NOVEL WORKSHOP

The Neighborhood

At night he dreamed about her and the good times before everything started to fall apart.

This is part of a novel, chapter 3. To see all published chapters, go here.

3

Actually, he was a little insecure now, after they had left. Maybe there was nothing to count on anyway, this friendship with Larsens. He had become acquainted with Larsen’s after the worst had happened. And he was glad that they had not been there and seen him and Sara and what happened in the time before she left. It was perhaps the blackest night of his life, and he knew he would never fully recover — never in his life!

At night he dreamed about Sara and the good times before everything started to fall apart. At night he also dreamed that everything was back to normal, only that she was no longer there. And when he woke up in the morning, he thought that everything was fine, almost completely as before. Everything would be fine, because then the world could not go so completely off the hinges!

But that was exactly what was about to happen. He got the scope of it a little clearer for himself one Saturday morning when he took a walk down the street. Normally there would be a bustling life outside in front of the houses this sunny day, but it was not. He was more and more shocked as he discovered that the street was completely empty. Empty, no people!

He had long since tried to deny it. It was a completely normal reaction, a defense mechanism, too difficult to grasp what was about to happen. No one in the street had said anything to him. No neighbors had announced that they would travel or move.

There were no external factors, no clear signs that would indicate that this was going to happen, that everyone was suddenly going to travel. — Maybe they had traveled further south to find a better place to settle down. This winter had been colder than usual, there had been several strong storms, and people were tired of the harsh climate.

Many of the neighbors in the Milky Way had a camper. When he went down the street and looked, he saw that all the twelve houses that had a camper were empty, and the camper vans were gone.

He had a hard time seeing what could have led to these changes, so that all the neighbors had left without warning. The Milky Way was a good place to live, a good neighborhood and a good environment. It had been like this before, up through the years. They had had barbecues with the neighbors, and street parties at least once a year, in the spring. And then they had games for the kids.

That was strange, he thought. But then he realized that it had been a long time since the kids were small, and when he thought about it, no one in the Milky Way had small children anymore. But for the Jensen family, it was a bit awkward. They lived on the other side of the Milky Way. They had a daughter who was almost grown up and he had seen her pass by not very many days ago, he said. But then he was a little stunned. It might have been several weeks ago. After all, he was not at all sure when it had happened.

He walked further down the street. The Stormberg couple in the big house further down on the other side of the Milky Way had two dogs, and then they had an adult son who occasionally came home and went for a walk with the dogs. It was empty in the yard there too. He felt that while thinking of the Stormberg family, unrest began to rise to something resembling panic. — He had not seen them come back from shopping at the mall either, not for a long time. He thought, “What’s going on in the neighborhood here? What’s going on here? It is unbelievable. Has anything happened in the world? ”

He frantically tried to find out if he was awake or if he was in a dream. It was not easy to say. He wished he could just wake up and discover that what he had experienced in the dream, it was not like that in real life, it just had to be like that. A bad dream, a nightmare.

He decided to go home but got nowhere. It was as if something — an invisible arm — was holding him back. It was something that held him tight.

He decided to make one last attempt and walked down to the end of the street where there was a small turning point just past the house of Moss. There was no one there either. He started to get really worried. This was completely wild. There were no people to see at all.

What was this? Had he not followed what was happening in the world at all? Had he not realized that the world had completely changed, that important things had happened out there?

He had not watched TV for many weeks, because after he had decided to write this novel and he had started that work, there was one thing that mattered, and that was to write, to write, write all the time. As long as new things came into the story that added value to the script, the most important thing was to keep going. Just keep on writing more of what came from within.

It had become like an obsession to be able to move this project forward, and as the volume — the page number — had increased he had become more and more monomaniacal, only focused on one thing — writing, writing, writing.

Novel fragments will appear here at irregular intervals, as the writing of fiction progresses. For the latest follow me here: https://oivind47.medium.com/

Novel in progress. — The author appreciates comments and feedback.

© Øivind H. Solheim , @oivind47, hiker, teacher, author of novels, poetry, articles, essays, short fiction and experimental writing. [email protected]

# 2:

# 4: They Lived Their Quiet Lives

https://readmedium.com/they-lived-their-quiet-lives-f736ad5badc6