Tilt

         He was stretched out on the backseat with his head tilted back looking out the window. The sky was upside down. Drenched in sweat which dribbled off his forehead onto the leather underneath him. Streaks of paint on the outside of the window which had hardened into plaster. An unopened bottle of champagne rolled back and forth across the carpeted floor.

         “I’m unwell,” he mumbled. His words passed through the partition to the driver who said nothing. He could see the white gloved hands tightly gripping the wheel and the back of a gray haired-head.

         The long limo curved through the countryside like a snake. A sleek oily serpent in the environment which bred the hearty and humble it swallowed whole. He liked to believe that this is where he had been born.

         He sat up in the backseat. Rolled down a window which brought a chill wind to his fevered head. The sky was upside down. A farmhouse was in the distance in a field of wheat which hung down from above. This was that childhood home he remembered. It peered down at him and he closed his eyes and thought of it tilting back onto land.

         “That’s where I grew up.”

         “Very good, sir,” the driver replied and turned the limo down the narrow dirt road.

         The countryside was littered with dead houses like this. Neglected. Taken back by the earth. Shelter for feral animals in the cold of winter. Its wooden walls had turned grey and sagged as if weighed down by water. As sickly as him.

         The driver stepped out of the limo and his feet cracked the dry brittle grass it walked upon. He muttered something under his breath. He opened the back door with a stubborn tug and then began to wander off into the deep weeds which surrounded the home.

         “I’m just going to be a few minutes. You can wait out here if you’d like,” he said as he pulled himself out of the limo. There was a thickness to the air as if the dead sunken house was bleeding out dust and mould from within it. The driver didn’t say anything as he stood in the waist-high weeds next to the house. His back was turned and he looked off into the distance at the endless field of wheat which grew in the land behind the home.

         There had once been steps which led up to the home’s front porch but they had withered away into nothing. He hoisted himself up onto the landing which left decades of grime and decay embedded into his damp sickly hands. The front door had been bombarded by the rain and it now bent backwards like it had been made out of newspaper. He pressed his foot against what remained of it and pushed it back even further before stepping atop it to enter.

         It was no longer a home. It was sagging ceilings, depressed floorboards, rotten furniture. Chewed apart by rats and doused in the piss of stray creatures. He tried to remember it as it was but that flickering film reel which played in his mind of Christmas mornings and games of hide and seek could not be projected onto these walls.

         He stood at the top of the stairs to the basement. The frame around them was bent and misshapen. A cold draft came up from the darkness that the stairs petered off into. He lightly placed his foot down on the first wooden step which drooped underneath him but held. He pulled his phone out of his suit pocket. 46 missed calls. He slid the flashlight on and aimed it at the darkness. Down he went.

         His leather shoes pressed softly in snow. He shivered. It was night and an iced over lake spread out for miles around him. There were limbless cedar trees which circled the edge of the chilled water and cast dark shadows across the snow. Nothing could be heard. He took a few steps forward through the snow and sat down at where the ice began. He could see his reflection in the glassy surface with his disheveled hair and pale face. He still felt unwell.

         Ahead of him on the other side of the ice he saw a figure emerge through the trees. A child. They held a lantern in their hands which glowed extra bright against the backdrop of night behind it. He waved to them and they held the lantern high into the air as if trying to better see him. He lowered his hand and the two continued to stare at each other in silence. A sea of ice between them. One bathed in light. The child placed the lantern into a bank of snow on his edge of the river and then disappeared back into the trees. He thought about crossing the ice to retrieve the light but decided against it. He took a deep breath and watched it pass through his lips as fog when he exhaled. He stood up. Lightly brushed his hand against a tree to feel its rough bark and then walked back to the stairs.

         The driver was sitting in the dirt road with his back against the limo. Above him the word “thief” remained engraved on the window in paint. He jumped down from the porch and landed with a crunch on the dead grass. He walked back towards the limo but stopped. Turned around. Stared at the house which seemed so sad and pathetic in the cold light of day. He was feeling better.

         “Take me back to the city. I’m done here.”

         He was stretched out on the backseat with his head tilted back looking out the window. The sky was upside down. The leather underneath him was caked in dry sweat. Streaks of paint on the outside of the window had hardened into plaster. An unopened bottle of champagne rolled back and forth across the carpeted floor.

         “That house must have been something back in the day,” the driver said.

         “I was mistaken. I never lived here.”

         He closed his eyes to go to sleep.