Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-25985626-20150108132611

         My first pasta ever. Sorry for any grammar mistakes, should there be any (I'm not native English speaker). I welcome all criticism.



        Back when I was six, I used to live on the outskirts of the city. It was a really lovely place - a silent street with barely any cars driving through. I could use the surroundings to my liking, because nobody minded a single child playing around. During the summer I used to be out all day and come home late at night all covered in dirt. One day I would build a sandcastle using the sand pile by the street, the other I'd just climb some trees. It was never boring, even though I had no friends.

         Then my birthday came, and I finally got my first bike. I was so excited, I couldn't wait to try it out. Though it wasn't really so easy. You know how it is, I never even rode a bike before, and it took me one or two weeks to pick up how to drive in a straight line, let alone turning. One day I wanted to try turning at last, but I was stupid. Instead of turning like a normal person, I figured it would be way cooler to do that sick-looking turn like the motorcyclists do on the speedways. The street was made of cinder so it seemed perfect. You can imagine what happened next. I fell from my bike, hit the ground with my knee and in seconds it was in blood. I was panicking, since the sight of blood wasn't really that common to me at the time. I didn't know what was going on with my knee, all I knew was that it hurt.

         It was then that some person had approached me. It was a girl, older than me, and apparently she moved in only recently. She asked me if I it hurt much, then helped me to stand up and took me to where she lived to patch the wound up. As it turned out, she lived a few houses from mine. I knew that house, I've seen it a few times already. It was a rather fancy-looking house with a huge chicken coop made of concrete next to it. On the inside it was a rather normal home, her parents were nice and I got a professional-looking first aid. I was happy. The leg wasn't broken, but some cinder went under the skin and I'd have to bear with it being there - though it wasn't really a problem. In a few days it didn't hurt at all and I'd be up and running again.

         I did stay friends with that girl even after that. Since she just moved in not long before, she didn't know anybody around, and I'm guessing she liked the feeling of looking after a kid. Her name was Cindy, and she was twelve. We'd come over to each other pretty often, though I visited her a lot more often. After all, I was still an only child and I needed attention. Not to mention all these cool chicken back in the coop. We'd feed them almost every day. The coop was wooden on the inside, and it was really big - so big that apart from all the chicken nesting boxes it had a closed room in the back. We were never allowed to go in there, but her parents would sit there for rather long. The door was always closed, but once Cindy's mom went inside when we were feeding the chicken. I didn't manage to get a grasp of what's inside, but something else hit me - the stench. The inside of the room stank like hell. As a kid I didn't know many smells apart from my favorite food, the flowers and the like, so I just figured it must be where chicken do their business. It seemed weird if it wasn't kept clear, but I never got another thought on that. After all, back in the day fun was all that mattered. Soon after that the coop became off-limits. Apparently her parents were testing out some new, healthy feed. So we found something else to do, and that is - riding bikes.

         Cindy also owned a bike, so she taught me how to turn properly and everything else I didn't know. After that we would ride our bikes around town pretty often. It was really fun. We would race every Saturday, but she always beat me. Nonetheless, I kept challenging her to races hoping to show her how much better I've gotten, but the result was always the same. One day, she was asked by her parents to buy some supplies. They were busy at the coop so they couldn't go shopping themselves, and since we were about to take off on our bikes, it wasn't a problem to take a small break by the shop. So we rode to the nearest store that was open, parked outside and Cindy went inside, asking me to take care of the bikes. I was happy - I'd finally get to show her how reliable I can be. She was inside when three kids approached me. They were all a little older than me, I don't know - nine or ten years old? Doesn't matter. I can't even remember their faces, the only thing that I've noticed was one guy's hoodie. It was bright orange, I've seen one like that for the first time and it seemed really cool. They asked me if they can take Cindy's bike for a ride. I naturally declined, it was hers and I had no right to give it to them. They didn't give up, though. They said something about upcoming birthday for one of them, and how he wanted the same model but he didn't know how good it is in reality. I was hesitant, but still a child - naïve and stupid. They promised to return it, so I foolishly let them take it. And that's the last I've seen of them, as they ran away with the bike, laughing.

         Soon after, Cindy was done with her shopping. Surprised, she asked me where is her bike, so I told her what happened. She was furious. She didn't want to hear my apologies, she just started ignoring me. I thought she would forgive me after a while and we'd play around together again. But she didn't. Nobody ever opened when I tried knocking on their door, the coop was locked as well. After a month I've seen a moving truck parked outside their home. They were moving out. I finally came to understand. That was it. I knew I'd never see Cindy again. As I watched the truck take off, one thing piqued my interest. There was a bike tied to the truck. The same bike Cindy used to ride on.

<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"TimesNewRoman","serif"; mso-ansi-language:EN-US">         The very same night I heard sirens. The home Cindy lived in was on fire. Curious, I went out and started watching how the house where I had my only friend was going down in flames, how the coop I spent my afternoons at became an empty concrete skeleton. When the firefighters dealt with the fire, there was hardly anything left of the house. Distressed, I went back home. Took me a few nights to come to terms with what happened, but in the end, I came back to being the same old cheery youngster.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"TimesNewRoman","serif"; mso-ansi-language:EN-US">         Sometime after that, I had a 'brilliant' idea. Or so it seemed to me. I wanted to check out what was left of the coop. Who knew, maybe I'd find something cool I could take back home? Maybe there was some eggs that chicken would hatch out of? That's probably what I thought back then. I tried to do it during the day, but my parents would stop me. They didn't want me wandering under a roof that can fall down easily. But I already made my mind. The same night, I sneaked out equipped with a flashlight and went straight to what used to be Cindy's house. As I expected, it was just a pile of rubble. It was really sad seeing it in that state. But the coop was still standing. As empty as it seemed, it was still holding on its own. When I got inside, I was disappointed. Just some burnt wood around, ash here, something that used to be a chicken elsewhere. I withheld my puke and continued exploring. The door we were forbidden to cross was burnt down. I took a deep breath and went further inside. At first I couldn't take out much of what was inside. Some pile of rubble, nothing special. But there was this weird smell. Something like... burnt meat. I directed my flashlight at the stack in the middle and took a closer look. When I finally recognized what I was seeing, I was taken aback. It was a pile of human bodies. That's what used to stink so bad back in the day. Some of them were torn apart, but the three on the top were in one piece. The faces were too damaged for me to recognize any of those. The clothes were all burnt down as well. The bodies were small, so I just figured they were some children. Terrified, I crouched, trying not to puke. Doing so I dropped my flashlight, which in turn showed me something I had not noticed until now. It was a torn, thick cloth. A torn piece of a bright orange hoodie. <ac_metadata title="The Bike (unreviewed)"> </ac_metadata>