Chapter 5

Memoires of the Past

I ran down 56th Ave., the road into town, and went left down 208th St.; weaving around groups of homebound teenagers as I went. I ran past the Safeway grocery store, crossed the Fraser Highway intersection and went over the bridge. Finally, I reached my limit and came to a stop next to the sign for Nicomekl Park; just next to the park's dead-end road into the flood plain. Once I caught my breath, I continued down the sidewalk, taking a glance at the river as I walked. It was definitely higher than normal, but it didn't seem high enough to flood my everyday route. So I stepped through the space in-between the concrete dividers and descended down the small hill.

Not far down the path, my eye caught a familiar sight to the left of the asphalt. I stopped walking. A slightly overgrown trail made its way through the tall grass, ending on the edge of a townhouse complex on elevated ground. Looking at the trail and complex brought back some memories. Climbing over a fence to tag the last person in a game of Man Tracker. Hiding in the tall grass to avoid capture. Dropping stuffed animals out of a second story window and catching them when they were thrown back up. Climbing out the back window and sitting on the roof with Natt and his younger sister. Waiting for Natt on the path while he took his short cut through the tall grass.

Good times.

Of course, it came with a bad aftertaste; the day I found his townhouse empty, my early Christmas present to them in hand.

They never last.

I felt something land on my cheek; something wet.

Is it starting to rain?

I lifted my hand and waited. Sure enough, I felt two more drops land on the palm of my hand. Looking down the path, I focused my gaze, and I saw the thin streaks of other tiny drops as they fell.

With a sombre sigh, I reached back, pulled the hood of my sweater over my head and continued walking.

I walked up to the infamous traffic light in front of the elderly centre about five minutes later. By now the rain was coming down at a steady drizzle. There wasn't a lot of traffic that day, so I didn't really have to press the button to cross the street. Then again, I'm the kind of guy who would press the crosswalk button on the way to put a letter in the public mailbox at 11:00 pm on a Saturday night; so I wasn't going to make jaywalking a habit just yet. Besides, I wanted to test something.

Slam.

I hit the crosswalk button and looked up at the traffic light as it went from green, to yellow, to red. The crossing sign then displayed a white walking figure.

"Of course." I muttered under my breath. I stepped off the curb and crossed the street.

When I got home, I put my bag on the storage bench, took off my shoes, hug up my Old Navy hoody and went straight to my computer. I had to take my mind off of the recent weirdness and my refreshed memories. Once my computer was on and I had signed in, I went about doing my everyday things. I checked my email, emptied out my inbox on DeviantART, looked at posts on Facebook, and saw what was new on YouTube. None of those helped though.

In a last ditch effort, I turned on my PS2 and opened the disk drive, grabbed Rawer Danger off of my game shelf and put the disk into the console. Once the game loaded, I selected my save file and continued from where I had left off. Thankfully, I got rather into it and temporarily forgot about what was bugging me.

A few hours later, I heard my mom's car pull up in the driveway. The yellowed headlights of her '02 Chevy Cavalier shone through the Rec room window closest to the front door for a few seconds before being turned off. The car idled a few seconds longer; the vibrations from its aged engine could be felt from my spot on the couch. The engine soon died and I heard the sound of the car door being opened and closed, followed by the screech of the old mailbox as its lid was opened and shut. The front door was then unlocked via key, opened and then closed with its trademark slam before she called out.

"Hey Poopy-Doopy, you home?"

Why do you call me that?

The door to the Rec room opened behind me and she walked in.

"Hey handsome, how was your day?" I paused the game before replying.

"It was okay." I realized that it was a lie immediately after.

"Just 'okay'?"

"Yeah." I turned to look at her.

"Do you have any homework?"

"No." Another lie, this time intentional.

"Well alright," she turned for the door, "I'll be upstairs if you need me." She walked out of the Rec room, closing the door behind her. I sighed. I now had a feeling in my gut that I can't quite explain; it was as if all of my motivation had been suddenly sucked out, leaving me with a feeling of emptiness. Returning to my game, I unpaused it and continued playing until I reached a save point; at which point I saved and turned off my PS2. Standing up from the couch, I walked to the Rec room door, opened it, grabbed my backpack, closed the door, set my backpack on the couch, pulled out my pencil case and cheap binder, and finally sat down at my desk. Opening my binder, I took out my Social Studies homework and started labeling countries on the five blank maps I had been given.

"Aiden!" It was my mom. It had been about an hour or so since I had started my homework. I got up from my desk and walked over to the door.

"What?!" I yelled back after opening the door enough to stick my head out.

"Can you fix my internet?"

Translation: Reboot the wireless router.

