Chapter Twenty-Five:
Sam and Stacy drove until it was well into the night. They had not spoken a word to each other since Colby's kidnapping. Sam pulled into a driveway and stepped out, staring at a slightly crooked house with multiple colors racing along it's sides that had a certain charm, that you just had to feel it was magic by just looking at it. Stacy moved to stand beside Sam. Without checking out the house, Sam went up and turned the doorknob; the door was already open. They stepped inside and the house was eerily dark.
They were in a dining room, pictures and paintings donned the deep blue walls. The room was trashed, obviously ransacked. Stacy stepped through it, watching for the broken glass and debris. Sam was going upstairs, seemingly knowing his way around the home. He made his way into a large study and froze, Stacy watching behind him. He seemed to be in remembrance, his eyes fogged over and misty, somewhat like that of a blind man.
"Sam," Stacy called out to him, "Sam, are you alright?"
"Years pass, and you think that God, if there ever was one, will show himself to his creation, help them, save them. Years pass and memories, memories fade. You forget who you are, you forget where you came from. You," He falters and Stacy continues to watch him fervently, "You forget things that make you feel pain, or sorrow for the world, for yourself." He turns to look at Stacy. "You forget all of the things that made you, all because you want to forget all you left. All the pain that you left. The years pass, and you forget who you are, no, you forsake who you are for your own self-conscious. You want to die forgetting all you've done, and with the honor of nobility to the world, but you can never truly forget what made your soul. You can never truly forget what killed you long before your body aged and died. You die a shell, you die worthless. I've forsaken who I am for a life that means nothing. I was fearless once, had the world. Had a love, a desire, a passion, had a skill. I left it to be nothing but a damned puppet and every night I shout the answer to the heavens I regret never having given. 'Yes! Damn it, a thousand times yes!'" He looks at Stacy. "There's so much I want to take back, so much I missed being. So much I gave up."
"Sam-"
"Go." He looks away from her. She takes a step toward him.
"Sam, I can help." She reaches towards him with a tentative hand.
"Go." She retracts her hand. "I'll meet you downstairs." She stands there a moment before stepping back. At the door she stops and whispers, "You don't have to forget to remember." Sam stares at her as she walks off. She starts down the stairs and reaches the second floor landing, she makes her way down the hall to go down the last flight to the first floor, but an ajar door catches her eye. It's painted a lilac purple, but inside the walls are painted to look like a hazy mist of orange. Almost as if you were dreaming the color. It had three beds, each stripped bare of their dressings. Across the way from the door was a large Peter Pan styled window with a double-door window and a seat. Discarded on the floor was a broken frame to a picture lying face down. Stacy stooped carefully to the floor and picked it up slowly, brushing the glass aside. She hissed slightly as a piece snagged her finger and left a scarlet trail running down her index finger of her left hand. She shook the frame and a picture slid out from the glass that had managed to stay in its desired place. She picked it up and turned it over. Staring at her was a group of three teenaged girls, all three tangled up in a giant knot inside of a Mystery Five blanket, wrestling it to get out, laughing all the same.
She scanned their faces, the last one struck her. It was Colby. She was smiling and still had braces in her teeth. Her eyes were glowing; she was happy. Stacy felt herself smile a bit at the image. This was the first time she had ever seen Colby truly happy. That's when she realized whose house she was in. She was in Colby's house, and Sam, Sam had taken her there.