Nostalgia and Horror

And a cup of coffee to go

The skeletons of memories were scattered about the landscape of his childhood. It had been almost forty years since Dermott had visited the neighborhood where he grew up. He had plenty of happy memories but those memories no longer seemed to connect with the stage upon which they occurred.

The streets were still all in the same place. The houses were still there. But his memories were not. His memories were only within himself.

The trees were either much taller or no longer there, only their stumps giving evidence of their history. Some of the homes had been fixed up and added onto while others were in a state of deterioration. The grocery store had a new name and the shopping mall was boarded up. The strip shopping center had all different stores. The school had a new wing as did the hospital.

Dermott could not visit the old neighborhood without driving by the house where he grew up. The first thing he noticed was that the front yard was now enclosed by a chain-link fence and inside that fence were two dogs. He remembered how his mother had vociferously complained about the next-door neighbor’s barking dog and now there were two dogs in what used to be her own yard. This made Dermott smile.

He also noticed that the rose bushes by the large living room window were gone as was the peach tree by the garage. And the carved wooden sign above the front door which read, The Jensens, was replaced by a sign which read, The Hathaways.

Dermott had slowed down to look over his old home but then quickly sped away, not looking back.

He then slowed down again as he drove past the park. He looked for a certain weeping willow tree and quickly spotted it. It was so much larger now. It was under that weeping willow tree that Dermott had made out with Suzanna Alderton when he was in eighth grade. He could remember clear as day reaching up under her shirt and fondling her little breasts. It was the first time he had ever touched a breast.

At the other end of the park was the playground, complete with swings, a merry-go-round, monkey bars, and what looked like a tall rocket. One could climb up a circular staircase inside the rocket and at the top go down a tall slide. Dermott remembered how during his senior year in high school he and Debbie Landsdorf used to go to that playground late at night to smoke pot and play on the playground equipment like little children. Once they had sex inside the top of the rocket.

Then Dermott drove by his old high school. In almost forty years he had never come back to town to attend a high school reunion. The thought of doing so repulsed him. Upon graduating he had vowed to never, ever return there.

He noticed that the high school had added a new wing of classrooms as well as tripled the amount of seating in the football stadium. Despite this, he was sure that everything else was exactly the same.

Dermott was overcome by an urge to get the hell out of town. Almost an hour of driving around the old neighborhood was not as pleasant and nostalgic as he had hoped. It merely served to remind him why he left so long ago. He would have been better off simply replaying the memories in his head. They were better than revisiting the scene of his youthful crimes.

He had a long way to go once he got back on the highway so he decided to stop for some coffee and maybe a burger so he drove to the Burger King where he had worked way back in high school. He was shocked, though, when he got there. The Burger King was no longer a Burger King. It was now a Starbucks!

Dermott sat in his parked car for several minutes looking at the building before going inside for coffee. As he stood at the counter perusing the menu board a man came up to him on the other side of the counter, “Greetings. Can I take your order? Uh… Dermott? Dermott Jensen? Is that you?”

Dermott looked at the man. At first he did not recognize him but the harder he looked at the man’s face he soon realized it was Derek Johnson. Dermott and Derek had worked together at the Burger King so many years ago.

“Uh… yeah… it’s me.”

“Holy crap, Dermott. I haven’t seen you in forever. Did you move back to town?”

“Oh God no! No. No. I’m uh… just passing through town and checking out the old neighborhood.”

“Well, we sure have missed you at all the high school reunions.”

“Yeah well… So Derek, here you are still working in the same building where we worked together almost forty years ago. Same building just a different uniform.”

“Yup,” Derek beamed with pride. “Except now I’m an assistant manager.”

Dermott’s jaw dropped. He was overcome with horror.

“Well, there’s a line forming now so I better take your order.”

“I’ll take the largest cup of coffee you’ve got — to go.”

It was not long before Dermott was back in his car heading out of town on the very same highway that he left town on almost forty years ago.

Except this time he was driving a lot faster.

Copyright by White Feather. All Rights Reserved. This is a work of fiction.

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