It echoed louder

than usual that night.

The moon poured through cracks in the blinds, even still the room was as dead as a mausoleum. From one side came the quiet pips of someone snoozing quietly, from the other wisps of music in the air. I was comfortable though, laying on my bed running through my memories, watching the highlight reels.

The headphones sang their songs and brought memory after memory. The darkness was my blanket, engulfing me in that comfort of anonymity, in that area where nothing was real and everything was only a faint memory of a time where almost nothing seemed real. The echoes of laughter rang through my ears, the sounds of children on some island in the middle of a vast sea enjoying life without hesitation. The lawn was washed out, too green to be real; and the sun washed everything white, a contrast to the darkness which I lay in, a floating sun burnt 70's polaroid hinting of a time when nothing mattered.

The neighborhood was small, uninteresting and run down. Boxes of the same looking little apartment were huddled together within the gates but at the west end of the complex, on the far corner sat a little piece of heaven within this purgatory. There, the door would open wide to a vast wide open green field, I remember you could comfortably fit 22 of the best football players you could find in little Garden Grove. At one end of the field giant trees lumbered over the whole complex, their gigantic arms stretching out past anything my little limbs could ever reach; and soft green grass till the opposite end.

One room held all the wisdom, experience, lies, and problems. Another held hope for the future, evolution and adaptation. And yet another helped pay the bills. The grand hall contained our souls, entrapped in the tube and glued to the chairs. Our galley, well food.

It feels good, to be so lost within oneself sometimes.

It's when the memories burn brighter than the sun that I can't help but want to go back to that place. When the audio of happiness stream from one side of my head to the other, echoing as it comes back, and back, and back, and back...