Winchester Words

Lockdown the third, was into its twelfth week. The cold, dark days of winter presenting a different challenge than the novelty of the first ‘stay at home’ curfew the previous spring. I had a message from the mother of my children. Our youngest son was in crisis. His psychotic, cannabis induced, episodes of eight years earlier had returned.

I pulled up outside the familiar house that had once been the place to come home. Unclipping the seatbelt, I rubbed my face breathing deeply, centring; at least trying to. A bus passed close to the wing mirror, brakes hissing down the steep hill beside the parked car. I recalled how we had, in that first winter after moving in, when it snowed, watched from the bedroom window as cars drove recklessly down that hill. Turned sidewards in the fresh snowfall, cars slid, crashing into others parked further down the slope. This year it was my son crashing. The ravaging demon of mental health unleashed once more, and after so much progress. Almost a year of ‘working from home’ isolation, separation from his friends, the false ignominy of living with his mother when others had travelled, studied and worked in new places had tipped him over. I glanced to my right, through the car window, and where heart saw home; my head knew it no longer was, but a part of me, a portion of my history still lived there. Not least the boy, now man, that was in pain again.

Closing the car door and crossing the road, I rang the doorbell ….

To read the full short story click one of the links to Hindsight 2020, a collection of short stories curated by Steve Fowler. Lockdown Madness is one of 32 short stories from around the world reflecting on the effects of Covid 19.

https://www.hindsightbook2020.com/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hindsight-Untold-Stories-Steve-Fowler/dp/B0BVT722KF