Desolate | Teen Ink

Desolate

November 26, 2011
By candykat2295 BRONZE, Mount Juliet, Tennessee
candykat2295 BRONZE, Mount Juliet, Tennessee
1 article 0 photos 0 comments

Favorite Quote:
"To dream is to starve doubt, feed hope"
- Justina Chen Headley, North of Beautiful


On a chilly October afternoon, after flipping through the channels for the 12th time to find nothing on TV, I pulled myself off the sofa and went exploring in the field behind our house. After I hopped the fence, I started to walk. The field could only be described as desolate and forgotten. After walking for a while, I came across and old abandoned house. You could see the beauty hidden beneath the chipped paint and moss. In its glory days this house was not a house that if you passed by on your walk to school or the general store that you could pass without a glance. It was a house you stood and looked up at with envy. The house was large with white chipped paint and a porch that wrapped around the perimeter. I walked up the steps to the baby blue front door and reached for the ornate doorknob in awe. As I walked over the threshold I looked around, taking in my surroundings. It was a dark room covered from floor to ceiling with a thick layer of dust. The floor creaked as I walked through the living room. The dust and lack of furniture in the room confirmed my suspicions that the house had not been home to anyone for many, many years. The front room, even with the absence of furniture was beautiful and extravagant. A dazzling chandelier overlooked the main foyer and the floors were made of white marble. As I walked throughout the house I could not help but wonder who would leave a house this beautiful. My explanation was presented to me through a letter laid on the dining room table, one of the few furniture pieces left in the house. The note that had miraculously lain uncovered for decades read as this:
To whom it may concern,

If you are reading this letter you may be wondering as to the reason behind our disappearance. Heartbreak. Only a fortnight ago death undertook our dearest daughter, Rose, after many months of being gravely ill. My husband and I have been struggling to live in this house that we acquired to raise our only daughter in, but the memory is still too fresh upon our minds. Someday we may wish to come back to our home but until that time comes someone may live in our house. To the individual who chooses to accept this offer I ask of only one thing, the room upstairs at the end of the hall is not to be touched. This room belonged to Rose and in her memory nothing has been moved. I also ask that if you are not planning on accepting this offer to live in our home or willing to find someone who would be interested, that you would kindly leave this note in the place that you found it.
Sincerely,
Mr. and Mrs. Kindling

After finishing the letter, I rushed up to find the aforementioned room. When I opened the door saw a beautiful room that clearly once belonged to a young girl. Dolls and teddy bears sat throughout the space, on the shelves on the wall and on the bed. I walked over to the bed, covered with a pink silk duvet and picked up a beautiful blonde, curly-haired doll wearing a lace, Victorian style dress. I was admiring the doll, my back to the only window in the room, when a huge gust of wind blew against my back, startling me and causing me to drop the doll back on the bed. I whipped around to see a closed window. The room began to feel smaller. I was not afraid really just slightly uncomfortable and unwelcome. I felt like I was not welcome in this room, like Rose, the little girl in the letter, did not want to be disturbed. So, I turned around and left room, left the house and went home with a new story to tell that I knew, to everyone I told, would be denounced as a silly dream.

The author's comments:
I wrote a shorter, much much different version of this short story when my 10th English teacher gave us the word desolate and told us to write whatever came to us. I came back to the story later and rewrote it. So, this is my interpretation of the word desolate.

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