I ran, refusing to look back, until I reached the safety of the junked wreck up the dirt road. That rusty hulk, leaning into the wind on perished rubber, watching the world go by, was surrounded by mounds of flowers. Forget-me-nots. I hadn't seen those prolific tiny blue blossoms in so long.
When I finally scrabbled the car door open, its hinges screamed in protesting alarm at being disturbed after all the decades it huddled along the edge of the track. I jumped at the sound, fearful of giving some indication that I had fled.
My bare feet trod mounds of brush, the crunching underneath likely the skeletons of long dead possums who had made this decaying mess their sanctuary.
I huddled, dripping, on strips of shredded seat cover and a rusty eruption of springs, taking a first hesitant look through the filthy windows streaming rivulets through the grime.
Pressing my scratched and bleeding palms to the glass, I saw, finally, where I had been kept all these years, for the very first time.
Image by Bryan DeLae