MY TOWN

• Steven Hoffman, Grade 8, Tumbarumba High School
• Short Story
• 2014

Excellence Award in the 'The Text Generation 2014' competition

It had been an exhausting journey, but I had finally arrived. More than 18 years had lapsed since I had been back in my town. I have recently been living in Small Ville but I decided to come back here to Krypton to face what had driven me away.
I cannot describe my emotions right now; it would be like trying to describe the taste of water. As I stepped out of my car visions came back to me, I try piecing them together. But I can’t. I stare at the door. Not the door of my car but the rusty, beaten down door that held the entrance to my old childhood house. The house in which I was raised to be the person I am now.
More visions came back to me now, and I began to feel quite faint. I approached the door and laid my hand upon the handle. I took a deep breath and grasped the handle, turn it and pushed it open. Dust, bugs and spider webs had collected in every corner of the house. The smell of old rotting support beams that were infested with termites was unbearable. But I pushed on, making my way through every room.
I reached my old room. As I stepped inside I saw lying on the floor, my old teddy bear. I used to lay there cuddling it whilst my mother would sing me a lullaby until I fell asleep. Tears began to roll down my cheeks as the painful memories stabbed me in the heart like a dagger. I sunk to the ground and picked up the teddy. I held it close to my chest as I repeated my favourite lullaby that my mother would sing to me nearly every night.
It was the last physical memory I had connecting me to my lost and distant mother. More visions appeared in my head and I began to remember. There was men, shouting and yelling. I heard my mother’s screams as she tried holding back the men, keeping them away from her beloved son.
But they were too strong for her. They took my mother away. As they through her out the door it was the last glimpse I’d ever get of her. As for me? I was sent away to an orphanage and spent years there, growing up watching kids leave and new kids come in. until I was 15. A kind and loving family embraced me in their arms and took me away to a new home.
At the time my mother was taken away from me I was too young to understand. I was so confused when this new family took me into their home. But as I grew older brief memories came back to me, which led me to coming back here. To find out what really happened to my mother. To find the truth, but so far there was nothing. Nothing at all.