A new short story...

Memories

She sits silently, waiting. Light streams unevenly through the broken blinds, creating a jagged pattern against the bare wall. The wall wasn’t always bare, but that’s all almost forgotten now. The days when the walls told a very different story, had a different life. Now they are just empty; empty and forgotten.

Slowly she gets up from the hard floor. She brushes herself off and walks up to the broken blinds. She pulls them aside creating dust swirls to move through the air as more light streams into the room.  She holds her hand up to shield from the brightness. Still waiting.

She turns to survey the empty walls and a room which once held everything she thought she wanted. Now not only the walls are empty, but so is she. The wooden floors covered with the dust of being unwanted and unloved. Only a lonely suitcase sits neatly by the doorway.

She moves across the room, to the once busy hallway. There was always someone coming and going. The long silent corridor stretches the length of the house, several other empty rooms off it. She decides to return to the window, not wanting to enter any of those rooms.

She pulls the broken blinds open, and as she does, they finally drop, seeming to have lost any hope of being repaired. They land on the floor with a loud crash; dust clouds fly through the bright light now streaming in. She stares at them lying defeated on the floor and decides to leave them. There is no point in trying to fix something that is broken for good.

She stares out the window, squinting in the light. She doesn’t shield herself this time. Slowly she closes her eyes, allowing the warm sunlight to wash over her. A flash of a memory flickers in her mind. A warm day, laughter, love, happiness. The life she thought she wanted. She opens her eyes, still waiting.

Finally the car pulls up outside. She sighs. She turns and walks towards the doorway and picks up the lonely suitcase. She walks out of the room for the last time and slowly heads for the front door. As she exits the house, she knows she will never come back, never have this life again. The memories will be hidden deep, forgotten like the bare wall inside the room, inside the house, which once held everything she thought she wanted.

By Ariane Dalton