Adelaide Street was the dead street. At least that’s what we all call it, although no actual dead, or otherwise death related, things reside there. It just sort of looks, well, dead, or at least that’s what I’ve heard. It’s so far out of the city, just a strip of lowlife houses with unknown inhabitants, that no one ever goes there. No one has a reason to. The sort of secludedness it possesses, though, allowed for many rumours to float around; mostly crazy things, like cannibalistic witches waiting for their next meal, or forgotten princesses waiting for true love’s kiss. I didn’t believe any of them, no one did, but everyone still knew them. Ramada was a small town, so we had our small town ghost stories.
I quickly checked the time. 5:07. It was a late saturday afternoon, in the late autumn. My dad was still at work, and being the workaholic business man that he was, I wouldn’t expect him home until quite late. My older brother, Adrian, was away for the month, doing some super special trip for a whole crap load of extra credit (because he’s so damn perfect), and so he wasn’t around either. I tightened my brown leather trench coat, a super expensive present from my father that I’d gotten for my sixteenth birthday earlier this year.
The road wasn’t a random street in the middle of nowhere, no. It was connected to Carson Street, which led everywhere in Ramada. I had gotten Adrian’s current girlfriend, Kayla, to drive me to the beginning of the road, and managed to get there without any questions asked by her. I would text her to pick me up when I was done.
Tying my long, unbrushed hair into a messy bun, and adjusting my over sized black rimmed glasses (it was either a hipster look, or a geeky professorial look, and I chose the less mainstream), I continued to walk, with my black combat boots (much cheaper than the trench), down the dead street.
It turns out that the street in its entirety, wasn’t ‘dead’, but more accurately only one house was. Or at least, you know, looked it. Metaphorically speaking.
Ivy grew along the front and side of it, dull green leaves blowing against each other. A rust-coloured brick chimney produced black smoke, that eventually faded into the dreary grey sky. A green wooden door, with a bronze metal knob stood in the centre of the front, not really that welcoming. Four large windows rimmed with green wood, shadowed a silhouette lurking behind the restrictive glass, the silhouette’s owner blissfully ignoring their house’s rugged state.
Chipping white pain, rusted, weathered shingles on the roof, breaking, foggy glass. I tried to picture those children-eating hags and golden-haired beauties about to be murdered within, but it wasn’t happening (I guess it’s just because of my lack of imagination). And at first glance, so was the lawn, the garden, but at a second glance, there appeared to be a sliver of life left.
A rose. An impeccable, scarlet rose, hidden behind overgrown, yellowed grass. All of its tender, velvety petals were still miraculously intact, and it’s deep green stem standing the rose upright in all of its splendored glory. It was wondrous how such a beautiful thing could thrive in such an environment.
Somehow, this rose was a poignant reminder of what I was here for. 703 Adelaide Street. How this erroneously placed flower, emitting the essence of perfection, persuaded me to continue forth, even though I was freezing cold and admittedly scared, was beyond me. But it did. To that dead house. To my long lost mother.
Ember Bound 