house in the distance. Coloured hay yellow and on the corner
of Colorado Close and Main Street, it was extremely
distinctive, and couldn't be mistaken, although one really
annoying and bothersome drunk continuously argues that it
is a pub. I stopped, just short of the pelican crossing, and
listened. The noticeable rumble of thunder filled the sky, and
a large crack of lightning blasted through the air. A long
pause, so long in fact, that it felt like an eternity. Nothing,
not even the minute sound of a travelling car, or the
scurrying of a terrified cat, just an unearthly silence. I
continued to teeter and totter home, the pain becoming
unbearable. I closed my eyes, to try and block out the
immense pain I was suffering. I finally got to my house, and
opened the rusty iron gate, which squeaked very loudly, like
a frightened mouse about to be killed by a ferocious looking
tabby cat. I opened the door, and quickly staggered in, away
from the eerie outside world. The pain was still there, still
stabbing me over and over again, leaving me breathless and
in tremendous discomfort. I crawled up the large oak
staircase, each step even larger and more terrifying than the
next. I got halfway up the mountain that was the staircase,
and gave up, the pain was too much. I leant against the
freshly painted cream coloured walls, and curled up into a
ball, like a harvest mouse hibernating, and slowly drifted off
to sleep, the pain increasing with every breath I took.
When I awoke from my long, painful slumber, I was greeted
by a tall, blurry figure, almost transparent. I stared at it,
transfixed at the figure. It was a man, five and a half feet tall,
and dressed in a black suit, with long, black trousers. In his
right hand, he was firmly carrying a newspaper, and in his
left, was a partly visible cigarette, the ash glowing a crimson
red. I froze. What was he doing in my house? And why was he
translucent? I stood up, and the man with the ghostly
complexion smiled, and looked at my living room door, as if
he was directing me to go in. As I walked past the man, I
looked closely. He did seem familiar, but where from? He had
grey hair, and a small bald patch on the left hand side of his
head. He walked with a bit of a limp, and seemed in a lot of
agony. I nervously sat down, and watched as the old,
crippled man slowly dawdled into the room, sitting down
next to me. He seemed to know me, his eyes told me so.
They had a glint, as if he had finally met someone he had
been dying to see for a long time. I asked the familiar man if
he would like a drink, and as he quietly declined, I slowly
paced into the kitchen, my mind still trying to recall his face.
It was as I was making myself a weak cup of tea, that I
realised that the pain, the pain that had caused me to come
home early, had disappeared. I remembered the large amount
of pain I was in, and looked at the man, now wincing in pain.
I swiftly looked at where the pain was on my body, and
compared it to the old man's pain. It was in exactly the same
place. As I nervously paced back into the living room, the
man stood up, and slowly disappeared. His hazy and grey
coloured outline, reduced to nothing but a fragment of
memory. I looked at where the old man had been sitting. One
single, lonely tear rolled down my right cheek and landed in
my steaming hot cup of milky tea. I sat in the old man's
place, and sipped my hot drink. I tried to figure out who the
man was. I had some faint recollection of where I had seen
him before. It was when I was roughly six years old. My
mother and father took me to a weird house in the middle of
the country. I remembered the strong smell of flowers, and
the loud buzzing of bees and wasps filled the air. The
outside of the house was painted a bright white, and green
ivy was climbing up one side. Red and yellow roses were
arranged in a pattern so distinctive, no one could forget it. I
smiled as I remembered my time at the house, but was also
sad, as I still couldn't remember whose house it was, and
most importantly, who the ghostly man was. I was sprung
away from my daydream by the sound of the front door
loudly closing. The jingle and jangle of keys told me straight
away, that it was my mother, coming back from work. As I
went to greet her in the hallway, I noticed that she too had
been crying. I consoled her, and asked her why she had been
crying. We sat back in the living room, and she held my hand
tightly.
"Daniel, do you remember going to your grandfather's
cottage when you were seven?" she asked, her voice croaking
as she fought back the tears.
"Oh no..." I sobbed, knowing exactly what she was about to
say.
"Well," she started, "this morning I had a phone call in work
from the police. Your grandfather was attacked earlier this
morning, at about seven o'clock. These ruthless thugs
smashed the door down, and were going to steal his
pension." My mother smiled. "You know what he was like,
and tried to stop them. Well, one of them stabbed him in his
side..." She pointed to her side, to exactly the same place
where the ghostly man and I had encountered the pain. My
mother started to cry, she was desperately trying to hold
back the tears. "They killed him!" she yelled, completely
breaking down and sobbing profusely onto my shoulder.
More tears rolled down my cheek, as my mother and I held
each other. Why? Why him?