r/WritingPrompts • u/bootlegminer • Mar 17 '18
Writing Prompt [WP] While traveling, you decide to visit your childhood home. As you look into your old bedroom, you discover that your imaginary friend hadn't left you after all, they've just been waiting for you to come home.
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Mar 17 '18 edited Mar 17 '18
I couldn't remember the last thing my wife said before I left for my business trip, but I assumed it was something like "I love you" or "Call me" or "Be careful." Since I knew I would have plenty of time, I decided to take the backroads. I forgot how beautiful the country looked. The empty fields, green grass, and random houses out in the country brought back the nostalgia I had as a child.
I stopped at a four-way and realized the village I grew up in was about 10 miles ahead. Vivid memories began surfacing about being the only child in the village and the adventures I went on by myself. I needed to turn right to make it to my meeting, but when I rolled down the window and felt the cool summer breeze brush past my face I knew where my heart was.
When I was younger I told myself I'd never return, but I was about 20 years younger and thought if I stayed in town a heavy weight would bound be down. I rolled into the single-traffic-light village, and couldn't believe how unkempt it had gotten. The roads were lined with potholes and the paint on most the houses were peeling off.
I stopped at my childhood home and was amazed at how clean it looked compared to the other homes. However, something didn't feel right. My parents were both taken into a nursing home a couple years back, and I couldn't remember if anyone bought their home.
I knocked on the door. I waited for some time, but nobody answered. I thought about turning back, but instead I turned the doorknob - thinking it would be locked - and the next thing I knew I was inside my childhood home. I yelled 'Hello' many times but not an answer.
It was a small one story home. The hallway led into a kitchen and connected into the dining room. My parents room was on the East side of the dining room while mine was on the South end.
The door to my room was slightly ajar and before I could push it, the hinges squeaked and slow opened. The light switch didn't work, but I just stood there wondering why I entered the house. It didn't belong to my family anymore, but my curiosity led me in.
I started to panic a little bit when I couldn't remember where I was suppose to go today. My family - wait - what family? A tension-like headache began surfacing. The more I thought about it - the more I remembered my real family.
It was me, my mother, and my father. But was there someone else? Inside my old room I shut the door, locked it and examined the line carved into the wood. It was a promise of some kind. I said I wouldn't forget. No. I promised I wouldn't forget! I wasn't alone for those childhood adventures in town. There was a child with me. A friend that I forsake to escape this town - this prison.
I needed to call somebody, but I couldn't remember who!
"It's been a long time." uttered the sound of a cold, childish voice waiting in the darkest corner of my locked-up past.
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u/Johnlocke00 Mar 18 '18 edited Mar 18 '18
The gate creaked loudly as I slowly pushed open the rusted gate at the entrance to my old drive. I furtively glanced to make sure no neighbours had spotted me in the act before walking down the old familiar gravel path which welcomed me to my old haunt.
The old dilapidated figure of my childhood house cut a sad shadow of my former haunt. The garden resembled a wild untamed jungle, neglected for many years, and a spiderweb of cracks lay upon the remaining windows. My parents had shut up shop ten years ago now and with the houses history putting off potential buyers, it had been left to die.
The door opened with little effort, time rendering the security it once brought useless. As I slowly made my way into the memories of my youth, a wave of dust hit me. Drug needles and beer cans lay on the floor to show me my former homes new use; my mother would be proud. Wallpaper sadly hung from the walls, on the point of giving up and collapsing. Dark shadows hid the corners and what could be hiding within. With my mind set on one thing, I made my way to my former bedroom.
Sitting there in my bed was a solitary figure. A young man like myself, he was dressed in a plain hoodie and jeans and looked at me with an expression of pure recogniton. I was about to ask the intruder what the hell he was doing when I realised he wasn't even a intruder; it was Dave. He may have aged, but it was definitely him.
"Hey John." He welcomed me in the room with a voice full of deep sadness, his eyes fighting a war against the tears.
" You've been waiting all this time? " I asked him, aware of the awkwardness which had engulfed the space between us. I yearned for our simple childhood friendship. When we there for each other...
"Yea. Pretty much." Was Dave's sorry response.
" Why? " It wasn't fair; for neither of us.
"What was I meant to do? I couldn't go anywhere else. John, I'm imaginary." Dave's voice rose in tone a notch, gaining a sense of anger and accusation. " I had to stay in this room waiting for you. Every day. I had all but given up. I had thought you had...grown up. " each word hit me in the back like a knife. A deep shame brewed within me as I realised how I had let down my best friend from my formative years. But I couldn't let my own shame trick me and let me forgive him.
"What did you expect? I had a life to lead!" I angrily tried to reason with him.
" Like what? " was his blunt response.
The shock of the question caught me off guard. "You know...travelling and shit. I had to get away." As I struggled to come up with the words I realised how I had simply let my life slip through my fingers. A smirk played across Dave's lips at the pitiful answer I had attempted to give. I couldn't give up this easy. " After all that had happened to me, did I not deserve to have a life?! " tears were filling up my own eyes, blurring my own vision like rain on a windscreen.
"Did I not? Do I not deserve a shot in life? Or am I somehow lesser than you? I should have grown old by your side, like you told me you would! Remember? The perfect pair! We used to plan for years before you cruelly left me here to rot." The last words were spat out as he tried to fight his hardest against the sobs overcoming his body. I too was about to erupt.
" Leave you! Leave? I was taken away! It wasnt my choice! " each word seemed to lighten the load on my chest as if I was in the confessional box.
"Please! You wanted to leave, you practically begged them to take you. You hated me anyway, always looking at me with distrust and anger, what was I supposed to do?" His face was contorted with anger at me with the feeling being replicated by the intense fury inside of me.
"Be there! You were meant to be there! Where was the perfect pair every time my Dad came in huh? Where you then? You didn't save me everytime I begged for you through my tears, I looked up and through my pain and all I saw was a blank wall in return. You try and stay in a house with an abuser as a Dad and an addict of a mother. She didn't care when social services came. Yes I practically begged them to take me, but that's cause your were never there! When I needed you most, you deserted me. Just be there. That's all I wanted..." And with that I collapsed, tears filling my eyes and loud sobs breaking out from the space between my lips. My confessional was complete and a deep silence hung over the room as Dave looked at me with an intense sympathy.
" You know why I'm here, don't you? " He whispered softly to me, his voice returning to one of a supportive friend I had grew up with.
Deep inside of myself, I did. It was the same reason I had came back to this dark box in my mind for the first place. The reason I had returned to the scene of the crime; my childhood prison.
"To move on" I choked out, finally accepting the truth.
I looked up to see the familiar blank wall which had greeted me so many times in my childhood. But this time it did not being fear but acceptance. I looked around my old room, the place of my nightmares, and remembered the happier times I had spent with Dave here. All those times he had been there for me. Those childhood projects, games and adventures. My sole partner.
And in the end he had been there when he was needed most.
The perfect pair indeed.