AN: This is a re-write of the original ‘Emma Came Home’ (previous chapter). My teacher helped me write this one because I’m actually reading it out to lots of other people… nervous stuff! Enjoy!

Emma Came Home

Walking down empty roads, Emma held her head high. She was scared, she wanted to get back on a city-bound train, go back to a warmer place. Not stay in a place that was empty and dusty, where skeletons sat on rocking chairs on rickety front porches of houses that were falling apart. But she had a job to do, and she was going to do it well.

   She kept walking until she reached the white weatherboard house with the green tin roof, where she stopped and stared at her childhood home. The grass had grown long; a red brick path covered in moss split the grass in two, running from where Emma stood to the porch. The weatherboards were filthy and the tin roof was rusty and faded. Her memories were not.

   Emma quickly walked up the pathway, stepping carefully up onto the porch. The front door had a word painted across it.

   ‘Abandoned’. Some things could so easily be abandoned.

“I’m leaving.”

   “What do you mean, you’re leaving? Girl, you get back here or I’ll…”

   “You’ll do what? Hit me? Not likely! We’re all going to leave here someday, I’ll just rather do it while I’m ahead!”

   Slam.

No matter. She made her way around the porch and opened the back door, and found herself in what she remembered to be the kitchen. Dirty tiled floor and bench tops, a stopped clock.

She watched from the table.

   “I don’t care what you like, you’ll eat it. If you don’t like it, get your own dinner!”

   “I work all fucking day, Anna! You’re supposed to get me dinner.”

   “And I did.”

   “Not what I like.”

   “You know, I don’t give three shits to what you like. Go visit one of your little whores or something, maybe they’ll make you something if you promise to leave quickly.”

   “Screw you, woman…”

Emma closed the door behind her and walked down a hallway, past closed doors, and taking a breath, opened a door at the end up of the corridor.

   The violet carpet was flat, the lemon wallpaper almost white. Paint peeled off a dresser, and in the middle of the room, a double bed with a mattress and an iron frame. White lace quilt and white lace pillow. As pretty as the bed was, Emma knew she could not touch it, could not sleep in it. White was the shade of innocence, something that Emma wished she still had. Given a choice now, she’d be able to sleep here tonight.

Screams. Then Emma was thrown down on the bed. She couldn’t see her mother.

   “You’ve gone completely mad! Get off her now!”

   “If you don’t bloody shut up you’ll be next, you hear?”

   The large hand clamped down on Emma’s mouth and nose, making it close to impossible for her to breathe. Her mother’s voice was low.

   “I swear… I’ll kill you…”

   “Do you want the neighbours to hear?”

   “Yes!”

   “Wrong answer.”

   Emma blacked out.

She left the room.

   The globes in the ceiling lights were blown, the telephone was dead. The entire house was dead. Fallen apart along with its inhabitants.

A man was shouting at a cowering woman, while a small, dark-haired girl cried in a corner.

“But I’m not dead. I haven’t fallen apart yet.”

   Back in the kitchen, Emma turned on the water tap. Finding a glass in the cupboard, she watched as the water turned from dirty to clear. Filling the glass, she took a sip, and tipped the rest out.

   “Everything’s murky.”

   Emma took out a box of matches from her handbag and lit one before throwing it onto the wooden lounge room floor. It caught alight. She walked out the back door and around to the front of the house, where she stood and waited on the road.

   She didn’t have to wait long.

   The lounge room was soon engulfed in flames, the fire spreading rapidly to the kitchen and the hallway. The windows exploded with such force that it burned Emma’s ears; the weatherboards went up in flames. With the strength of the walls lost, the roof began to sag and collapsed, the house crashing down. The fire took on a violent life of its own. Emma’s face blazed with the sensation of being so near the lames, her eyes began to water. The flames leapt high into the darkening sky, forcing the evils of the house into the stars beyond. As the fire spread towards the grass, Emma backed away.

   Then, turning on her heel, she walked back down the street the way she came. She had a city-bound train to catch, one that was going to take her home.