Alone

My nose is assaulted by the dingy smell associated with paper factories and muddy rivers. Even with the windows rolled up the scent infiltrates my car. It reminds me of the long aimless nights I’d drive around with my friends listening to music and wondering where our lives would take us. As I get off I20 and hop onto 49 I’m forced to weave around abandoned vehicles. Cars and trucks are scattered across the highways and exit ramps.

Eventually, I navigate through the disarray and make my way down King Road. As I pass the Cane’s and McDonald’s, I’m confronted by the deserted nature of the city. I continue driving to my old college in the hopes of finding someone. I drive past what was a Vacuum Repair Store, the Skinworks Tattoo cottage, and see the dorm I once lived in is still standing there. I pull into the lot and decide to walk the campus. When I glance at Strawn’s Eat Shop I’m back with my roommate. He’s laughing about something, but we’re walking to get breakfast. He’s trying to tell me something, but I can’t hear him.

“What’d you say? Where’d you come from?”

He looks at me, but it feels like he’s looking through me. I turn around to see what he had been looking at. When I turn back around, he’s gone. I run forward, to see where he went. Then run back to Cline Residence Hall. Around the corner the glass door is shattered.

“What the hell just happened?”

I take the opportunity to go inside. There’s nothing to indicate that anyone had been there recently. The power appeared to be out in most places, all of the light was coming from the center courtyard. I walked through the lobby area, checked the dorm kitchen, then into the courtyard area in search of a glimpse of life. I hiked up the center French quarter staircase to what had once been my home. The muggy air feels suffocating in the courtyard. My t-shirt has lines of sweat forming on my chest and back.

The dorm was just as abandoned as the cars on the highway. All the furniture was where it was supposed to be, but the belongings of those who would’ve been living there were all gone. All that was left was the trash from a previous tenant, and evidence of some smaller creature finding a home. I stare at the white cinderblock wall and see every picture that hung there previously. Pictures of my friends, pictures of places I had been or wished to go to. There was a deep sense of loss, and the more I thought about the memories the less clear they seemed to be. I could hear the laughter of my friends, and chased the sound into another empty white bedroom. The building seemed to taunt me with memories that I couldn’t quite grasp.

After I left Cline, I walked across the deserted campus to what had once been the Admissions Office. The sign was still posted out front, but the windows and doors were boarded up. Why wasn’t my friend greeting me at the door, offering a tour of the campus we both knew like the back of our hands? These memories came in flashes so quick I could hardly decipher reality. One moment I was standing outside Jackson Hall the next I was in the middle of a French lesson. The signs for “Centenary in Paris” were still on some of the windows and I could see the desks I used to occupy now forgotten.

I’m sitting at the desk. My professor makes a joke about French grammar. People around me laugh. I look around trying to identify people by names, but all that comes to mind are references like choir, other sorority, and swimmer. Why can’t I remember the names of the people I’m in class with. I look back at my professor, and wonder for a moment how I got here. Obviously, I walked here from my dorm this morning, but I don’t remember it. I get up to leave, and when I move I’m standing outside the window looking in at the empty classroom. I feel like I’m losing my mind. I look in every direction before collapsing to the ground, knees pulled tightly to my chest.

There I felt so absolutely alone. I had no idea where everyone had gone, nor what had happened to the place I once called home. I was still being assaulted by the glimpses of what may have been memories. I finally worked up the courage to walk across the campus down to frat row. Then I saw the back of someone that I swore I knew. When I blinked they were gone. When I passed the giant letters laying on the ground I felt the sound of music reverberating off of the house.

I ran up to the little white house with red trim, stumbling over the uneven laid bricks. Inside was barren. The dance floor I saw with neon lights and spilled drinks, now resembled an abandoned class room sans the desks.

This confrontation between the past and reality began to feel indecipherable.

“Where were you? The rose ceremony is about to start!”

I turn around and I’m looking at my date.

“Where did you come from? What happened here?” I ask.

She doesn’t answer, but opens the door and I follow her to my truck. I look down and I’m in a white collared shirt paired with red suspenders and a pair of bluejeans. I recognize it, but don’t remember putting it on. Outside it’s different. The sun is shining and the mugginess has subsided. I see my brothers. Our dates are dressed in bright pink and blue Antebellum dresses.

When I try to walk to them I’m back where I started. No longer clad in a jeans and suspenders. I run back outside to see that no one is there. It was another memory taking over my mind. I can’t tell you if the things I don’t see are real. The truth is I don’t know if this place is truly abandoned, or if the people I know are just gone.