The sun was setting on the horizon behind the wooded hills to the west. Gond had been driving for a little over an hour, through the wheat fields and reed beds. He had the feeling that someone had decided to leave everything behind, taking even time with them. Everything was frozen, everything was the same as when he was a child. But a halo of decay and sadness covered everything.

Was that halo his own feelings, the filter of his life on those fields?

When he arrived, before him stood a totally abandoned house, the sliding doors leaky, the windows broken, vines choking the walls full of cracks.

But the worst was the state of the interior of the house.

As if a gale had blown through, everything was full of broken glass. Chairs were on one side and on the other of the rooms, tables were knocked over, plates were shattered. No one had entered that house for a long time.

It was the house that no one in her family talked about. A house that had belonged to his grandfather and that, after he died, had been rented out to various tenants. Then, it had been put up for sale, but without a fuss and without success. As if out of obligation.

That was all he knew.

His whole family, citizens with good jobs, had turned their backs on the countryside.

But up to that point... Why had they left that house in that state? Why didn't anyone talk about it?

Inside the house there was a strong oppressive smell, an odor without fragrance but stinking. He opened all the doors and windows and let the cold autumn wind blow into the walls and into every corner of the interior of the house.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Better.

Then, he decided that while he waited for the moving truck, he would devote himself to cleaning everything. It was impossible in one day. There was work for weeks. Or even months. But at least it wouldn't hurt to leave everything empty, take out the garbage, get that smell out of there. Whatever it took.

While he was cleaning the house, childhood memories came back to him, memories of summer, full of cicadas and happiness, in the garden of that house. He, his sisters, around their grandparents, running around and playing, hiding in the nooks and crannies of that big labyrinthine house. Then, stories around the fire that his grandfather told them, stories that had inspired him to start writing and painting.

In those days it didn't have that oppressive smell. It smelled of forest, of legends. It smelled of arcane secrets, of fascinating adventures. And all that had evaporated from his life. It didn't take him long to understand that inside his body he also had that same smell that the house gave off. An oppressive smell. A smell of closure, of oblivion, of abandonment.

Since he quit his job two years ago, he had entered a spiral of depression. The divorce came almost unintentionally, as if everything came in a package. It was natural, and organic. His job as a translator in a publishing house, his marriage, his bourgeois lifestyle. Everything had crumbled like a house of cards. But in a natural way, like when a giant blows on a little straw house and the house, no matter how little the giant blows, crumbles, and falls down.

Then, also following the logic of events, he fell into the alleys of alcohol and excess. And he thought he could go back to writing and painting, with this hubris that excess provides.

He had been trying for months to get someone to publish his writings, to get someone to buy his paintings and drawings. But he had lost his talent, his inspiration. The source had dried up. A rich and abundant source in his adolescence that had grown a wild, untamed forest of stories that he had later burned or lost on purpose.

After cleaning over the house and taking the trash outside, he sat on the porch and stared out at the dreary, abandoned garden. A strange inner peace came over him, a peace he hadn't felt since childhood.

But he also felt emptier than ever.