First line prompts supplied by writingexercises.

Can't Stay Here

After five years, he just happened to be walking down their street? It was more of a coincidence that he returned. One bus ride after the other blurred buildings, streets, and towns together, and before he knew it, he had marched towards his childhood home.

The fence was the same cyclical structure. Uneven slats of wood threatened to fall off after years of neglect. Bits of rusted metal on nails poking out would have given him a nasty case of tetanus if he so much as nicked them.

On the side of the home, the bushes his mother loved to trim had risen up to the window. White wildflowers had bloomed on the thorny stems. The rest of the yard was filled with brown grass and holes deep enough to hide a dog bone or a particularly small brain. Only stray dandelions shivering in the wind gave the home any semblance of normalcy.

He lunged over the fence with a long step and gazed at the remnants. The home reminded him of the tomatoes Gloria tried to raise in her garden. Rotten, discolored, and in serious need of care, it made a snicker rise up from within him. He assumed they couldn't keep the home while he was wasting away in Thorney Towers, and he strode up the creaking steps, the wood threatening to collapse under his weight.

Peering through the window, he frowned. It was too dark for him to make out anything, but he remembered what had been there. The white and blue checkerboard tiles spanning from wall to wall surfaced in his mind's eye when he shifted his gaze to the ground. There had been a table in the center, one he had hidden underneath many times while his mother threw down the bended spoons, each one clattering louder than the last. He reasoned that there had already been rust on the oven and cabinets and not the other way around when he squinted at what was left inside. Scraps of metal coated in chipping green paint, broken tiles, and dust particles still fluttering in the stale air, those were the remains of the kitchen.

Caligosto leaned away and returned to the entrance. The doorknob seemed lopsided, and when he grabbed it, it popped off, revealing a rusted interior and loose screws. He twisted it between his fingers, a hum pressing against his closed lips as if he was examining a curious brain, but it slipped from his grasp and rolled off the ledge. His gaze never left it as it fell into one of the many holes, sinking as if it were trapped in quicksand, the dirt and flimsy pieces of grass quickly claiming it before he could do anything.

He chuckled. It was such a stupid sight. His old home left to decay under the sun, it was funny in the twisted way he liked. All of the others had places to return to while his was left in disrepair. Even Sheegor found a new home after hers had been burned and bombed to hell and back.

There was nothing left for Caligosto, which was exactly what he expected. What reason would they have to keep a house filled with nothing but horrors and memories of a child they wanted to forget?

Pivoting on his heels, he tiptoed down the steps. If there was any reason to stay and search, he couldn't think of one. With no one waiting for him, Caligosto ambled over the fence and left it behind. He fixed his sweater and went off to the nearest bus stop, rummaging around in his pocket for the rest of his quarters.

As he waited, sitting on the farthest edge of the bench while a mother fixed her child's pigtails next to him, he flinched as they waved to him from across the street.

Bye, son!

Buh-bye! We love you!