This is a short story that I've written last year for an English assignment and I've edited it recently ^^
The Return
Her feet carried her reluctantly through the newly paved streets while her bright blue eyes flickered from side to side, sucking in the changes. Suddenly Maggie stood nailed to the ground. Her eyes widened and her face changed into disgust as she saw that her dark thoughts had become reality. The three-story building where she had spent most of her childhood was now replaced by a lowly fast-food restaurant. The people on the terrace stared right back at her with disapproving looks. She twitched as she forced herself to turn and move on. A fine tear drop escaped her eye as she turned right at the end of the street.
A firm twist with the rusted key and the door squeaked open, revealing the ravage inside. Maggie saw it right away. Her father had left the house behind without having entered to pick up his valuables – not after that incident. She halted in the doorway to ponder but she moved on and stepped inside, closing the door behind her.
Sleeping in her old house wasn’t as pleasant as she’d hoped it to be. She had woken up with tired eyes and a buzzing head full of memories. Maggie had left the house early in the morning, hauling a couple of empty shopping bags. Two and a half hours later she came back bent under an enormous weight, sweeping off sweat droplets with the back of her hand. Permitting herself to take a short break she gulped a lot of ice cold cranberry juice as she planned the rest of her day. She concluded that it was convenient to start with the first floor, working downwards, leaving the kitchen for the very last.
At eight thirty in the evening every room on the first floor was cleaned, as well as the living room, the corridor and the toilet downstairs. The time had come to enter it. The kitchen. She had already postponed it as long as possible. Her entire body trembled and shuddered, every muscle and every thought went against entering the room beyond. But she knew that if she’d want to face what had happened in there she’d have to face it now.
One night – when Maggie was still a teenager – her father had entered the room with his gloomy face, mumbling about the damn dimwitted neighbors who couldn’t even shut up that damn dog of theirs. He grunted, grinned at his daughter’s astonished face and stumbled drunken further.
By the time her father had reached the second-hand refrigerator, yellowish saliva was dripping from the corner of his mouth on the shiny kitchen floor. Maggie stood there, watching him pulling frustrated at the handle, not conscious of his wife’s hand strained on the refrigerator’s door – holding it shut. The calm voice of her mother filled the air: “Stop Roger”. Abruptly her father had stopped and looked up at his wife’s stubborn face. Then a deep, awkward voice echoed in the room: “Whad do ya dink … you’re doing! Prefenting me do haf some fun?” With that rhetorical question it had started: the endless flow of demands, blames, insults and roars thrown at her mother Helen. Maggie watched motionless with mixed feelings at the scene, waiting desperately for it to end.
A heavy pound and there he lay, unconscious. Roger was then picked up by strong but trembling woman hands to be carried out of Maggie’s view. The elder woman came back, informing Maggie what she should do. The only thing that Maggie understood was that she was left behind for an hour, alone, in this house with an odd man on the sofa who looked like her father. Her mother had gone to visit a friend to seek comfort as well as support.
