The first thing that makes me aware of the rottenness is a half-drunk cup of black tea that I don’t
remember making and that is now sprouting mold. Its stench almost assaults me as I enter his room. I
see him splayed out on a mattress, a replacement for the bed we were supposed to buy about two years
ago when we moved in. His room seems beyond redemption even though it hardly was one to begin with.
There is a curious mixture of odours in the room that have fused into each other and morphed into something that cannot be traced back to its source. His head tilts up in my direction as a snake but retreats without any acknowledgement of my presence. I doubt he has showered even once this past week. I pick up the rotten cup of moldy tea leaves and the clothes that were piled up on the floor beside the mattress. I take a glimpse of his face which is shielded from the sunlight forcing its way into the decrepitude of the room by his right hand with the little guitar tattoo on it. Suddenly overpowered by an urge to run away, I scurry out of the room, shouting “I’ll be back soon,” more to myself than to him.
I take some seeds from the kitchen and feed the birds on my way out. As I begin walking, several thoughts inundate my mind, demanding to be heard. I push them back and focus on how my chest heaves and falls with every step I take. After what feels like hours, I see it- the sign. And I know it has only been minutes because I know how far the sign is from our house and I know that even if it didn’t have a concrete form, it would still be there. Far enough to give us an illusion of security and close enough to break it.
This sign is an advertisement- an old one, twenty years to be precise. It has been ravaged by moths and woodlice making the cheap paint chip away in more places than I can count. I notice it is a little further than it was the last time I saw it, almost embedded into the forest which stretches on two sides along the road. I picture people pushing it further every day, a little imperceptible push like you would give a nervous child before his first stage performance. I almost laugh out loud at the ridiculousness of it. Why not uproot it, burn it down, bury it, destroy it once and for all? What are they afraid of? Certainly not my father who is too weak to get up from his mattress. And more certainly not me, a nobody, a recluse, a cast-off.
The sign features my mother and father together wearing sequined clothes and overenthusiastic smiles and pointing to a new album featuring themselves. That was before all the hell unleashed. All I can see are two young people, very much in love, and making their dreams come true. And they did. At least for a little while. “One-hit wonders” they called them. That was before my mother overdosed and my father spiralled into more and more nothingness with each passing year.
Now we live off his royalty money and the advance a publisher gave us last year to write a book which I am ghost-writing for him. It’s turning out to be quite good in my opinion. It is written in first person and I sometimes include details that I craved for myself during my childhood. I paint elaborate pictures of him and my mother, lying on beaches and tanned and salty-haired; dreaming in each others’ arms under the starry sky of Paris; happy and running through fields of wildflowers. They are not true. But I know the people won’t care. People hardly want the truth.
As I see the dark sky encroaching, I start my journey back to the house. I find him in the same way as I left him. I take out the fresh pile of laundry from the dryer. After putting on some water for evening tea, I sit down to write the book. I search and search but nothing comes to me. This happens to me sometimes. I close my eyes and picture it. The sign and the forest around it. The forest, ever-growing and wild and unstoppable. How long till it eats the sign whole? How long till it claims it as one of its own? Has it already begun?
There is a curious mixture of odours in the room that have fused into each other and morphed into something that cannot be traced back to its source. His head tilts up in my direction as a snake but retreats without any acknowledgement of my presence. I doubt he has showered even once this past week. I pick up the rotten cup of moldy tea leaves and the clothes that were piled up on the floor beside the mattress. I take a glimpse of his face which is shielded from the sunlight forcing its way into the decrepitude of the room by his right hand with the little guitar tattoo on it. Suddenly overpowered by an urge to run away, I scurry out of the room, shouting “I’ll be back soon,” more to myself than to him.
I take some seeds from the kitchen and feed the birds on my way out. As I begin walking, several thoughts inundate my mind, demanding to be heard. I push them back and focus on how my chest heaves and falls with every step I take. After what feels like hours, I see it- the sign. And I know it has only been minutes because I know how far the sign is from our house and I know that even if it didn’t have a concrete form, it would still be there. Far enough to give us an illusion of security and close enough to break it.
This sign is an advertisement- an old one, twenty years to be precise. It has been ravaged by moths and woodlice making the cheap paint chip away in more places than I can count. I notice it is a little further than it was the last time I saw it, almost embedded into the forest which stretches on two sides along the road. I picture people pushing it further every day, a little imperceptible push like you would give a nervous child before his first stage performance. I almost laugh out loud at the ridiculousness of it. Why not uproot it, burn it down, bury it, destroy it once and for all? What are they afraid of? Certainly not my father who is too weak to get up from his mattress. And more certainly not me, a nobody, a recluse, a cast-off.
The sign features my mother and father together wearing sequined clothes and overenthusiastic smiles and pointing to a new album featuring themselves. That was before all the hell unleashed. All I can see are two young people, very much in love, and making their dreams come true. And they did. At least for a little while. “One-hit wonders” they called them. That was before my mother overdosed and my father spiralled into more and more nothingness with each passing year.
Now we live off his royalty money and the advance a publisher gave us last year to write a book which I am ghost-writing for him. It’s turning out to be quite good in my opinion. It is written in first person and I sometimes include details that I craved for myself during my childhood. I paint elaborate pictures of him and my mother, lying on beaches and tanned and salty-haired; dreaming in each others’ arms under the starry sky of Paris; happy and running through fields of wildflowers. They are not true. But I know the people won’t care. People hardly want the truth.
As I see the dark sky encroaching, I start my journey back to the house. I find him in the same way as I left him. I take out the fresh pile of laundry from the dryer. After putting on some water for evening tea, I sit down to write the book. I search and search but nothing comes to me. This happens to me sometimes. I close my eyes and picture it. The sign and the forest around it. The forest, ever-growing and wild and unstoppable. How long till it eats the sign whole? How long till it claims it as one of its own? Has it already begun?