the way I remember it, but in the sense that I did once know what the feeling was. It feels complete, almost the end of a cycle. It’s as if the house has been through so much, and for years, it just begged to rest. And now that it’s getting it, the walls are tired yet relieved. The windows look grey, but in a serene way. They are finally asleep.

The hallway to my right catches my eye. It’s completely dark, and gives an almost ominous impression. Intrigued, I enter between the grey walls, and I’m met with three doors. Of course, none of the rooms belong to anyone anymore, but I remember them as they once were. The room to my left was where my parents slept, and the bathroom is directly in front of me. The door to the right leads to my room, where the majority of my memories lie.

I carefully push the door open, hearing only a whisper of a creak. The room is lit up like the living room with the light from the dimming sunset. The two windows across from the doorway are very obviously encased in a thin layer of dust, along with the wall beside it. The white paint from the walls is beginning to chip off. It’s very obvious that the room hasn’t been visited in a year at the very least.

The silence is the next thing I observe. As someone who would spend his days in this room, I remember the sounds of the vent or trains passing by. But now, there’s nothing. The ambience of the wind pushing against the glass panes outside is all I can hear besides my own footsteps on the ground. It feels like a weight added to my chest, almost as if I were a child who realized he had lost a rock he found on a walk home. It’s a slight feeling of grief, but the lost item is so far removed from the entirety of my life that I can’t help but feel only a glimpse of the emotion. In this particular case, however, the thing I grieve for isn't an item–it’s my childhood, and the memories I left behind to be forgotten.

The flooding back of memories is too much for me to bear. My chest gets tight. I begin to tremble, as if I were shivering. However, my face feels hot, so it isn’t the bitterness of December weighing my body down. It’s me, it’s my head, it’s everything around me. It’s the past screaming out, yelling for me, begging to be heard and acknowledged. It’s the future, looming over me and reminding me that nothing matters, nothing is important, this will all get turned to ash and dust today. And it’s the present–the realization that I’m in this house, all alone, with no protection or plans to help me out. Across all pieces of time, I’m swallowed with panic and vulnerability. Out of instinct, I sit down onto the hardwood floor and collect my thoughts.

