Building 2 “It Comes Back”

“Things come to an end. That is simply the reality of life. But despite that, we are so unprepared for it, the systems we grow and nourish failing to adequately help us to move on when something is lost forever.

Some people say not all those who wander are lost, and that not all things that are lost stay that way if sought out. But such thinking, such false idealism only makes it hurt so much worse when the reality comes, and we are forced to see the truth.

That even if such things return, it is never what it was, and like all other things it is always on borrowed time.

Stories are like that, and that is something that I think I have learned to get better at. There is a thrill in the ending of a story, of taking a journey with a thing of your own creation and seeing it reach the point where you are sure that the tale has been told.

But people aren't like that.

They shouldn't be like that.

Three years ago, the ones I thought I had lost started coming back. Three years ago, my house went from a family of four, to three, to two, to none. And after I got done burying them in the backyard, after I washed the acid burns off my hands and showered more times than I could count, only then did it suddenly dawn on me that this was an ending.

But I didn't know how to begin something new.

Eventually I found a way, I reached out. I talked to people I hadn't talked to in years, created new connections, and slowly but surely started to create a new life for myself.

Then they started coming back.

First one, then two, then three.

But they weren't like they were before. They couldn't be like they were before. Because they were the ones that died. They knew they had died, that what they were were simply a shadow of a shade, cast upon the walls. But I could see them all the same. I could smell them, that acidic scent lingering in my home.

We were a family again, by most measurements.

But that is not how loss is. There is always a shelf life, and if I had known, I wouldn't had struggled so hard. It only makes it worse, because though I never really wished for things to be like they are now, the truth remains that the things that we are likely to lose, are often things that linger and return, even if we maybe don't want them to.

Three yeas ago, they started coming back, but not like they used to be.

And yet I am sitting here, in my home, trying to see my life as being something other than it was, because getting better was worth it. Getting better was worth all the effort and the tears and the pain, and to have it all back in this mockery of form just isn't fucking fair. I didn't want it to come back. Not like this!
I am so sorry. I have been so empty lately. They take something out of me, just by existing. I didn't ask for them back, just like I never want to start a story all over again. But this place has a way of always returning things to us, of bringing back things, the truth eating away and eating away at us even long after it has been relevant.

Things always come to an end, but they never really do do they? Because there are always survivors, those left behind who have to keep on going even when things reach their end.

And the ending isn't the part that hurts.

I would know. I would give anything if it would just mean that things would stay ended.

Because what they are, if it is what it was before, is not something worth waiting for. And this place has a way of taking pain, and letting it linger.

Even long after it was dead.”

It is raining today in a way that it hasn't in such a long time. Thick sheets run across the ground while the thunder rumbles and the lightening flashes like the hand of god. I have been sitting here on the front porch for the last hour, simply enjoying the feeling of the spray of the rain on my face, as the rain is tossed about by the wind.

I am getting a little soaked, but I don't care.

You have to take the moments where you can get them.

There is an empty lot down the road where a house had been torn down years before. The concrete basement was filled in, and even now you can see the places where the old concrete rises up from the ground. By now it might as well be public land for all the interest that has been paid to it. Some people have suggested turning it into a community garden, but the idea was nixed.

People say the ground has gone sour.

I know that what they mean is something else, something that is harder to explain to an outsider. That there is something wrong in the spirit of the place, and that no amount of effort could fix that. The soil is bad because the land itself is an awful mess, and there seems no other way about it.

Lately, the land...

A siren? There is a siren going off. A tornado siren? There hasn't been a tornado through here in ages. The system was put in place long ago before the land was swallowed up by homes. It remains, even though it never really has its use...

I am inside now. I see what all the fuss was about. The wind has started to really pick up and the rain is coming down as a torrent of water...the winds are supposed to be around sixty miles per hour.

The siren just ended, but the severe storm warning I guess will keep on going till 11:30pm. Shit. I really can't remember the last time I heard a siren going off at night. It is eerie and out of place.

What was I saying?

Right. The land. Thing is, the land over the last year or so has started to become sort of a sanctuary. Long grasses and prairie plants have started to take hold, and the though there is some maintenance outside the fence, no effort has been made to deal with the stuff inside.

But lately things in there have been strange. There have been holes in the fence where small creatures had managed to find their way in, but the holes have gotten larger. But most of all, the strange thing is the way all the grass is starting to rot.

At first it was simply a bit of mold on some of the stalks, but now it is starting to become obvious that the plants there are rotting, breaking down with a gray moldering coating on much of the green there. There have actually been talks about trying to find a way to combat the strange blight, as the smell is getting noticeable, and people really don't want to see it spread.

I don't know what is going on with it. It is just very strange.

I just saw a swarm of rats running across the road.

What the hell is going on around here?

The siren. It is going off again. It is only supposed to go off again if there is something else going on. But I am looking and I can't find any further word. It is only supposed to be a bad storm. There is nothing else.

I am looking at the sky. The lightening is rushing across with a violence I...this isn't supposed to happen. We did all the things were supposed to do!

THERE IS A SHAPE IN THE SKY!

We dodnid did what we89u were supposed to.

It is agnry. Angry.

Angry.

Why is is it angry at 0[us.

We did it right,.

We did it right?

Namarrgon...Namarrgon

The graveyard is burning.