They Come Back

Suffocation is a horrible feeling, I mused as I surreptitiously rolled my window down just enough to relieve the stifling heat of the hot air swirling around our family car.

The big city never stopped breathing down his neck, my father told us as we drove towards our new home out in the middle of nowhere. The people who stayed there were pathetic, soft spined cowards who trembled in fear of their own shadows and were simply too stupid to recognize opportunity when it knocked, no matter if that knocking was at the door or upside their head. The old man smiled as he sermonized us, full of good cheer and gleaming white teeth. His dark eyes dared anyone to raise even a breath of protest against his unilateral decision to upend our lives.

My mother stewed silently, a honed skill that to an outside observer looked suspiciously like bland acceptance. She'd been furious at first, from the moment she'd received a brusque phone call until the old man had arrived home last night and demanded to know why our entire household had yet to be squared away. As usual, I took the brunt of the blame, lazy and selfish as I was.

My mother's practical anger had been matched by my younger sister Danielle's righteous indignation. She would be separated from all her friends, she'd wailed, and now she'd have to change schools as well. It was an atrocity, to be sure, but in the end even the nearly indomitable will of a twelve year old girl could not derail Dad's Big Plan. To the old man, everything had landed in the win column. My mother often complained that she had no room in our tiny yard to grow a proper vegetable garden. Our new home boasted a twenty acre plot which stretched deep into the woods behind the massive house, so now she could weed and till and plant and harvest to her heart's content. My spoiled sister would be the recipient of a great chance to build character, a growth experience - my father loved those.

Nobody had asked what I thought of moving almost a hundred miles from the only home I'd ever known at the tail end of the summer between my junior and senior years, but if they had I would have told them I was delighted. Goodbye parking lots and mini malls, endless stretches of asphalt and neon, hello living in one big park. My father thought, and said, that I was a weird kid as well as a smug punk. My mother's chief objection to abandoning the city was that she'd miss the people. While I shared her love of green things that grew, I couldn't have been more enthused to be free of the clutches of the city and endlessly shifting quicksand upon which the social order had been built. School hadn't been going well for me academically or socially so a fresh start in a new place sounded divine to me. If that made me a smug punk and a weirdo then, as usual, my father was right.

As we pulled up the long gravel driveway and caught sight of it through the dense trees, I saw that at least he'd not been exaggerating about the size of the house he'd gotten such a great bargain on. The place was huge, a six bedroom monster with another dozen rooms to boot, a place for everything you could possibly imagine and a few things you couldn't. I marveled at all the space as I carried my few boxes of possessions inside and helped unload the u-haul my father had rented. I staked a claim to a room on the opposite end of the house as my folks and my sister did, then pretended not to have done it on purpose. After living for so long almost directly under the old man's thumb, even this much breathing space was bliss.

Exhausted and sore, but in a good way, I settled into my bed that night and gazed up at the ceiling. I tried to imagine just what other world of potential this move held for me. I would be starting school on a whole other planet. I could be anyone I wanted to be. I could even meet a girl. Stranger things had happened. I slipped into the embrace of sleep, giddy with the thought that this move marked a turning point in my life.

* * * *

A creaking sound woke me some time later. I rubbed my eyes, wondering if I'd imagined it. I rolled over to look at the clock and saw it was just after midnight. I yawned, then closed my eyes.