Gone Home

I searched around, searching for what was up. Everything had been spinning, the world running around me faster and faster.

My vision blurred further and further with every blink, as I dangled from my car seat, the lock pushing against my sickened stomach.

I tried to call out for my parents, although nothing but a pathetic wheeze emerged from my mouth.

I squirmed and wiggled as sirens began to wail, hoping to at least free myself from my dangling prison, but by the time I had finally escaped, I had already lost too much blood.

“Mom, I’m tired… I’m ready to go home.”

Those were the last words I ever remember saying to her before I met my grandfather.

My grandfather was a strange man. The kind of man who glares at you a reminds you of everything you didn’t want to think about.

Around him, my brain would constantly yell run. ‘Is he done with me? Am I being thrown away?’, tended to follow after.

Every day was the same, churning stomach.

The same internal begging to go home, to see my father again, to sleep in my own bed.

Until it wasn’t.

Until I had gotten home.

Something about the home I had been raised in felt different. I never could tell what it was, but it made me realize that my dream was nothing but a meaningless void. An empty wish, with nothing but disappointment waiting for me.

The only thing I had left for my past was a small, “Huh.”

I wandered around my room, picking up old toys and looking at photo frames, searching for what meaning was left, when I saw a statuette.

A statuette that I treasured as a child. It had been one of those things a child decides is important for no other reason other than for the sake of it. It had once meant the world to me, to the point that I distinctly remember caring for it as if it was a child.

I put it to bed, fed it, took it with me everywhere. I remember those warm summer mornings that filled my heart with the purest form of positivity, where the gardens looked like the most gorgeous tropical rainforests, and my home seemed bright, where I’d look at my doll and take them from their bed, swaddling it in my arms. It seemed so perfect.

But then I picked it up. Its surface was cold, and it’s eye stared off into the cracked paint on the walls. What a useless thing I thought before dropping it to the ground, watching the pieces scattering.