Clicking
The neighbour's children are gone. Once, he burned down the house next door. After that, they were taken and hidden away with their mother, a few hundred kilometres away. She was no longer permitted to enter the village. They're a few years older now and have been back for a week or so. The young boys swing from the apple tree and steal the village flowers. The parents welcome visitors who, upon arrival, blast their car horns and shout. They laugh and sing karaoke late into the night. The village chat is endless, disapproving. I can say more about these lives now than my own. Muted, but I can't help it. "The other day he showed them his gun!" I almost envy their summer. I see glimpses of freedom and magic in some future memory that is not my own. A quiet descends. Other noises have taken their place. A constant dripping. It's a clicking. Beetles gnaw and tunnel their way through the wood of my treehouse. Click, click, click. The wood is riddled with holes a...