#fridayflash : Stone’s Throw

I brought her back one last time.

She liked the place, remembered it from her childhood, she said, or maybe when she was older, a teenager. I can’t remember. I glazed over every time she started to talk about the time before me. It can’t have been that interesting. She wasn’t. She weren’t much to look at neither.

I can see how she’d like the place. It’s boring, so empty. Nothing but trees and the lake. She knew the names of all the trees but basically there was tall ones crowded round the lake and clumpier ones going up the hill. I liked those ones the best, you could tell they didn’t want to be here. It looked like they were scrambling up the hillside to get away.

And it’s so bleeding dark when we get to her favourite spot on the shore because the trees is all so tightly-packed, way worse than the new tower blocks she used to moan about back home. You always feel there’s someone or something watching you here. Eyes everywhere. I hate it. Place gives me the creeps. I’m a city boy, I don’t mind telling you. It’s where I belong. No one gives a shit what you do there, no one watches you, not really, they’re all dead behind the eyes: tired, stressed, not really there, never present, wishing they were somewhere else, or someone else. Sounds grand, don’t it? But I know where I’d rather be any day.

It’s so quiet here, it’s freaking me out. Not a sound. Not even a bird. Dead as a dodo.

I chucked some stones in the water when we got here but there was just a hollow plop and then silence, didn’t matter how many times I did it, or how big the stone or anything. I guess that’s good in a way but it’s freaking unnerving.

I got to get out of here, make tracks without making tracks, if you get me.

I won’t be back and she won’t ever leave.