The Memory

• Amber Holmes, Grade 10, Toormina High School
• Short Story
• 2011

Excellence Award in the 'Step Write Up 2011' competition

I watched intently as my father slipped silently out the front door of my house on Theresa Close. Ironically, his old, shaggy night gown trailing behind him, reminded me of the train on a wedding dress. Draped either side of this fist was a long silver necklace that my mother had given to him as an Anniversary gift a little over seven years ago.
As his eyes swept through the house one last time, he looked as if he were almost happy to be leaving it behind. All the hard work he and my mother had put into this place and he could just leave that all behind?
He turned abruptly and continued through the threshold. The door closed with a slightly muted gasp, the doorknob flicked quietly back into place.
My fingers fumbled at the blinds as I attempted to pry them open. They buckled simultaneously, making a shape just the right size for my eye. I peeked through them to see a last, quick glimpse of my father as he squeezed into his opalescent, Bugatti Veyron. The engine purred with a wild, but still almost silent, growl at first, then steadied to a light rumble. The tyres turned with little effort and the car started to back slowly out of the three-car garage my father and mother had built in the early 1970’s.
The car’s tyres turned slowly to face the opposite direction. Barely missing my mother’s cherry-red Ferrari, it drifted slowly around in a semicircle, straightened up, and crept silently towards the busiest section of Theresa Close. The loose gravel of the busy road was a harsh contrast to the smooth concrete of my driveway.
As the car advanced, the traffic on the usually busy road seemed to disappear. By the time the car neared the curb, the traffic flow was almost non-existent.
The tyres crunched and cracked as they swivelled on the loose gravel of the main road. The car lurched forward and the wheels spun. Chunks of gravel flew out from under the tyres and thick, grey smoke began to spill out from underneath the car.
The smoke hung in the air around the car for a few seconds until, for the very last time, the sparkling Bugatti Veyron sped away from the house on Theresa Close.
I watched the smoke twist and contort as the air rushed back to fill the space where my father had once been. I watched it whirl round in the slight breeze that had swept briefly through the valley. I watched until the stench of burnt rubber reached the house and the smoke had disappeared. Then I began to cry.
This is ‘The Memory’. This is ‘The Memory’ which, at the time, I would rather have stored in the waste bin in the back of my brain where I would never find it again; ‘The Memory’ which many people wished I had recounted; ‘The Memory’ which was more valuable than gold; ‘The Memory’ which was the beginning of the end.