User:Pwillis/Fiction/Seeds/Chapter 1

=Seeds=

Chapter 1
I remember two childhoods. I had two. Whether this is a fortunate thing or not I really can't say. Fortune is only apparent in life's result. Certainly, we cannot know our fortunes until they have become history. Looking backward it is difficult to imagine my past as belonging to me at all. Since my life is hardly over it would be hasty to state with any certainty of fortune or misfortune. There are fleeting fragments of life, here, where I call home. Life with my mother and father. Long summers with my brothers and sisters under the blue skies of the great northwestern prairies. This makes it very difficult really to relate this story. Difficult to relate much of my life prior to age 5 or so. Not difficult for lack of remembering, but difficult because I can't tell if those memories belong to me or are part of some mental delusion that I have allowed myself to fall victim to. My first memory of my life, here, is being dropped off on a corner in a small, rural, Canadian town. I had been thoroughly instructed where to walk, the house number, where I would live, the people I would come in contact with there. As the small van drove away, I followed my instructions. I walked down the street. I walked to a house. I climbed the stairs. I opened the front door. I entered the house. From the front door I passed through a small boot room, at the top of the front step. It was summer, the weather was dry and my shoes were not soiled. I saw no reason to remove them. I decided that it was best not to remove them, in case I needed to beat a hasty retreat. Beyond the boot room was what appeared to be a kitchen. There was a woman working there, preparing the evening meal. I waited pensively in the doorway assessing how she would respond to my initial presence. She glanced my direction after noticing, perhaps sensing, me standing there. She looked at me briefly. There was a subtle question that crossed her face momentarily and then it was gone again. Something subconscious perhaps. I felt some relief when she looked away to her work once again. "Go wash your hands for dinner.", she said. These were the first words I remember my mother speaking. I thought to comply quickly and do as she wished. Not being intimately familiar with the layout of the house was the next problem I would need to resolve. I moved past her, through the room to one of two other doors on the opposite wall. Both were closed. I chose the door to the right. It opened to a basement stairway. "Did you hear me?", the woman said, "Do I need to repeat myself?". She turned and pointed to the other door. "Hands!", she said. There was a threatening maternal undertone to her voice. I quickly closed the stairway door and moved to open the other. As I passed from the kitchen she returned to her work. "Use soap this time", she said. Beyond the second door was a short hallway. A brief search found me in a simple washroom with basic bathtub, toilet and sink. The fixtures were utilitarian and clean. There was a bar of soap on the sink which I used to wash my hands, and a single towel hanging on a peg. As I dried my hands on the towel I could hear some commotion coming from the kitchen. I replaced the towel to the peg and returned to the kitchen. At the door was another woman who seemed very upset. "I saw them", she was saying, "They snatched him and drove away." My mother was trying to calm her. "No", she said,"He's here. Look". Mother pointed at me. When the other woman saw me standing there she quieted and a quizzical look transformed her.

Forward: Chapter 2