Abandoned: A Scene in 500 Words

During time spent on lock down in the 2020 coronavirus outbreak, I produced a series of character studies, short shorts, poems, and vignettes in 500 or fewer words. Enjoy!



I’ve driven this street but never walked it before. Walking is such a different perspective, allowing focus on things we drive by without a glance. I love to walk. I could walk all day.

So I must have seen the house but I have no memory of it. It looks derelict. It’s out of place between neat lawns and manicured gardens. I wonder if the neighbors resent it.

It’s a large house, a full two stories with garden level windows peeking through untrimmed juniper shrubbery. A side door opens into the garden and that’s what initially catches my eye: it’s a gorgeous door. But it’s half hidden behind a juniper with a large lilac rioting out of control.

I stop to get a better look. The door is double and made of some sort of dark wood that’s fast losing its polish to the elements. The wood is carved with vines and flowers in ornate twists and swirls. It looks like it must open to Narnia.

Then I see the rest of the house. There’s a wonderful wide deck wrapping around the side and front of the home but the railing dangles, broken, over space. Looking closer, I see that the deck is missing an entire section of flooring and nails jut like rabid teeth. The paint, once grey, has peeled away in long stripes.

I love abandoned places because they must all have stories. My imagination runs away. Maybe a sudden death, a job loss, an inability to be in whatever circumstances for one more minute. Abandoned places speak to the transience of the human experience, how quickly lives can change. My minds eye sees a woman running from the house, lugging an over packed suitcase trailing bra straps and socks.

Nature reclaims so quickly. The grass has grown up and matted, covering the yard in a thick web of dry stalks. Once roses had gown along the property line but now only dead branches, heavy with fierce thorns, silhouette against the sky. It feels a lonely and broken place.

Then I see the light. There’s a light on inside. I see it through slatted blinds but the windows are too dirty to make out much more than the glow of a bulb in a flower shaped sconce. I get no sense of the room.

My imagination revises at the speed of light. Not an abandoned house but an abandoned person, too old, too sick, too crazy, for upkeep. Maybe a hoarder, piles of trash choking the rooms, threatening annihilation under an avalanche of smothering stuff. Grocery bags of shit, a whole rooms filled with used diapers, the drains clogging, floors sagging under weight, package after package delivered daily, building mansions of needless belongings.

No, maybe an agoraphobic in rooms sparkling and beautiful, unable to prevent the outside from falling into neglect. Serene dustless surfaces kept perfect with perpetual cleaning. Maybe some damaged, isolated genius looking through the window back at me.

I shiver, walking on.