Short Stories

Abandoned

"Write a story with the title 'abandoned'."

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Sat on the cool dusty stone my legs swinging below me, the feathery breeze trickling around the hill I pursed my lips, whistling. The tune my grandad taught me like a whisper in my mouth. I'm not sure why I was whistling really. Maybe like a tree falling in the desert with no one around, I just wanted to see if I still could.

If i still could whistle, if i could still be myself, if I still mattered.

I watched as the smoke in the distance faded into the dwindling orange evening light, the train a speck on the horizon. It seemed so insignificant against the grand scale of the valley below me, and yet it held my entire family. Well my dad and my younger sister, the others had left way before. There was not much left out here anymore, the desert had spread and so the people had left. Tumbleweed now bounced down the middle of the dust filled roads instead of the shiny smooth cars that used to roll along.

My fingers stroked the letter that had been hurriedly pressed into my palms as I was pushed away from the train. I had thought my dad was joking when he said only my sister would come with him, that someone had to look after the house for when everyone returned. I had asked why would we ever return, we were going to make ourselves a new life in the city. I guess i should have realised when all i ever got in response was a confused glance.

The town was no longer really something anyone would return to, the desert had staked its claim, the houses which had not already burnt in the heat were covered in the thorns of the tumbleweed. Like giant bonfires they sat ready, nature was just waiting for the right moment to strike the match, with no natural water around the town would burn red for days.

I sat alone at the top of the hill. The last train slipping beneath the edge of the sky the smoke gone from the inky abyss above me. The whistling of my grandads tune and the groaning tumbleweed the only sounds to keep me company.

Pushing to my feet I stood, I began to walk. The last drips of the sunset behind me as i turned my back on it and towards the future rays of the sunlight.

Tomorrow would be hotter, and all this place would need is a spark, my family might have thought it better to start anew, burning the history books. But I refused to be cremated into their pages.