You Know Before You Know

It's strange, the things that persist in your mind. 

It was a terrible day. Not that there was any reason for it to be, besides the cold wind and lowering sky. I'd gone out to look for somewhere to try my new camera, but really I'd gone out to get my mind off something, or rather to think about it somewhere else. 

The landscape seemed empty, lifeless. An expanse of blank asphalt and withered grass. No matter how much I wanted to find something hopeful in it, there was nothing there at all. 

Sometimes the end of a journey can be foretold by its beginning, or in this case, the beginning of its end.  

The wind rattled the old tin building I'd come to investigate. It had been a warehouse once, and despite signs of activity outside, it was clear it had been out of use for a long, long time. The windows were tightly boarded, forbidding even the smallest glimpse inside. 

I'd chosen this place because I'd remembered coming here as a child once with my girl scout troop, maybe after a visit to the park. We'd sat on the loading dock and chattered and sang songs and I suppose whatever else girl scouts do while we waited for our rides. I remembered those times fondly, but now looking around for any piece of my past, I saw that nothing was at all familiar and any warm feelings were gone.

Turning away, I decided to investigate the nearby bridge. I'd been over it countless times, but never underneath. I stumbled down the bleached grey hill through the bleached grey grass, down to the patch of compact dirt under the archway. It seemed as though it might have sheltered people now and again, maybe for just a little while, but there was no sign of them now. Except maybe in the feeling of the place - a particularly hopeless strain of despair.

There was a little stream, though, and still looking for answers in something I could not name, I followed it. What I found, with its archways of catclaw and bramble and straw like vines, resembled a dead fairyland. Even the movement of water hardly made it seem more alive.

I sat next to it for a while, deep in thought, all the while hoping for an answer that never came. 

Now, a year later, I can see what I didn't want to see.

I'd already had my answer then, at the beginning of the end.