The House On The Hill - Short Story

She was walking up the pathway, not oblivious to the to the impending heat harshly beating down on her face, at least she could see her house now, and she noticed how the windows glistened in the sun reflecting back, just as it did in a story she heard as a child about the house and the golden windows. She couldn't help but think how simple life used to be when she had sat on the carpet in the classroom listening to stories like that, not understanding their worth and still appreciating the calmness of letting it sink in, never knowing that she would look back on them today, TODAY of all days.
Her focus shifted back to her throbbing feet as she looked down to the shoes that felt heavy in her hands. Her thoughts were at war, as much as she wanted the comfort and protection that the distant house promised she feared the silence within, a reminder that she was not only alone but that she was lonely.

She has been walking a few kilometers from where she made him stop the car and got out. It was just one fight too many and she realized that even if she won every battle, this war was not for her, she had nothing left to loose and also nothing left to gain in that relationship. After all he had given her nothing but a sense of self pity for staying in the first place and more than that, he never gave her a reason to stay. If you do what you have always done, you would get what you had always gotten as the saying goes.

The scorching sand on the soles of her feet stung deeply and as the physical pain infiltrated her thoughts with every step closer to home, they gave the tears running down her cheeks a dual purpose. At this point she couldn’t tell exactly what felt worse; the pain of her flesh or the pain in her heart. At least she knew that she was real, as she swallowed down the hurt.

She had been no stranger to loneliness, despite the fact that she was seldom alone. And it could very well be that her independent way of life that she had grown accustomed to throughout the years often constricted her ability to romantically co-exist. Not that being the independent loner that she had become would have been her first choice or even an option as a matter of fact. It was a more a case of a random series of events that snowballed while she was doing what needed to be done.

Just a few more steps she told herself as she paused for a moment in the shade of an overhanging tree, searching for some form of divine intervention to grant he the strength and motivation that she so desperately needed right now for the last hundred and fifty meters to her hollowed sanctuary. For a moment she closed her eyes and found herself lost in flashes playing out before her of the intimacy cocooned in the memories of all that happened just the night before. In that moment she could feel the twisted sheets caressing every curve of her naked body while the air, infused with the palatable scent of spent passion, filled her lungs, and the last flickers of lapping flames splashed from the wick embedded in the melted wax of the burnt out candle. Swiftly she forced herself back to the moment she was in and opened her eyes, took in a gulp of air as one would if you were going to dive under water then gave the first step to the last stretch home.

She felt insecure and uncertain as if she was stuck between freedom and death and couldn’t define the one from the other. Then she looked down at her forearms. Her blue stained skin was his final parting gift to her, and in that very moment she realized that whatever all the hurt she feels now and anything that might come would still be better than allowing herself to stay!

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