Leaving my childhood neighborhood

When I came home from school, I could see the moving van’s doors shutting, like a big knife chopping my life in two. My life was over. Feeling pretty down, I walk over to the car, already revved and ready to go. “Why the long face?” My mom asks while tucking my stuffed animals into the trunk, the dust on their soft, velvety faces being whisked into the wind. “What do you think, mom? Today was devastating!” I blurted out, my eyes teary. “I’ve had to say goodbye to literally every friend I’ve ever made in this neighborhood. Why’d we even have to move? What's wrong with our house? Why are you guys so eager to leave?” I literally was at the brink of tears. “Oh, come on Daniel, Sometimes I wish you would just…”

Wake up! Wake Up! Wake Up! Wake Up! Wake Up!

Wake up. Those words seemed to not go away but echoed continuously. In an instant, I couldn’t hear anything but those 2 haunting words. The pavement started to merge with the grass. The house and buildings around me slowly broke apart into pieces. My parents, the moving guys, and everyone started degrading to dust until it was me, standing in a white void. Endless, eternal, I truly was all alone. Then I woke up

“Wake Up! Dude, Wake Up!” My friend shouted in my ear. “The brownies are almost done!”

I was asleep. I can tell because not even in my wildest dreams would I smell such a vivid, mouthwatering aroma. It’s like we were cooking angels. After blinking a few times, my vision slowly began to focus. I could see that I was in a house, but not my house, and not with my family. Once things stopped looking so blurry, I could make out the outline of a black cat running around the floor, playing with a small mouse toy. Then it hit me. “I’m at my friend's House?” I pondered aloud. “Uh, yeah. You’ve been here for...” he started. I missed that last part though; I was too busy as I observed the clock strike midnight.

“Oh my gosh! Sorry! I got to go!” I told my friend in a rush. I sprint over to the door, thoughts racing through my head. I'm so late! I should have been home 3 hours ago! My parents are going to be fuming!

“Daniel, wait, come back!” But it was too late. All that was left of me was my shadow. My heart was beating at hyper speed, any faster and I would’ve passed out. As I ran, I quickly checked my phone, only to be greeted to a long stream of worried text messages. Instead, I opted to try to call rather than reading the full novel my mom had written for me on WhatsApp. Drat, no signal I thought to myself, shaking a cold fist at the universe for giving me such bad luck. Eh, maybe it wasn’t so bad. If I had called them, they totally would have yelled at me in a “I love you, but you’re really dumb sometimes” kind of way. When I finally got back to my house which was, thankfully, only a few blocks away, I hopped the fence and unlocked the door, overlooking the lack of cars in the driveway and the note on the door. It read

Daniel, we’re leaving now, stay at friend’s for the night.

I slowly cracked the door open expecting to be met by 2 angry giants ready to gobble me up in an instant. All I was met with was freezing cold air. To my utter surprise, I couldn’t hear anything. No heaters warming the house, no water flowing through the pipes, no whirring of my dad’s Cpap machine, it was just dead silence. Nothing was where it should have been because nothing was there at all. Well, apart from the memories, and the dust.

Dust eternally.