The Ongoing Picture Challenge

History in the Houses

“I want to live there,” I smiled, tilting my head like I was trying to understand what I was actually saying. A smirk was playing at my lips, but I felt a part of me truly meant what I was saying. I want to live there, in all of its decrepit essence.

I craved the teardrop puddles crowded on the soaked asphalt, the overgrowth, just the entire fatality of the paired houses as they lay dying next to each other.

It goes back to the little girls with hearts for fixing, the crazed teenaged girls who want to be the one to give the boy with nothing to live for the smile, the ones searching for the bad boy to “just be good” for them only.

I was one of them in my own way, only slightly less psychopathic. I wanted to show these houses what vitality was, to feel their walls breath in sync with my own troubled thoughts.

“There…?” His eyebrows knit together and delicate lines grinned from the side of his crinkled cerulean eyes. “Come on, Mel,” Miles sighed at me, tugging on my arm. When I didn’t respond, he nearly ripped it out of its socket.

I shrugged him off and found a place on the ground to sit. The leaky ground was frosty beneath my bare legs. It had been an unusually chilly April day, and the wind had chilled everything. I didn’t know when I left my house this morning in jean shorts and a slim tank-top that this would be a problem.

I crossed my legs, looking up at Miles. Why I sat down despite the gross ground, I couldn’t tell you. Maybe it was because I knew it would piss Miles off. I wanted to dissect every part of these houses… They looked dissected enough already.

Silence hung in the air like the smell of smoke trailing from a cigarette. I smiled up at Miles, watching as he rolled his eyes, sighed, and plopped down next to me on the cold road.

“You’re so difficult,” he told me, jabbing a finger into my ribs as he leaned back on his hand. To be fair, I was difficult, but he hadn’t even tried this time.

“What’s so great about these houses?”

Hell if I knew, but I felt like I was falling in love. I was an explorer drawn out with wanderlust and creative innovation. My mind established a story in everything my eyes could process, running rampant with wishful ideas of a future and an abandoned past.

What happened in these houses? There were too many possibilities to fathom. Maybe two rueful families shared a property dispute, so close together. Or an overbearing mother begged her husband to build a house for their little momma’s boy of a son to live with his wife. Two lovers who desired space. Siblings who loved each other more than life, but couldn’t stand to share living responsibilities. Best friends from childhood who beat the odds and life-long hard ships. A home for business, a home to live in.

“Noah, what do you think you’re doing? My mom is going to hear you.” I mean, I knew he was an idiot, but I gave him enough credit not to show up at my house at three a.m. Sure, he knew I would be awake, I was always awake, but what was he doing here? Now?

“Vivi, your mom is going to hear YOU if you keep yelling at me instead of coming out to see me. So quietly, get out here!” He was whisper shouting at me from a mere ten feet down from my bedroom window.

I stayed where I was, facing him down from the confines of my bedroom. He wasn’t wrong, I was the one yelling. My mom would give herself a heart attack from scolding me if she woke up and found me talking to Noah this late at night. Noah was my best friend, and all my mom could picture was us having sex every moment we were alone.

What could my course of action be? The stairs creaked, the floorboards groaned, the walls bellowed at the slightest whisper of movement. The window was ten feet off the ground, I didn’t have Rapunzel hair, and there was no way I could trust Noah to catch me. Dutiful and strong was not in his job description.