I Lie Among The Embers

I'll tell you about the day I set the Barn on fire.

The chilly air, the warmth of the flaming building, the feeling of being watched by the stars above as they shook their heads at me—I remember it all. A perfect memory, but tainted with vengeance.

I wasn't just burning a place, I was burning my past.

The Barn belonged to nobody. Many say it was the product of an old farm, but it's been here before my parents were born, and the walls were haunted with the memories of people gone by. Unfortunately, I left my mark one-too-many times, and now I had to get rid of it.

The first time I visited the Barn, I was a curious child.

"I heard Anne Barlowe saw a ghost," my brother whispered, "that place is trouble."

I've grown to realize that he was messing with my five year old mind, and that Anne Barlowe was a liar. I remember stumbling to the Barn in the middle of the night, my tiny, toddler feet scampering towards the field it lay in. I was curious and I was innocent.

I broke my leg that day—fell from the wooden balcony, screamed, wailed, cried—and no one found me until Morn'. I'd been laying hurt for hours. It was only the beginning of the trauma that the Barn left me living with.

The second time I visited, I was ten.

It had grown older in years, moss growing along the decaying wooden walls, and paint fading away to nothing. I went on a game of Truth or Dare with my elementary friends, but the memory of being terrified was vivid in my mind. There was a tingle running along my femur as I walked through the doors, remembering the time I fell.

I'd begun to think the tales of ghosts were real—except they turned out to be my own.

My 'friends' at the time locked me in there, their laughter echoing into the night sky as they ran back down the field. They never told me why they did it. I didn't bother asking.

The third time I went to the Barn, I was sixteen.

I'd matured, but was still naive. A boy brought me there, looking for a quiet place to get away to. No one visited, because it had withered away to nothingness. There were holes in the walls, and the balcony had collapsed into a pile of hay.

I kissed him there. I thought I fell in love.

I didn't.

The fourth time, I was seventeen, and I swung open the wooden doors to see the boy I gave my heart to standing inside. This time, he had another girl in his arms. I thought it was my fault; that I wasn't enough. Another one of my ghosts had gone to live in the Barn that day.

I can't count the rest of the times I returned.

When I ran away from home, that's where I slept. Beneath the shattered roof, huddled under a thin blanket as I strived through the cold. My ghosts kept me company. I thought I'd live and die there, because there was no hope for me anywhere else.

Two years I stayed there, sneaking into the town neighboring mine and getting a job. I waited tables, earned little-to-nothing, and wasn't able to afford a living space. The Barn made do. I remember the nights I'd return to it, eyes bloodshot and red from crying after a customer yelled at me for screwing up an order.

Then I found Eddie.

He was only in the town for a week, but he seemed to have moved into my life indefinitely. He came from England, making a quick stop before adventuring around the rest of the US. I met him at a bus stop, where he said he liked my jeans. I said I liked his shoes. We liked each other.

He ended up staying two more weeks, and when he found out where I'd been living, he asked me to come with him. I had nothing here, and he was offering me everything.

I said yes.

I was given a chance to have a new life, and I wanted the ghosts of my past to let me move on. Eddie helped me find the gasoline, and I brought the lighter. No one would care if the Barn disappeared, and that's how I wanted it. I wanted them to forget, so they'd forget about me.

I'd live a new life, free from the shackles of those wooden doors.

So there I was, standing under the glistening night sky, watching it burn to ashes. When the embers start to shine, I'll lay among them, basking in the knowledge that the ghosts were nothing but speckles of dust. When they finally die out, that's when I'll leave.

That's when I'll live.