One sunny afternoon, she decided to visit her past; that old townhouse with many arms and legs, the one with the steep stairs and the blue paint, the one where the walls smelt like salt and where the windows let in lesser light than usual. It was home once.

Did she know that the house cried? It cried for her to run across the floor with her tiny feet, to tumble up those perilous stairs. In lonesome nights, even the blue walls heaved sighs as they grew greener with death every passing moment.

Purple peeked in the horizon when she finally stepped in. The dead house gave out a merry chuckle, the ceiling showered her with warm dust, and the green moss creeping up the walls stopped dead. A smile broke on her face as she slowly walked towards the staircase. The banister had long fallen off. She laughed to herself as she struggled up those stairs in the dark, how she used to know these stairs like the back of her hand. The roof. She would fly plastic bags here because she never learnt to fly kites. Sometimes the bags would get stuck in the foliage of the old mahogany. The tree still stood, lifeless without the green. It died waiting for little hands to rustle its branches for pieces of polythene. She came and stood underneath the barren branches, and that's when she saw them. Stains of yellows, greens, blues and reds across the roof. Paintballs, how could she ever forget? Those balloons stolen from birthday parties filled with the paint bought from the shop near school, with every penny her young self could save; throwing little balls of laughter, and Helen, how could she forget Helen? Her and Helen they'd always come dressed in white and go down wearing colorful pretty frocks. So many whites that had turned shades blue, green, purple and and every other color imaginable.

Helen fell off the roof trying to dodge a red paintball. She was eight and quarter.

The sun had gone down. She stood underneath the branches staring at the little girl that now stood before her. The girl, she could be no more than eight; wearing a smile so innocent, and those glistening eyes. “Hi Helen” - she wanted to say but her lips didn't part. Still that same Helen who last played paintballs with her in 10th of November, 1996,the same white frock with blotches of yellow down the hem,the same pink ribbon in her hair.

She stood like before, staring blankly at the bit of her past. She hadn't realized she was wearing a white dress today, and she hadn't noticed the red paintball in the girl's hands clutched tightly.