The Childhood Home...A Short Story

The Weekly Writing Prompt

The last couple of weeks, I've waited to write my story for the Weekly Writing Prompt on Sundays. Since I don't do any other writing on Sundays (except for my personal journal...), Sundays have been great for writing these. I saw the picture and I wanted to write a Mother's Day story, but it didn't turn out that way.

For those unfamiliar with the rules of the writing prompt, here they are:

1) Use the photo and the 5 words provided in your story

2) Keep your word count 500 words or less.

3) You have until next Tuesday to link up your post.

4) Click the Blue inLinkz button on these sites to enter your story: Nicole, Carrie, Tena or Leanne.

5) Have fun, don’t stress, let those creative juices flow.

This week's 5 must-use words:

Butter

Evil

Wardrobe

Rescue

Ballroom

 It's an great picture. I hope I did it justice.

The Childhood Home

I remember watching as my mother made bread in the small kitchen of our home. Along with the laundry and the dishes and other chores, our family needed bread to be made almost every day. She gathered flour, eggs, butter and other ingredients and mixed the dough by hand, then spread flower on the counter and formed usually three loaves.

I knew almost to the second when the bell on the oven would ding and I could have my first slice of baked bread covered in honey. The sugary taste teases my tongue as I drive.

These and a million other memories flood my brain as I round another corner and come closer to the home where I grew up, the home that sheltered me from harm and the evil found in the world, a home built by my father, where five years separated the deaths of both he and his wife. 

I was the last of my two siblings to leave, to separate from my parents and venture out into the world. After my oldest brother left for college, I was young and I ran around his abandoned room playing with my imaginary friends behind the bedroom door and inside his empty wardrobe. As I grew the wardrobe moved to my room and became a storage locker, a ball room for my many sports interest.

My sister, then me...we left mom and dad to live the remainder of their days together. First dad passed, them mom followed. It's been years since I last saw the house, twenty, to be exact. I thought it would be difficult to turn that last corner and return home.

I was right.

I parked the car and looked east to where the house once stood. Where once stood a porch, weeds grew. Where the humble home rose from the ground and the aroma of freshly baked bread once wafted through the rooms and halls, a wooden path led to a void where a child's heart screams for acknowledgement but can find no rescue. The temporal structure has vanished and now resides as a ghost, a home for the spirits of deceased souls.

Word Count: 361