We decided to explore the derelict house. With its lone presence on the prairie right across from our suburb, how could we not, with its crooked shingles, shattered windows, and missing doors?
We were boys, even those of us that weren’t, growing up in the cold, straight world of men. Don’t cry, don’t run indoors, don’t be loud, don’t cuss, sit still in school, sit still in church, don’t talk back, do as you’re told.
There, though, across the highway we were told never to cross, sat something unowned, uninhabited, and unexplored. Something no adult had ever spoken of, but surely would not want us to touch.
We crept inside like burglars, as if some parental ghost of authority inhabited even this place, watching us. We moved from room to room, making sure each one was dead, finding only the remains of whatever the family that fled had left behind. When Eric broke the ancient headboard, it sounded through the house like the crack of a rifle, and everyone froze.
Nothing happened. There were no consequences. Then the laughter started and became a rampage. We broke everything in that house that hadn’t already been broken.
Hours later, dirty, dusty, covered in the scratches of our rebellion, glass in our hair, we rode our bikes home through clouds of spent mania.
We never went back. We knew we had taken everything from that place that it could give.
See the author’s published work here.
Image courtesy of John Keeley.
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