Tears begin to steadily flow down my face. I breathe in and out, focusing on calming myself. The light is beginning to disappear outside of the house. The sun has nearly passed the threshold, and soon it’ll be nighttime. Of course, the smartest thing to do right now is leave, but I can’t move. I curl up onto the floor, tears still rolling down my face. The world suddenly goes black.

~~~

The smell of paint is the first thing I notice. Fresh paint, but not so fresh that the scent is overwhelming. It’s simply a background detail, indicating that it was applied a few weeks ago at most. The next thing I notice is the warmth that surrounds me, seemingly caressing my face and welcoming me. It almost feels as if I’m home.

I open my eyes to find the sun shining through the windows. Did I really sleep here all night? Am I dreaming? There are so many questions bouncing around in my brain, but when I observe the rest of the room, my mind is so overwhelmed that the questions stop for a moment.

The first thing I notice when I sit up is the color. Everything seems so much more colorful and vibrant, almost like the colors you’d see on a children’s show. There are drawings on the walls, with stick figures plastered onto plain copying paper. A TV set sits upon a dresser behind me, and a bed sits adjacent to the dresser. The bed seems comfortable, with sheets and pillows decorating it. The walls are no longer chipping, and the room is no longer silent. Clattering comes from the kitchen, and an indistinct conversation complements it. I smell a slight hint of bacon as well.

I need to think through this. It’s crazy, right? I remember what the house was like before I fell asleep. It was barren, quiet, and scarily different from what I had remembered. Now, it’s full, bustling, and remotely familiar. Not as familiar as a specific memory, but as familiar as an emotion you feel in a single fleeting moment. It feels as if I’ve been here before, although I haven’t. Not like this.

As I’m on the floor frozen in fear, I hear footsteps from the hallway leading to the door. Before I can process the things going on around me, a little girl runs in. She quickly closes the door behind her, and quickly turns around to give me a smile. Her brown hair is cut in a bob, and she’s wearing a blue tie dye dress. She radiates joy and wonder just from her smile alone.

“Come on, let’s go play outside!” She whines. In shock, I realize who this girl is. The voice, the dress, the hair–this girl is me. And I don’t mean figuratively. This little girl is literally me, the same version of me when I was under six years old. I’m not sure how young she is now, but she’s either three or four.

I couldn’t help but look at her in pure shock. My mouth parts open like I’m going to say something, but I don’t. I have so much to say, and nowhere to begin. I have to be dreaming, but it’s unusual for me to have dreams this vivid. The girl is unamused, and gives me a pouting face. “You promised! Please?”

In a split second, I decided to play along. Resisting whatever this is will most likely do more harm than good. “I-I’m coming,” I stammer. “Just… lead the way.”

She picks her smile back up again and turns to the door. She opens it as quickly as she did the last time, and leaves it open so I could follow. I’m led out into the dining room, where three people are sitting down. Two of them are my parents, but not how they look now. They’re dressed differently, and they have their old glasses on. The other person is my half brother, who I hadn’t seen in such a long time. It may have been at least three years since we last met, and even then, it felt almost in passing. In comparison to the other moments in my life, that one had felt so small and insignificant, despite my attempts to magnify it. But now, here was the version of a brother I had once known, the one that I had kept in my psyche ever since I was a kid.

“Maria, please eat breakfast before playing outside.” My mother sounds so much more colorful than she did before. She had always been a colorful woman, but her voice seems to match the cheerful veil pulled over my eyes. It then hits me: I must be experiencing things the same way I did as a child.

“Okay, but can Martin have some too?” My heart stops. How does she know my name? I didn’t even know I was trans at this point of my life. How would she know what my name is? I want to ask, but it feels rude to interrupt. “Just look at him. He’s starving!”

My parents don’t look away from her. “Okay, yes, he can have some. Let me make him a plate.” My mother gets up from the table, passing behind my father’s chair and disappearing into the kitchen. My father and brother sit in silence for what seems like an eternity. How long does it take to make a plate of bacon? I want to go check on my mom, but something stops me.

I turn around, realizing that I don’t even have a seat at the table. I then hear a slow scraping across the ground, and see Maria pushing a chair up to make a seat for me. She pushes it between her seat and our brother’s. After she finally places the chair, she turns and looks at me.

“Here, I got you a seat, Martin.” She pats the bottom of the chair. “Now you can eat breakfast with the rest of the family!”

I look at her for a moment, slightly alarmed. Why does it seem like she’s the only one reacting to my existence? Why is no one else greeting me, and why did my mom need to be reminded that I should also have a plate of breakfast? The whole thing is bizarre. It feels like I’m invisible to everyone except the younger version of myself. I slowly sit down in the seat, all of these thoughts still running in my mind.

My brother turns to my dad, “Chris, don’t you think it’s silly to let her do this?” He seems irritated, supposedly by my presence. He hasn’t turned to look at me once, though. Does he even know I’m here? I begin to speak, but my dad responds.

“No, Connor, everyone has imaginary friends when they’re a kid.”

My blood goes cold. Imaginary friend? What does that mean? Am I a figment of my own imagination? That makes no sense. Whatever thoughts I had before are immediately thrown away now. How can I be an imaginary person?

Before I know it, a tear runs down my face. It feels so… wrong. If I am imaginary, that obviously means that I can’t be seen by anyone except the girl. But, if I’m invisible… does that mean I can’t see my family again? Does it mean that I’m stuck here, stuck with a family that can’t even see me? A family that doesn’t exist in the real world anymore? Why is this happening to me of all people?

“Dad, stop! You’re making him sad!” I didn’t know it before, but I’m almost sobbing at this point. I can’t feel the tears running down my cheeks, but I can see my vision getting watery. I sniffle and try to calm myself in an attempt to not scare Maria. I can’t let her see me like this. However, every time I tell myself that it’s okay, it’s probably a dream, this can’t be real–another thought pops in. You’re invisible. You’ll never reach them again. This is your punishment for not spending enough time with them.

Not thinking, I start running towards the door. It nearly bursts open, almost without any effort. I sit on the stairs leading up to the porch, letting my thoughts take a hold of me. Unexpectedly, I see a cat come around the corner of the house in front of me. It seems cautious, especially since I’m crying my eyes out. I smile at it and then realize that it’s my childhood cat, which makes me cry even more. I try to appear friendly, and not scare him away. He slowly approaches me.

“Here, baby, come here,” I call out. He loses some of the fear in his posture and climbs up beside me. He sits on the same step I’m sitting on, laying next to me in a position that shows that he’s calm. It surprises me, as the cat I knew was always mean and never found anyone trustworthy. He only started trusting me as I got older. Even more concerning: how can he see me?

He begins purring, and he climbs into my lap. My vision gets clearer, which I’m taking as a sign that my tears stopped. I look up at the sky, wondering how I got into this position. The sky is the brightest blue I’ve ever seen, like a glowing bluebird had used its feathers to build the sky. As my body settles down, I realize the calmness around me. It feels as if I’m sinking into the fabric of time itself. It feels so empty, yet so calm.

~~~~~

It was all over the news. The small town was shaken over the carelessness of the act: an act of arson with one dead. A man, lost too young–he was twenty-six. It was only a small, abandoned house that no one cared about, but somehow, one person was dead. How did that happen? The coroner said that the body was close to the flame, so it may have been started by the victim itself. However, the townspeople decided to question if that were the case–why would someone commit suicide in such a way? Was the body near a wall close to the outdoors, and that’s why the report came out that way? If he had started the fire, wouldn’t he have run away? The questions kept coming, with no answers. 

Two weeks later, the police department made a statement about the fire–it had started outside, not inside. Who started it? They had no clue. But now, suicide had been ruled out. Half of the concerns would have gone away. However, by that point, the world had moved on from the case, and no one remembered the strange fire on Graceland Street. Some people saw the article and had to be reminded that it was the case that the town was talking about just a couple of weeks ago. They skimmed it, and moved onto the comics.

However, the family of Martin Wallis had gathered to mourn his memory. His mother, father, and two brothers had gone, all together once again. His mother and father, still in town, had only driven a few minutes to the funeral. His brothers, however, had driven from states away. His half brother, from Wyoming, and his younger brother, from Vermont. After being apart for so long, his family had all gathered together to mourn a shared grief. The loss of a brother, a son, a friend. As they all stood around, they all wondered if they had made enough time for him. Would things have been different if they had never drifted apart? Or would they have been the same? They silently decided that while they didn’t know for sure, it had turned out this way for them. And that was that.