Going Home

         “Lou!” The shouting of his name pierces the silence in the small patch of timber. Lou is stretched out in the shade offered by oak and cedar and doesn’t want to think about his mother right now.
         “It’s time to come home, Lou!” The distant voice has an urgency that is hard to ignore. Maybe that’s just because Lou has been whipped so many times for not responding when his mother calls.
         The boy chooses to ignore her anyway and looks over at his fort with pride. He had spent the afternoon going through the junk in the burn pile behind his house for materials. A big piece of plywood and a broken broomstick served perfectly for what the boy had in mind. After all his hard work he felt as though he had earned a little break before heading back home.
         “Don’t make me come out there and find you!” His mother’s voice has an added touch of irritation. This paints an angry look on Lou’s face. She’s always telling me what to do. Well she isn’t the boss of me out here. He starts thinking that he could even bring a girl out here to play with if he wanted to. His mother had always frowned at him anytime he talked to a girl. She always told him that girls were only here to lead her son to hell.
         “Boy, you are in for quite a whipping! Here I come!” This finally sends Lou into motion. He scrambles off the ground and into his fort. He had already gathered as many clods of dirt as he could find to defend against a possible invasion. He hears his mother’s approaching footsteps and readies the balls of dirt.
         The colors fade into raindrops.

***

         The rain pelts down as the grown man lies face first in the mud. Pain torpedoes through his nerves and overloads his brain. He is trying to figure out why he came out here. The days events were the first memories to go. His mother's funeral, the walk out to see his old haven, and the attack are all gone.
         He didn’t know that the wolf was just trying to defend her cubs. He didn’t know that he was too close for comfort. To the wolf he was a threat to her children that she had to eliminate.
         While the new memories have all slipped away; the old memories won’t go. They cling to life just as desperately as he does. Thinking wastes away what little strength he has. His head collapses back into the mud, but his brain won’t let him rest. It just keeps reminding him of how badly his mom beat him that night. It tortures him with his inability to connect with women. All because of what she did. He thinks back to how she doused his fort with gasoline. She laughed at his hard work and even made him throw the match that burned it to the ground… The memories slide out and mix with the water in the puddle under his throat.
         “Lou, it’s time to come home.”