Last Moments

He had to see it one last time.

Don stepped into the abandoned house and quickly shut the door behind him. He reached out and hit the light switch but, unsurprisingly, the lights didn’t come on. Unfazed he took a small torch out of his pocket and turned it on, the powerful beam cutting through the darkness.

The house hadn’t changed much in all the years since he had last been in there. Covered in a layer of dust, but the same old house nonetheless. Moving the torch beam around, Don felt all his old memories coming back. The worn floorboard, the tatty sofa, the simple wooden table- it was as if he had been here yesterday.

For a while he paused, overwhelmed by the pulls of the past and the future- two sides tugging at him until he felt like he was about to be torn apart. Even after all he had been through, Don felt an immense reluctance to believe that he would be leaving all this behind. This town, for all its faults, was the only thing that he had ever known.

One last thing to do. Tiptoeing by instinct, even though he knew that there was nobody around, Don traced the steps to a plain white door. It was already half open and Don squeezed in.

It was a small bedroom. A child’s bedroom. Don noted the small bed, the action figures thrown messily over the floor, the books stacked on the bookshelf, a now deflated soccer ball in the corner. He scanned the room with his torch multiple times over, trying to take in as much of the picture as he could.

Exiting the room as silently as he had entered, Don noticed something on the lounge table. It was a photo of a man, woman and young boy, all smiling and laughing on a sunny day at the beach. He tucked it safely into his trouser pocket.

Suddenly Don could feel his phone vibrating in his pocket, indicating that he had received a text message. He didn’t need to check to know what it said.

Don stepped out of the house into the cool night breeze, making sure to lock the door behind him. Sure enough the car, a beat-up Ford, was waiting outside the front gate, its headlights switched off. Don took one last glimpse at the house behind him and hurried forward.

It was time to go.