The hill
I love short stories, I love to write them, and I love to read them. So here is an attempt by me to write one.
Daniel Moore is a fictional character owned by me. An y use of him will require my permission.
All town names and locations are purely fictional and are not affiliated with anything in the real world.
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Have you ever wanted? Wanted for things to be the way they were back then? It's a feeling I can't shake, a need for a time that's past. A need for something half remembered. A birthday on the veranda, in a house you once lived in. A fortress made of dreams and imagination in your backyard. It haunts me, to think that those days are over. Golden days, peaceful days of laughter. More and more, I find myself looking back, wishing and wanting for it, that time; to replace the drudgery of my day.
I come back to reality, and realise that what I crave has long slipped from my grasp and into my thoughts. I feel old, like a decrepit old man longing for his youth, a remnant of a past age looking back on his prime years. It saddens me, that in youth, I did not savour youth; but instead, wished to become older, to see the world as an adult, a full grown man. But that is the way of man, to wish for what he doesn't have and to long for what is lost. Memories fade with age, leaving your years unremembered, as unremarkable as all the rest; until you're left with an ache in your chest, an ache that won't go away, no matter how hard you try to forget it.
I savour the memories remembered, and keep them alive with all my heart. But still they warp, and still they shrink in splendour; just not as slowly. One memory stays with me; of a place called the hill. It still stands, nothing has changed about it. It is the sole representation of my childhood left to me. Family homes have been torn down and replaced, old schools change, friends die and are changed, but the hill remains constant; A single unmoving mass of earth and rock.
On its slopes, games of war, games of tag, games of hide and seek were played out by friends long dead and my younger self. Feats of honour, and mateship; acts of courage and daring, all were acted out on that hill for the enjoyment of ourselves and no one else. The hill meant to me many things; a place to sit and think, a place to play, or a place to run away to from the evils and paradoxes of the world. It was my sanctuary in times of ill and so much more. It was my home.
I read in the paper, about a new hotel that was about to be constructed by some faceless multimillionaire from some faraway country. Construction was due to start anytime now and the size and scale was truly astonishing. I kept on reading until I hit a certain passage; A collection of words that meant everything to me, but would mean nothing to anyone else. "This project is due to be built on a hill located outside the town of Moss Elsi." I sat there, just staring at the words in disbelief. The hill, my fortress, my sanctuary, my pillar of memory, was going to be built over. I wanted to complain, I wanted to get angry; but all I felt was sorrow. For what did a millionaire care for the memories of a poor old fool like me. If a moth stood in the way of a train, the train would not stop, it would crush the moth on its windshield. I sat and thought until the sun began to reach its end, and then made up my mind.
I stood on the slopes of my childhood, and saw the light of the setting sun fall for the last time on the elm and ash trees that covered the green hills skin. I saw the hiding holes and the tree fort as it was ages past, and again I was a child, playing and laughing like there was no tomorrow. I began to laugh, and soon the laughter became hollow and forced; and with the laughter's end came a final, solitary tear that fell down my craggy, cracked face and onto the lush grass. There the teardrop glowed like some melancholy gem. For the teardrop was my last memory of a place I loved so dearly; and with its final placement, I turned and walked away, to see the hallowed halls of youth never again unto my dying day.
"Daniel Moore (the man in this story) died aged 79, from a heart failure caused by his progressively worsening health. Towards the end of his life, he became increasingly sad, always wearing a look of sorrow on his face. He would not talk, and became extremely ill in the last year of his life. I was going through a box of his belongings and came across his journal, his sole companion, as his wife had died 12 years previously. I understand his frustration, at having even his memories taken by some nameless man; and hope he walks in the memories of his childhood even in death."