Butcherbirds

I Don't Need These City Streets

It doesn’t take long for Jed to realise exactly who Seth is, but then again, it isn’t hard. Seth’s socially awkward, and painfully oblivious to the real world.

But Seth makes up for it. He pulls funny faces at Jed’s niece to stop her crying, he teaches Jed all the things he can’t learn in three years of on-and-off education.

Seth’s a prince and Jed can barely read. But they have found something truly remarkable.

Friendship.

 

There wasn’t enough breath in his lungs to let him scream.  So he cried instead.

He crawled his way to a standing position and forces himself into the room.

It looks just the same as it did Before apart from the vast accumulation of dust that had gathered since the room was last disturbed, six years ago to the day.

It was cramped, due to its small size and the fact that at one point, five people lived there.

There was dirty cups on the sideboard of the tiny kitchenette, a couple of dog-eared books stacked in the corner, a broken clock that had its hands stopped at two o’clock hung at an angle off the wall.

Everything looked the same. But everything was different. There was no sounds of children’s laughter, no comforting sounds of tea being brewed.

Nothing, not even birdsong, just his breath.

He looked down at his feet. On the floor, grey with dust, lay a small book.

He knew as soon as he saw it what it was, and what it contained.

The leather cracked as he opened it. He flicked through it carefully, and his gaze was reverent as they moved over the intricate sketches. He looked at each one, and he did, it got harder not to drop the book and run.

The last piece was clearly a work in progress, only the bare skeleton of a composition.

It was a face.

Seth knew who it was. After all, it’s not hard to recognise your own face.

He didn’t drop the book.

But he did run.