Pictures of a Childhood
The wall was cold underneath them, the rough stone chilled in the winter air. Their fingers were freezing and their cheeks were flushed, making them regret the lack of warm clothes they brought.
Well… in their defense they hadn’t expected to stay this long. They’d just meant to stop by and see if there was anything salvageable. They figured the area wouldn’t have been raided, the majority of it hidden with trees. Yes, it had been many years, but they still remembered the way.
The path through the woods had been so familiar, as if it had only been a few days since they’d last been along it. But that was foolish. It had been years, maybe 10 or 15 by then. They didn’t really know, time was hard when they were constantly on the move.
They’d entered the clearing as expected, thinking they were fully prepared to see what would be before them.
They’d been sorely wrong.
The moment the tall building had come into view, they’d felt a wave of emotions pouring over them, sprinting over to it like it was a lost friend. But of course the building wasn’t alive. And so they’d fallen to their knees by the entrance, tears threatening to fall as they’d looked up and up, and the bricks that were crumbling, and the windows mostly shattered. No one had been there to take care of it in years. They doubted many people even remembered the place existed.
But they did. Not many people stayed longer than a few months, but they had practically grown up in the place, taken in as a young child and raised within the walls of the place.
There had only been a handful of others who had stayed there as long as they had, all children around their age. They had all been friends for the most part, but they’d bonded especially with 3 girls their age. They’d all lived in the same room near the top floor of the building, together decorating it with anything and everything they could find.
Their best find had been an old camera, one of the ones that shot out a picture that then developed into color. There had only been one shot left, and so one day they’d taken a picture of themselves to hang up on the wall, the only physical evidence of the people who’d lived there for so long.
They’d wound their way up the staircase carefully, guided by muscle memory. The stairs had caved in at certain points, but for the most part it had held up better than they thought it would have. At long last they reached the landing where their room was located, their eyes landing on the door across from them. They sighed, carefully pushing against the door, hoping it wasn’t blocked off.
It swung open with a squeak, revealing the room they hadn’t seen in years. Everything was as they remembered it being, minus the layer of age and dust that coated everything. Most of their own possessions were strewn across the floor near their bed, a stark contrast to the neat piles the others had made. They’d never been the neat one, but they had to chuckle at exactly how much of a mess they’d once been.
The room had only one window, a small thing on the opposite side of the room as the door. On the walls either side of the window and door were two beds, each belonging to a different person. But the important thing was what had been stuck on the windowsill, a small photo taken 10 or more years earlier.
They stumbled across the room, grabbing the picture and holding it up to try to see. But it was too dark. So they’d made their way out of the room and up the stairs again, onto the flat roof of the building. And now, with their legs swung over the edge, the picture clasped firmly in their grasp, they could finally get a good look at it.
Their first reaction was to laugh, to smile at how young they looked. They must have been 13 or 14, still young, but old enough to be more independent. They’d all had wide grins stretch across their faces, arms around each other’s shoulders.
Across the bottom of the picture, a message had been written in messy pen, only barely discernible.
Love from Jane, Margaret, Samantha, and Jay
At that, their emotions began to bubble over the edge, a mix of laughter and tears surfacing the longer they stared at the picture. It was cold on the roof, and they didn’t realize how badly they were shivering until they looked down at their hands, their fingers almost numb and bright red.
But as they went to warm their hands up, their grip loosened for only a moment, but the picture caught the soft breeze and floated away, far out of their grasp, beyond their vision in a matter of seconds.
But they could do nothing but sit there, freezing, as they laughed, and as they cried, lost to the memories of their childhood.