I let out a sigh before opening the door all the way and climbing the stairs.

"Thanks honey bunny." She was sitting at the far end of the dinning room table next to the sliding doors of the sundeck; a china cabinet that contained anything but china was against the wall behind her. Her blue ACER laptop was on the table in front of her. Instead of answering, I shuffled over to the desk along the same wall as the sliding doors.

The desk was my mom's and it was in between the living and dinning rooms; looking at it made it seem as though it was actively dividing the rooms. The desk held lots of things, envelopes with bank statements, an address book, tape, a stapler, a printer, and an old Compaq computer among other things. On the desk's very top shelf, wedged between an artsy lamp and a ceresin one, sat the blue Linksys wireless router. I reach up and unplugged the power cord from the back of the router, counted to thirty, plugged it back in, and walked over to the laptop. Looking at the bottom right corner of the screen, I watched as the internet icon went from an X to full bars that looked like stairs.

"There, it's up." I said, refreshing the webpage of the open internet browser. I was about to turn and walk back to the stairs when something caught my eye. It was a tiny bubble. I stared at it as it slowly descended toward the ground, centimetres away from me. My eyes followed it until it stopped at about waist height and hovered for a second.

"Aiden?" I broke from my trance and the bubble popped. At least it looked like it popped, for all I know it could have simply disappeared. I looked over at my mom, "What were you staring at?"

"I thought I saw something," another lie. The day's events came back to me in full force, making the idea of telling her what I had just seen seem crazy.

I sat at my desk, staring at my homework. I had managed to complete one of the five maps in an hour of work, but hadn't touched it since then. I couldn't concentrate, not with the day's weirdness and facts of just how screwed up my life was swimming around in my head.

Who is that girl? Why does she keep disappearing and reappearing? Does she want something from me? Why did Tyler have to move. What was up with that dream? Where did Natt go? What the hell was that bubble? Why did he have to die?

I looked at the digital clock in the bottom corner of my screen; it read 12:06 AM. I closed my Blinkx Beat screen saver, turned off my computer and lamp, and went upstairs. I walked into my room, grabbed Back to the Future off of my shelf and walked out into the living room.

On the left wall next to my mom's desk was a stone fire place that we never used, along its mantle were family photographs in decorative frames. In the corner next to the fireplace was an RCA flat screen T.V. on a stand that belonged to a 32 inch Toshiba tube T.V. There was a dark green three cushion couch on the right wall with a matching recliner sitting on the edge of the living room. Above the couch was a painting of what I think was a street shot in Italy. On the far wall was a tall shelf with a storage door on the left side, a glass cabinet on the right and drawers on the bottom. A coffee table sat in front of it, on it was a steadily growing shrine for family friends, grandparents and an uncle. In the corner next to the couch was a lamp and an artsy glass shelf that held CDs and Cassette Tapes. On top was a combo player that had a Cassette player, a broken CD player, a Record player, and a radio. On top of that was another shrine of sorts, but for a single man. A man who had owned a 1981 Mercedes Benz 300D, ran a pool hall, helped build the set of Mission to Mars, and was offered a job to help build the Channel Tunnel.

I avoided looking at it, walking up to the T.V. and opening the glass doors of the T.V. stand. I pressed the DVD eject button on the VHS DVD combo player and placed the movie disk in the DVD tray. Putting the DVD case on the coffee table, I grabbed the remotes. I turned on the T.V., lowered the volume, waited for the menu to come up, and pressed play. I then placed the remotes on the coffee table, grabbed a couple of pillows off the top of the couch and a blanket off the arm rest, took off my glasses and put them on the DVD case, and laid down.

The camera panned out from some clocks, and showed off the various automated systems that Doc Brown had set up. Then Marty walked in.

"Hey Doc?" He returned the spare key to its spot under door mat. By this point my eyes were drawing to a close.

I woke up suddenly. The T.V. was off, so I figured that my brother had come up and turned it off. The house was pitch black except for the dinning room and kitchen which were illuminated by the street lights outside. I got up from the couch and trudged over to the bathroom, flipping the light switch as I entered, but the light didn't turn on. I took a step back, flipping the switch a few more times. A green light coming from behind the light switch blinked on and off as if that was what it was supposed to do. I really needed to go to the bathroom, but I couldn't go in the dark.

Erch.

A sound came from the dinning room, the familiar sound of a chair being moved on the hardwood floor. I walked out into the kitchen, looking into the dinning room. I didn't see anything a first, but then I saw movement under the table. A figure rushed out from under it and stopped in the middle of the kitchen, hopping up and down like an ape. The realization that some unknown thing was in my house filled me with fear. Scrunching my eyes shut, I hoped to God that I was dreaming.