Nail by Nail
Nail by Nail
by David Michael
“It’s so different now. I can hardly remember what the house looked like before.”
“I can remember. I can see it all. Every dusty pane of glass, every grimy piece of vinyl siding, every square foot of warped hardwood flooring and worn out carpet.”
“Stuck with you?”
“Stuck with me, yeah. And stuck through me. And continues to stab at me even now.”
“But the old house is gone now. All that’s left is the foundation.”
“Nope. All that’s left is in my memory. I even tore out the original foundation.”
“Laid a slab?”
“No. I created a new raised foundation.”
“Why?”
“So I could answer that question. Over and over.”
“OK. OK.”
“That’s where the dog lived.”
“What? Under the house?”
“Yeah.”
“Was that a good idea?”
“I don’t know. But the dog loved it under there. When we tried to block the crawl space entrance, he would still force his way inside. Then get stuck, and you could hear him whimpering through the floor. He was a stupid, stupid dog.”
“You miss him?”
“Sometimes.”
“Going to miss anything else from the old house?”
“I miss all of it, sometimes. I hate it. But I still miss it. I guess, no matter how bad it might’ve been, I’m not sure anyone can ever really stop missing the past. At least, I can’t. The dog was one of the good things, though. So I don’t mind missing him.”
“You’re finished now. The house is rebuilt. The past is gone.”
“Not gone, no. Not really. More like … reborn.”
“I thought you were trying to get rid of the past. I thought that was why you replaced the old house so thoroughly, replacing everything. You could’ve built something completely new here–”
“But I didn’t. Because I didn’t want something new.”
“What did you want?”
“To give some other family a better chance, maybe. Or maybe just to show the whole heap of piss-poor memories piled up in there that I could stare them down. That I could win. That they weren’t going to hold me back any longer.”
“Did they let you go? The memories?”
“Nope. They still got me. But you never know until you try.”
“Maybe you’re holding onto them now.”
“Maybe.”
“So do you think the curse is gone now?”
“Yeah. He died years ago. Oh. You meant the house. The house was never cursed. We were.”
“So why rebuild it?”
“It wasn’t the house’s fault. It deserved another chance. Best I can figure, this is what the house looked like when it was first built. Long before we came along to fuck it up.”
“So you’re done now? That’s it?”
“Yeah. I’m done here.”
Copyright © 2006 by David Michael.
Comments are closed.
