The grungy estate laid there, it did not sit or run around, it laid there, motionless and still for the next individual to walk by and speed up at the sight of black and brown. The three Fords rusted dead, waiting for their time to shine again-they never will. The yard, brown, and the lone Ash tree sits motionless waiting for the next rain storm; it was old enough to know it was not going to get nutrients any other way. It was a mile and a third away from the Altove River where kids came down on sunny days to bask and relax in the refreshing, cool, clean water. Nobody ever dared drive boats in there ever since Mr. Rhodes hit that ice peak of a rock last July. In the town of Andersonville rumors spread like a common cold and just like colds, everyone got in on it. Not one person knew who lived in the house nor did they care. Mr. Wheeler was always working, Mrs. Reck had better things to do, and even young Sammy Ford, the paperboy, just stopped wasting the paper and effort on a house that didn’t care to acknowledge either. Not once had he been curious to know who it was that imprudently left the world and everyone in it behind, he didn’t care.
               One thing everyone knew for sure was that the horrid creature that hides in the dark of this house impersonating the shadows of its own dark soul, did not want to be seen, did not want to be heard, and did not want anyone to know what, or who they were, the house indicated the burning fire in the thing’s heart.  The tricycle that rotted away for sixty-two years and a hundred and fifteen days, sat still. Moss grew off the handlebars like a child’s hair, it waived sometimes when the wind blew, but no one ever noticed it. No one cared to. The rocking chair on the front porch did not serve the primary purpose it once had; what was once used as the sunset chair had not witnessed a sunset in sixty-two years and a hundred and fifteen days. Its new job was to provide a birth place for the stray calico that lived in Joe Freeway’s beaten up barn. Like the unknown occupant of the house, the darkness served as a melody for this cat; being unable to see what surrounded them made them unable to see just how far they had fallen.
               The windows were hardly windows; the dust collection hung from the glass pane like a child hangs onto their parent’s hand. The dust matched the yard; black and brown, but the inside of the windows carried no dust, it was not brown, it was nothing; the four-inch planks secured by nine-inch nails prevented the wretched sunlight from entering this animal’s world. The people beyond these walls were of no relevance anymore. Light was not allowed in the house, it was not allowed anywhere but one room; the inside of the house reeked of smoke, anyone normal would cough at the unpleasant stink that had dug itself into the floorboards, roof, and any other object in the house with a cold embrace; the smoke hugged everything inside the encasement. Everything had not moved, it had not been touched, it had not been changed for sixty-two years and a hundred and fifteen days, all except for one thing, one item was missing, a picture. It left a gaping hole in the side of the wall never to be filled again.
               The floorboards creaked when walked on every day at 8:14 in the morning and 9:32 at night, well almost every day, one day every year, the same date,  the same floorboards would not move, they were as still as the house, and everything else in this world. This date’s importance is no longer thought about, nobody cares. The fancy twirling stairs that once had a Christmas ornaments dangling below them, and Easter eggs forced in between the links led up to a floor. This floor sat cold, dead, dusted, and dark. So dark. Two white doors hinged down on opposite sides of the hallway. One was closed and one was left open, this room was left open for a reason, this door was left unlocked and cracked open for a reason, but no one else cared to know.
              Downstairs beyond the kitchen, beyond the bathroom, beyond everything of importance to anyone, stood a room, this room was closed, but it was different, it had a dim light peak out from under it like a shy kid behind their father’s outer thigh. If anyone cared to open it, they would find a man, the man; his grey hair flowed over the bed, and he lay next to a puddle of tears that accumulated in the indent left from all previous nights before it. On the other side of the room sat an open closet; three lit candles melt through the cracks in the floorboards next to a picture, the picture; the picture was crusted and old, but figures could be made out, there were people in this photo, three in fact, two stood with smiles, but one was crossed out, the red ink ran down the crossed out figure like the candle wax, only anger could be felt for this figure, the tears were not for them. This other transparent faded figure that matched the house in the sense that it did not move, stood just as happy as the others. If you glanced below the picture, a frame surrounds it, a frame that used to be golden like a child’s uncut blonde beautiful locks is now as far gone as the house, the writing engraved so gently on the base could be made out, too bad no one cared to do so.
             For sixty-two years and a hundred and fifteen days this place left in time has laid motionless; it was not changed by man, but by nature; it has become less of a house and more of earth it sleeps upon. Although the weeds that engulfed the frame were just inches high, they might as well be six feet. The house will never see true daylight again; it has lost the game against rust, and he who lives there has lost an unfought battle against the evils that surround us all. It won’t take for the earth to reclaim its wood, held by those nine-inch nails.