Just like a scene out of a movie, where the prisoner takes his final steps down a hall of jail cells where rants of vulgarity fill the air as the electric chair awaits him at the endpoint. That's what it felt like walking down the walkway of 525, Everett Lane that Sunday afternoon. Much like the prisoner, I felt fear at the pit of my stomach. The kind that creates ripples of worry throughout your entire body. Though, my fear was that of opening old wounds. Thankfully, I found humor in the oddest of places to alleviate the fear a bit. The door mat read "My dog is not a biter. He's a Humper." I took a moment to reflect on the phone call that led to the piecing together of this event. It was exactly 20 years to the date that my beloved Lydia was taken away from me. The investigators said it was a homicide. Her scattered remains found in the alley of a Good Mart convenient store was the song that played in my mind every day since then, it was the end of my world. Lydia was my adopted daughter and only four years old when the good Lord decided it was time. I was in the middle of playing a game of chess with my spleen on a cloud made entirely of hair while a heap of teeth rained down on us strangely enough, when suddenly a telephone ring pierces through my dream and I awake to find that the ring was actually my telephone going off ever so loudly. The caller I.D, read unknown caller.



"Hello?"

"Dylan?"

"Speaking, who is this?"

"Dylan McKinley I can't believe you don't remember me! Does a Skynyrd concert back in '76 ring a bell?"



As soon as Dylan heard the words Skynyrd in '76 it brought him back to his teenage youth in the seventies. His heart missed a beat for a second when he realized that it was Ian Ward, his first and only love as a teenager. They would continue their forbidden love affair until a quarrel set in, through a diary kept by Dylan their parents would find out about everything: Their love affair, their first sexual experiences together at Skynyrd in 76, and their plans to run away from their then Idaho and lead new lives together in California. Before Lydia these were the happiest years for Dylan as were for Ian, but it would be Ian that would close this chapter in both their lives. He would deny anything he had to do with Dylan to avoid being thrown out into the streets as he knew his parents would. On the other side of the spectrum, Dylan in complete disbelief that his friend, his lover could do this to him wouldn't deny a thing and actually admitted to everything. His family wanted nothing to do with him from that day forward. That would be the last time he would see Ian.



"My God, Ian Ward! I thought I would never see the day."

"It's been ages Dyl, how have you been?"

"Well not expecting a call from you that's for sure, but it's a nice surprise. By the way, how did you..?"

"Listen Dyl, unfortunately I have to cut our little conversation even shorter. The wife needs me in the kitchen. I would love to get together sometime and catch up. As a matter of fact...(Static ensues.) Sunday"

"Ian, you're breaking up, I'm losing you."

"525 Everett Lane."

"Ian? Are you there? Ian?"



I proceed to ring the door bell, but just before I do so a beautiful women in full church attire beats me to the punch and opens the door.



"Good afternoon ma'am. My name is Dylan McKinley. I'm an old friend of Ian, he had asked me to stop by earlier this week. Would he happen to be around at the present moment?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Yes, I'm an old friend of..."

"How dare you claim that my dear Ian still grace this earth, he passed away years ago."

(Door slams.)

Scene.



© Erik Duarte 2006

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