Well today dawned crisp and cold. It is actually starting to feel a bit like December here. Of course we are almost into January. But at least it feels like December. So that’s something. I know I’m not huge on cold weather, but I have to admit, there is something about these crisp cold mornings I kind of actually enjoy. Just don’t tell anyone, okay? Are you ready to dive into the morning prompt? Good. Let’s go.
Okay one of the stories I am currently working on sort of bled into this one. I was actually thinking about this scene before I went to bed and somehow once I started writing it clicked into place. So at least I know I’ll use this segment in a story. That’s something I guess. And I kind of like it. I’ll modify it a bit when I put it in, but for now what I am currently working on leaked in.
Tuesday, December 28th: The air smelled stale.
The air smelled stale. I doubted anyone had been in the space for a while. I tried to remember the last time I was in the room. I was small then. It was just after Justin disappeared. Older than me by a good ten years, he hadn’t liked me in his space. He thought me a baby and thought I would break his things. The few times I was in his room when he was around, he grabbed me by the arm and hauled me out. I remembered the bruises from his none to gentle fingers.
I winced at the thought, it felt traitorous to think.
I remember trying to go into the room later. After he was gone. I was older then, no longer a baby. I remembered my feet not taking me past the door. I stopped as though there was an invisible wall separating it from the hallway. I remembered trying to make myself take that step into the room, but unable to take that final step. I don’t know how long I stood there but I remember beung caught in the doorway and told to leave.
It was Justin’s room and Justin’s room must not be touched. It had to remain the same as when he left it. So it would be there for when he returned.
I tried to remember then if I knew he wasn’t coming back. Had my last visit been before the arrest, before the trial, before the incarceration of the man who took Justin and so many others? I didn’t know. I couldn’t remember.
I remembered that my parents used to visit the space. Even though it had been years since Justin was in the space, their visits kept the ar fresh. Circulating. The door was opened, one of them entering and breathing in the space long enough for it not to feel abandoned. Then leaving and closing the door again.
They stopped opening the door before I left home, at least from what I saw. Now the door remained closed always and the air was stale. The memories were buried. Except that now I was here. And the man downstairs was here as well. The man who was sitting with my parents downstairs, feeling sorry for the way I was ambushed. I was familiar with the look of pity in his eyes. Of sorrow reflected.
This hadn’t been his plan. I knew that. I knew my parents well enough at this point to recognize the staging. He was caught just as I was and planned or not, this was how it played out. And now he was here.
I stepped into the stale room and closed the door behind me. The room had not changed since I was a child. It was where time stood still. I always felt guilty when I thought about my older brother. I didn’t know him very well. The age difference was too great. My interactions with hem were of an impatient teenager wanting to avoid a toddler. Perhaps as we grew we would both be closer, perhaps not.
He disappeared before I was old enough to be sent to preschool and I remembered very little of the time before. It was the time after that shaped me. Justin’s disappearance shaped my life. I was who I was because of it. If he stayed I would be someone else. I didn’t feel the weight of grief that others expected me to feel and couldn’t mourn his loss in the same personal way as my parents. The guilt of that rather than the loss weighed me down when I was taken to the therapists. It was that guilt I felt now.
Ten til Midnight 