Broken Memories

She doesn’t remember them very well anymore, just the fuzzy memories of the time they would go visit her mom’s parents out on the farm. Strangely she remembers the smells, the hot muggy air, the musty smell of the hay drying in the fields, the smell of the manure in that old barn, the barn where she met him, the boy with the crooked smile. She remembers his face, that tousled, sandy coloured hair that fell over his forehead, the blueness of his eyes in the sunlight, how when he saw her that crooked smile would light up his face. A tear slips down her face and she wipes it away with the back of her hand. Just to see her parents once more, funny how the memory worked, you remember people who were in your life for just a moment, then gone… yet the ones who raised you, sometimes they are a blur, a image no longer there, like a vhs that was scratched, blurred and remote.

The smell of hay and manure in this decrepit old barn was what finally put her to sleep, the memory of visits to her grandparents washing away the pain of loss and heartache of today, replaced by feelings of childlike euphoria as her dreams took her in.

“Lucy!!!” Her gramma was calling her for dinner, she giggled as she chased the chickens through the barn door into the evening sunshine. The pale haze of a summer with not enough rain cracking the ground and turning the grass to dust. She realizes now that was only the beginning, the start of the end. At the time it didn’t cross her mind to worry about such things, everything was great, mom and dad took care of everything and she had no worries other than when a scratched knee or bruised shin from playing too hard. She runs into the house and hears the frustration and worry on the adults voices as they discuss the heat of the late summer, how the rains haven’t come yet, and how the crops are nonexistent, she smiles at her mothers blurred face, then frowns, realizing this is a dream, the moment broken as her eyes spring open.

“Damn it!” Lucy curses with frustration at not being able to remember her own parents faces. How can you forget your own parents faces yet remember the first love you had. Lucy felt a stab of guilt at this realization. “What happened to me?” She wondered, “am I losing it finally?” The time alone had been making her a bit loopy some days, it had been 2 years since she’d last spoken to another human. Most of the world had burnt, the vegetation that was left was scarce and far between, often surrounding the small springs of water.

Lucy remembers her father warning her that the world was coming to an end; that this weather "w'snt norml la, right disturbin." he'd always say. He was right too, first time he was right. That always bugged mama in a way, how he could never seem to quite get things right, but Lucy loved him for it, it was endearing in its own way. Oh how she wished he'd been wrong about this too. A dry wind whistled its way across the dry, cracked landscape. she ran her tongue across her permenantly cracked lips to try and soften them, her throat sore from the dust.

Suddenly she is falling, falling, it doesn't seem to end. Endless darkness, and "bam!!" Lucy jerks awake, panic rushing through her, "where am I?" she whispers. A light flicks on outside, and she hears her name

"LUCY!!"

"What?" Lucy whispers to herself. "am I dreaming? or was I dreaming before?" the old familier stale hay and manure wafts over her, she looks down at her hands, they seem smaller, childlike. "What the hell is going on?" she gasps. "How could I have dreamt all that. I remember things, I felt things." The old barn groans around her, shifting, almost like it was alive. She flings open the barn door and stumbles outside. Its raining, she feels like she hasn't felt rain in 15 years. Tears streaming down her face, she looks up and lets the rain pour down over her. She's still in a childs body, but has lived a whole life in that decrepit old barn, Moments of her life she'll never understand. Memories of a past life, slipped away through the sands of time.