Twister

The twisted man used to sit here, looking out of the broadest of the windows, the one that reached down to the floor. The room around him was only cluttered with spider webs and dust and small parts of a cast-off life had drifted under the eaves. But there weren't many of these. This room they had always left for space, one for family and visitors to relax in. One that was once fuller with furniture and life. One that was once noisier.

Everyday he had made the slow climb up the final steep set of stairs to sit there. It was quiet then, even the air refused to move. Now with half the roof gone it still holds on grimly to the rough bare rafters. Here he had always sat in the only chair left in the room. Each day slowly easing himself into the rotten familiar frame, the smell of its damp fibers a comforting welcome. He would sit and watch down and across the life passing below. His eye-line drawn outwards to the green, this was once uninterrupted and only dimmed on a bad weather day.

As time passed the view changed. Eventually he could only see the traffic on the high street through the remaining gaps in the buildings and where the road his house sat on split onto the high street. Everyday he would watch, seeing the cars and lorries splash through the rain, in his mind he continually re-ran how it had changed. He remembered warmer, broader, sunnier days, with fewer cars and less houses to sit in the way. He could hardly see the village green now, and had no view to the pub he used to go to each evening. A swathe of hard red-brown now blotting out most of the horizon he had once been able to watch. Familiar cherished broad leaf trees and field edges had now vanished from view.

A quirk of life had left the chair sitting where he had last left it. This the only reminder, a tattered, rent and broken memory. Even the builders refused to sit in it. And none wanted to touch it yet to remove it from the room. Not until they absolutely had to.

The view from the room is now restricted to just the gap where the two roads meet and the roofers hardly look out as they work, the horizon being cluttered and singular in colour so that it doesn't draw the eye outward. If they stood and stopped, and took a deep breath they would just about be able to make out the edge of a great broad leaf tree that still sits on the green. Just one small part of an old mighty arm sticking out from behind a building. If they stood and stopped. And took a deep breath.