Hope

Home

'What is this place?' asked Holly as I drove into the scavenged garage. 

I unbuckled my seat belt and opened the door 'Home' I replied.

Aaron took one of the bags and I took the other. Callum held his mother's hand tightly as we walked out of the garage over towards the front door. Ash followed us slowly, looking around at the real world, everything that had been hidden from her all her life.  

'Well I be damned if it's still here' I said as I bent down to grip the old, ragged welcome mat and turn it over, and sure enough, mom's spare rusted key was still under the math, untouched since the day she last put it there. 

I raised the key like a trophy and laughed 'People truly never check under the doormat' I say as I put it into the keyhole, and heard that ever so sweet sound of my old home's door unlocking. When I opened the door, a familiar scent hit my nose, a smell of home. Not a window was opened in twenty years, not a door touched, the home untouched by bandits and infected, it's as if the infection never happened, and I've come to visit my parents. When I look back I see Ash still outside on the porch, leaning against the white wooden barrier my father made around the porch, taking in the apocalyptic sights. I dropped the bag on the tiled hall floor as Holly and Callum entered, and then I went out to join her, also leaning on the handmade bannister, slowly decaying.  

We didn't speak, both of us just looked around. Dozens of homes side by side in the estate, settled behind a once majestically front garden where the locals would be flowering plants and cutting grass. All those once fine gardens overrun by weeds and uncut grass.  

To Ash, it was all new, she had never seen anything like it. But for me, it was familiar, especially with this neighbourhood. I know these roads, it's where I would play tag, soccer, basketball when I was a kid with the other boys in the neighbourhood. The roads were once my playground... now they're a feeding zone. 

'See that house over there?' I asked, pointing across the street to a home that wasn't quite as lucky as mine, destroyed inside and out with all windows smashed and rooms burnt from bandits with their Molotov's in the early days. 

'Yeah' replied Ash. 

'That's Mr. and Mrs. Roche's home, an elderly couple high up in their seventies' as I said it, the abandoned cars and overgrown weeds on the road began to disappear and I found myself back in the playful neighbourhood with cheering children and innocent games.  

'Me and my sister, when we were 10. We used run across to their home, walk right up those steps and ring the doorbell' I could still feel and hear the ringing of the bell, standing patiently by my sisters side, waiting for them to answer, looking through the distorted glass on either side of the door until we saw movement approaching. 

'And then Mrs. Roche would answer the door and the smell of freshly baked cookies would tease our tonsils. "Can we have a biscuit?" we'd ask her politely, she'd simply smile and reply "of course" and invite us in with a great big welcome' 

I can still smell it, the old smell of burning tobacco and age old furniture. The unique smell of Mr. Roche's cologne that I called "the old man smell". 

'She brought us into the kitchen, and from the top shelf she pulled down an orange cylindrical box, crack it open and point it towards us. And us being kids, knowing we should take only one, reach in and try to be sneaky about taking two. Of course she knew, but she pretended that she didn't. We would eat the first one in her home as Mr. Roche comes in from the garage out back with a welcoming smile. 

'Hello Jerry and Bríd!' he would say with such optimism. 

'Hi Mr. Roche' we'd say back to him. The fresh air would breeze past our faces as he opened that back door leading to the garage. Mr. Roche would invite us into the living room, we had to walk back out into the hall to get there, a small room with a couch, an armchair and a television. Mr. Roche would sit in his old green armchair with red flora designs and light his pipe.