7 August 2012
Once upon a time in a misty little town in the middle of nowhere, lived a young boy who had spent much of his short life wishing that he was dead. It was a cold winter and the wind was whistling through the gaps in the bricks in the attic in which he lived. The boy shivered and huddled down next to his candle. He was waiting for his father to come back, but even in his ten year old hopefulness he knew that his father wasn't going to return. A famine had gripped the land, and all around the young boy had watched as the people around him had slowly packed up their lives into little boxes and had departed. It had been a long time since he'd felt the warmth of a kind hand, or seen the wrinkle of a smile at the corner of a person's eye when they chose to share their joy. So the young boy filled his waking hours of waiting with his mind. He drew his dreams on the walls with bits of charcoal from the drafty fire place, or chalk from the stones in the dead garden. The boy covered the fading wallpaper in spirals and creatures with wings and great eyes for looking through the misty sky at the place where the sun should be. And still the boy waited. His breath created a fog on the round window as he peered out at the dead world. No one had come for him, and the winter had whiled on for months. Longer and longer it stretched and the spring did not return. The boy felt strange, and tired, and withdrew further into the house, away from the windows and the feeble light of the misty days. His drawings became more fanciful. Soon people with glittering faces adorned the walls. A long man with a chalk coat stretched from the stairs in the cellar all the way up to the very top most rung of the attic ladder; his charcoal lantern lighting the way for the drawings that seemed to climb the ladder into the darkness of the mouldy attic. The boy cried and spent his days feeling sorry for himself; it had been a long time since he'd spoken aloud, but now he began to moan and grunt to himself, and the shadows that surrounded his guttering candle. It had burned for months and only now was burning low. He sighed and slammed the trapdoor of his attic room repeatedly. He felt the wood begin to break, and felt satisfied. It suddenly seemed a good idea to trap himself in the attic, away from the rest of the frightening house, so he began to kick at the ladder, punishing the wood for his loneliness. It broke and clattered downwards in pieces, the noise deafening in the empty house. He thought he heard a noise down beneath him. He regretted his madness. He wanted the ladder back. "Daddy? Daddy please come back for me. I'm frightened."
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Sunlight streamed through the windows and the curtains swirled in the breeze. A man sat quietly in a chair by the empty fire place, regarding the blackened ash. He supposed he saw faces looking at him. His son had loved to draw, he recalled. He and his son had sat for hours drawing. Filling paper with figures and animals. His son was a true genius. He'd have covered the walls if he, the man, his father, would have let him. He sighed and felt the tears press against his eyes again. Dandelion seeds drifted by the open window and birds sang brightly in the blue sky. His son had loved the summer time, and had felt sad in winter. How he missed him. There was a bang. He thought he heard a door slamming, a squeal of twisting wood, and then: "Daddy?"
In The Attic Of My Father • Opuss № I