Best Foot Forward

3

Dixon Morris looked out the car window, studying the houses along the road as his mother gently steered their car in a direction she clearly didn't want to go. Despite the grim set to June's face and the speed of the car declining gradually to walking pace as they approached, there was a cheerful mood between them. Dixon and his mother both looked forward to finding closure at last.

As they drove along their old neighbourhood, Dixon caught himself wondering if the houses had shrunk. In his childhood, this short stub of a road had always been so long. And the park used to be closer, didn't it? And the houses had always been big and tall, like multicoloured monstrosities. But these were all tiny little buildings, clearly built just after the second world war to house the expanding population. But as far as Dixon could remember they had been a lot larger than these cheaply constructed shacks.

As June stopped the car outside the shabbiest one on the row, Dixon frowned. He'd remembered the neighbouring homes as pastel-coloured, well-tended homes in comparison to their scruffy, brown house, but here they were in a line, complete with peeling paint and picket fences looking like rotted teeth. Some residents had tried to liven up their home with some colour and pretty flowers dotting mowed lawns, but most of the worn houses looked shoddy and cheap. He looked up at the porch where he had spent a few nights, sometimes voluntarily, out of his dad's reach. His padded bench was still there, with his plaid blanket piled on top in a mouldy heap. The house itself looked neglected. It was in a sad state of disrepair, but structurally it wasn't that much worse off than the neighbours. The small patch of a drive and lawn were both overgrown, and a few window frames looked ready to fall off, but apart from that, it looked like it had once been a typical, surprisingly small, house.

He slowly opened the car door and looked up and down the road. He had remembered theirs as a smaller house among larger ones, but in the morning sunshine, they looked overwhelmingly similar.

June stood outside the car, holding her sunglasses in her hand, slowly surveying the property. Dixon knew from the way she scratched her head that she was trying to keep her panic at bay.

"It's so small..." he finally said.

June turned her head to look at him with a drawn smile.

"It was all we could afford," she said.

"But. I remember it bigger! And the neighbour houses are so shabby! I thought they were huge palaces compared to this shithole!" Dixon shrugged.

"Language!" June corrected.

Dixon shot his mother a deadpan look.

"It's a dump!" he said dryly.

June sighed and let her hand fall from her dark curls.

"Yeah!" she breathed and dug a leather key chain with a single, dull grey key dangling from it. Somehow the worn leather tag, once in the shape of a house, matched the house.

"Right," she said and pushed off the car, propelling herself towards the house in front of them. 

The door was slightly stuck, but a sharp bump had it swinging outwards, and stale air hit them both.

"First thing first. Open as many windows as you can," June instructed and went hesitantly into the narrow hallway.

Dixon entered, surprised by the blue colour on the wall. Why did he remember it as dark brown? Apart from the broken light fixture, the light from the window by the door made it a lot lighter than the dungeon Dixon remembered.

On their right was the kitchen, brown, dingy and full of dead flies. A small table was in an inner corner where Dixon remembered doing his homework once his dad had passed out. The cabinets were all mostly intact. Some of the doors were crooked on the hinges from having been slammed too many times. The room was a lot narrower and shorter than he remembered, but by now, his expectations of this house took one hit after another.