15 for 15 Contest --- Closed

No one had come to this section of town since the end of the war. It had been the first and hardest hit. Almost everything was reduced to rubble and so overgrown it was nearly impossible to differentiate one bad memory from another. To describe it as a ghost town was an misunderstanding. Ghosts didn't haunt it. They haunted us.

We came to the lopsided doorway to our college and stopped. How long had it been since Rique, Myke, and I had been here? Each had their own separate pains with this place. For me it had been home for three years. My training grounds. My territory. For them.... my eyes quickly scanned their cold stone faces. It told me enough.

Once inside we all broke apart into our own directions. No one spoke, we just knew this wasn't a moment we could share together. I took to the dormitory, or what remained of it. The hallway that took me there was long, twisted, and gnarled with tree roots and vines. Every section that had been broken down to glass for our viewing purposes was shattered or leaning down dangerously.

I had hated that connecting hallway. Always so loud and crowded and it was the only quick way to class. What I wouldn't give to shove through scores of people again. The doorway to the rooms was caved in so I climbed through fallen cement and continued up the crumbling steps. Mine had been at the top. Secluded. Special because of my connections. For all that amounted to during the war.

As if came to the last floor, the fifth, I found myself blocked. It was as if the sky had fallen. While everything remained untouched by time and strife, mine was all that couldn't hold up.

"Figures," I said to my past and turned leave it all behind.