Remember

Remember when we were kids and used to go and play on that big area of waste land between our school and our estate on the way home from school?

Remember how we used to slide about on the ice that formed on the ponds in the depth of winter? We used to pretend we were real ice skaters, didn’t we? Remember that little girl that drowned in one of the ponds one year, when she fell through the ice?

They cordoned the ponds off soon after that, then they grassed over the wasteland and the kids used to play football on it on the way home instead. That would never have been half as much fun as the fun we had, when we used to explore the woods and the concrete tunnels near the ponds, that were actually massive drain pipes.

Remember when we discovered three skeletons all near each other in the wastelands? Some of the other boys said they were a rabbit, a cat and a dog and they said that the cat had killed the rabbit, the dog had killed the cat, and the mad man had killed the dog. We believed them.

Remember the mad man? You and the other boys said he was a tramp and you all used to take the mickey out of him, and throw stones at him. He used to go and hide in the tunnels.

Well apparently, when they were digging over that area to build a new estate recently, they found another skeleton. This time it was the skeleton of a man. Apparently he had been dead since 1956. Wasn’t that the same year we found all those animal skeletons? Wasn’t that our last year at junior school?

Turns out that it was the man we thought was a tramp. He apparently was really very rich. They found an old diary in the pocket of a ragged jacket lying under his body. His final entry was written on the day he must have died. He said that some boys had been throwing stones at him and one had cut his head open. He must have bled to death after he wrote it.

Wasn’t that you, Peter? Didn’t you pick up a rock and chuck it at him on the last day of school? We all ran off when we heard him scream.

Well, the police have spent ages trying to find someone the man also mentioned in his diary. Someone who had been nice to him once. Someone who had given her chocolate bar to him when the boys weren’t looking, because he looked hungry. Someone who wore a red blazer and a bottle green candy striped dress, made by her granny. Someone he said he would like to leave his money to if he died.

The police have found me now, the little girl called Sally who was wearing a green candy striped dress when she gave him her chocolate bar. I wonder how long it will be before they find you?

10 minute tale at Creative Writing March meeting.