Journey Home Page #2

I wrote this story as a response to my experiences with cancer.

• Horror

								

I felt my mind racing back through the last few hours of my life and it kept going back to the same question, “What the hell was in that burger?”
I reached for the remnants of a makeshift screen door, the rotted wood dangled from rusted hinges that creaked under the pressure of the light breeze.  The screen swayed lazily as I pulled the rickety door open, and I raised my hand to knock on the grayed and swollen front door.  I paused, the magnitude of what had just happened collided with the force of seeing Senior for the first time in at least 15 years.  We hadn’t spoken since I enlisted and shipped to basic, occasionally one of us tried to reach out, only to have it end in biting words and stinging sorrow.  We hadn’t spoken in almost three years, but after three peaceful years I had received a voicemail from him.  
A few tears ran down my cheek, my arm hung frozen in the air as I prepared for the knock.  I sucked in a deep breath and sighed it out.  I needed to get centered. Calm.  I was ready.  Ready to see my father, though I still call him Senior, dad as a word and a concept fit like a cheap suit, accentuating all of the negative features, never flattering at all.  I was not, however, ready for what I was about to see on the other side of the door.
I knocked on the door, light taps that had a soft wed thumping noise when my knuckles made contact.  I took another deep breath and closed my eyes anxiously waiting.  I shifted nervously from one foot to the other but no response came.  I didn’t know how much time had passed.  It could have been 10 seconds or a minute, it all felt the same in the moment, so I knocked again.  Thump.  Thump.  Thump.  Some more nervous shifting and waiting.  
“It's me!” I said loudly, “I’m coming in!”  I announced my presence and reached for the corroded door knob, I could feel its insides grinding crumbling as it protested against the motion.
The door creaked and groaned as I pushed on its rusty hinges.  It was an old wooden exterior door, the type with a single large window that sits about shoulder high.  The window looked like a network of spiderwebs that was ready to spill from the frame at any minute.  Behind that was a dingy coffee-colored curtain, though I’m certain it was supposed to be a sandy color.  The door opened, and I peered inside.  It looked exactly as I’d imagined.
“Senior?” I called out, my eyes scanned through the mess as I did. 
The first thing I noticed as I stepped into the room was the smell.  A thick haze of decay hung in the air, and I struggled through it just to get in the door.  Everything in the room, from the tattered cloth couch to the rickety coffee table seemed stained with rot.  Plates of moldy food sat on the makeshift table while flies danced around them. A cup of what looked to be coffee sat next to the plates, the corpses of many flies floated near the surface.
I shuddered as I forced down a gagging sensation.  My nose was burning from the overstimulation and I desperately wanted to turn around and leave, forgetting for a moment the terrifying experience I just had.  I had always envisioned Senior to be a filthy derelict, but this didn’t seem right.  I couldn’t imagine that he had let himself sink to this level of neglectfulness.  
“Senior”, I called again as I pushed through the living room and into the kitchen.  
The kitchen was much worse.  The appliances within were at least 60 years old, and the refrigerator was so ancient that it seeped radiation.  A shoddy stove sat next to it, a lone pan sat on one of the burners.  I peered inside, cringing at what I might find.  Dirty hot dog water, with one sad and bloated tube of meat floated in it.  It didn’t look old, at least it didn’t have the same level of rot most of the other remnants had.  The table behind me was littered with more dishes, and an old cordless phone, the base of which clung to the filth-stained wall for its life with the  understanding that any form of pressure would mean its doom.  Next to the phone was a pad of paper and a pen, as well as half of a cup of coffee that also became the final resting place for a plethora of bugs.  Both the pad and the coffee cup were relatively clean compared to the rest of junk strewn about.
The rest of the table was a landfill.  Sifting through it I found a two-day old newspaper, the remnants of a stale doughnut, and various other debris.  The whole house was covered in dust, but most of the actual filth seemed to be relatively new.  I didn’t know what I had expected, but I hadn’t expected this when I got the call.
“The call!” I thought to myself.  Senior had sounded frantic in the voicemail.  He was frantically chattering about eternal youth and discovery. 
We had barely spoken in the last fifteen years, and I was more than curious to know what he had found that made him call me, and like the god-damn idiot I am, I rushed out immediately.  Not because I believed he had actually found anything, but simply because no matter how much animosity there was between us I was eager to move on.  I wanted true peace, and I thought that just maybe I’d get it if I could just drag my dumb ass out to see him.  At some point one of us had to be an adult.
I moved around the kitchen, poking through every nook and cranny I could find.  The cabinets were surprisingly organized when compared to the refuse piles that accumulated on every horizontal surface.  Silence draped over the room like a heavy blanket, it felt unnaturally heavy and I barely noticed my own footsteps as I moved from cabinet to cabinet.  I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but I assumed that I would know as soon as I saw it.  Dust particles floated through the air, swirling around as I continued my search.  The eerie silence was overbearing.  Each noise was a distorted echo of what it should be.  The birds that chirped their happy sing-song sounded a deep and melancholic warbling, the breeze was harsh and wet.  Every noise that passed through my ears sounded deep and distorted.  
My vision slowly narrowed as the world around me tightened its grip.  I immediately lumbered for the table, planting my palms on its grime-filled surface.  A plate clattered as my hands slapped down, and I heard it hit the floor shattering.  The broken glass created a deep wave of sound that hung in the air, and I found myself taking deep breaths.  My vision began to twist and swirl as I steadied myself, and mentally I was walking through the motions of getting this under control. 
My first thought was that I was having some sort of after-effect from my head bouncing off of the steering wheel. I had experienced a concussion before and knew all too well what it was like.  This felt different somehow.  My feet no longer felt attached to the floor, and my body took on a weightless feeling.  I could feel my stomach begin twisting in knots and I became thankful that I had already thrown up outside.  
A distant noise began echoing in my head.  It had a distinct ringing, but it was low-pitched and had a hollow quality to it.  I closed my eyes tightly, doing everything I could to push these feelings away and regain control of myself.  My fingers curled into tight fists that turned my knuckles white.  I took a slow deep breath.  The noise stopped briefly, but then started again.  It had a rhythm to it, so I latched onto that rhythmic tone and used it to focus my attention.  

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