ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
I'M 40 married with 2 children. I was born on the banks of the river Mersey near Liverpool in England. I spent 24 yrs in the Armed Forces traveling extensively world wide. I have recently resigned to a persue a new career. Writing is something that I enjoy as relaxation. [September 2003]
AUTHOR'S OTHER TITLES (3) Ancient Worrior (Poetry) About King Arthur. [219 words] Is It Worth It ? (Poetry) - [88 words] [Self-Help] The Echoes Of Sorrow (Poetry) In memory of my cousin who died tragically 2 years ago. I wished he could have been with me on my 40 birthday. [108 words] [Spiritual]
The Death House Paul James Moore
The Memory House by P.J.Moore
The house stood still, nothing stirred, only the sound of the winters icy wind could be heard blowing through the cracks around the windows and doors. It hadn’t always been like this, in times long since gone the house had been filled with sounds. Babies, toddlers, teenagers, and adults alike had filled its warm and welcoming spaces. Laughter, sadness and Joy had been tenacious companions. 13 Bucannan road had stood for nearly a hundred years, it wasn’t a particularly spectacular house, one of a row of terraced houses, situated in an ordinary street on the banks of the River Mersey. Three generations had been lovingly reared in the house; it had seen many things, both good and bad. The bravery and ignorance of men leaving to go and fight Hitler, the desolation of surrounding houses and families by bombs dropped from dots in the sky, Parties thrown by the tired and weary home on leave; some would depart not to return. Happiness, relief and great joy on VE day, songs around the piano in the front lounge, birth in the front lounge, happy school days, courtship, marriage and divorce. These memories where now part of the house, they where entombed in its bricks and mortar, however silence now reverberated around its cold clammy walls.
The house was sad it mourned its loss and longed for laughter, in fact it longed for any sound of human habitation, the sounds of wind and weather grew tiresome, even the once comforting sounds of a squabbling family of mice had become wearisome. Someone did live in the house, a middle aged man, the house knew him, it had witnessed his birth, watched him go out of the door on his first day at school, seen the look of death on his face when he had been carried through the hall and laid next to the fire after being dragged unconscious from the River. Both his good and bad times had been shared, the house loved the man, but the man was seldom at home.
Ged was fifty one next birthday, he didn’t feel as though more than fifty years had gone by, but he knew he looked it. The years had washed over him like the sands of the River, steadily eroding and changing his features. To many nights spent down at the Brighton drinking pints of Irish stout, together with snatched fast food had helped to disfigure his once athletic medium frame, and where once there had been a toned flat stomach, a stretched, flabby, flaccid sack had now taken up residence. His once thick mat of black hair was lank, thin and parted in more places than the London Underground to try and combat the advance of his monks spot. He hadn’t married, there had been a few friends but that’s all, no one had swept him off his feet and he had until recently been waited on hand and foot by his doting mother.
Ged had loved the house to once, but now he spent as little time as possible at home. To many memories returned to haunt him, and the numbing silence could be felt, when at home he wore it like a thick veil that cut him off from the rest off the world. Ged was lonely, he didn’t want to end up like mum, all those years of raising children and working, it hurt him to think that she had never had a holiday abroad. The furthest she had been was London, and that had only been on one occasion. The Altziemers had got steadily worse until finally she didn’t even recognize him anymore. Eventually he just couldn’t cope and mum had gone into a care home.
Sat alone he thought his usual thoughts,“if only things could have been different,” his mind wondered back to better times, to the summers of his youth, to loves lost and opportunities squandered. Ged sat all afternoon; in fact all to often he had sat pondering or listening to the houses narcotic silence. Very occasionally someone would ring the bell, and very occasionally he would answer, nine times out of ten it would be the milkman or someone wanting to convert him to this or that religion.
At last the letter lay before him finished, just a few lines to relate his last lonely thoughts to his elder sisters and brother. It had only taken a second, and the blade from the razor had been a new one, Ged thought it strange, on TV people who cut their wrists thrashed about in a demonic frenzy or changed their minds and dialed 999 for help. As he felt his life’s blood ebb away he felt calm, a strange sadness surrounded him, he didn’t feel alone anymore, the house had come to take him, to make his death another one of its many memories.
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"the beginning of the story doesn't flow too well. you went too much into the house and too little into the essence of the man, for your tale is really about a man who misses his happy past and realizes the emptiness of the present. but, for all that a good effort." -- sunny, dc, usa.
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