Author: Rock Martin

Bright rays of the winter sun poured through the family room window and into the den, casting a welcoming sunspot across the carpet. Peaches nuzzled her yellow fur into the warm fabric and basked in the sunshine. It was that time again, when The Providers brought a tree inside and hung a bunch of weird stuff on it. Time for the house to smell like the forest, for those lovely faint jingles, and for happy voices to bounce off the walls.

Fred lumbered into the room and crashed down next to Peaches, the impact sending a roll across his plump, black fur. Peaches’ eyes flopped open as Fred pressed his back into hers, slid her to the edge of the sunspot, and drew a groan.

Peaches pushed back, the two jockeying for ownership, the sunspot big enough for just one Labrador. They wrestled until Fred abruptly buried his nose into his butt, ending the battle. Peaches huffed and rolled her eyes.

Dad always called it the wild. 

I never really understood why. As a matter of fact, there wasn’t much about him I understood, and he probably felt the same about me.

“Justin, I know fourteen is a tough age. I’ve been there. Not sure where you belong, how you fit in.” Dad’s words carried on the morning Vermont breeze, mingling with the familiar wintergreen scent of budding birch trees surrounding the trailhead parking area. My eyes rolled.

“There is no future, there is only now,” Sarah announced to Brian and me.  

I glanced upward and read the Chinese lettering sprawled across the frayed cloth canopy adorned with dragons.

“I told you this place was exotic.” Her words were excited, but I couldn’t help the eye roll and the familiar sneer that stretched across my face.   

When I was young, the road ahead was an adventure, full of twists and turns that could lead anywhere. But now? Decades later, I knew better. Life had become a straight shot, and all those dreams I once had continued to shrink in the distance.   

The dry Nevada wind burned against my face as I stared at the orange painted door that led to my childhood home. 

For a moment, the memory of its bright hue and brilliant color stood in all its glory, like it once had. 

A familiar muffled shout broke through the closed windows, and the door was once again the fading and peeling entryway of the present. 

Mark is gone.