It was raining hard as the man walked towards the old house. It was rundown and the smashed out windows looked like the sunken eyes of a skull. A steady wind picked up as the man walked, tossing the rain wet leaves wildly. His leather soled shoes crunched against the wet gravel as he walked. The house loomed dark and silent like a ghastly figure. As he reached the front walk the man pulled his sopping hood down lower over his head, the rain ran down his unshaven cheeks in large droplets, collecting in the coarse black stubble. He walked cautiously to the front door peering through the stained and cracked panes of glass, into the gloom. It was like a dream he thought, like a placid dream where the rain is falling silently and the cool wet air feels good on your face. You could almost taste the nostalgia in the air; it made you ache dully inside. The past was full of beautiful sadness, memories and ghosts, things that tore you to pieces inside. The past was like a dream, a faded and blurred dream.



All this the man thought as he looked in at the old house, decaying with age. And the memories flicked by like sepia toned photographs, dreams from a different life. A woman standing in the sunlight, the summer breeze gently blowing her pale blond hair, and he would blink and she would be gone like dust in the wind or bird song in the trees, a lighting storm on a summer night or mountain snow that is gone with the first rays of daylight. Dreams were funny things the man thought. He gazed at the house looking humbled and bent in the rain. What was this life if not a dream? Besides we all wake in the end, leaving memories as the only real and substantial things. The rain continued to fall.