FOUR WEEKS ON NEPTUNE

Prologue

I want to go home.

I want to go home, please.

What is home ? Is it brick and buildings, is it rooms and electronics, is it people , is it emotions? Is home definite ? I dont know that. I don't know what home is, I don't know if a home is loving and comforting like the movies and fairytales advertise them to be or are they a set of broken windows, beer bottles, dirty laundry on the floor and takeout bags and dishes decorated across the floor. Is it memories captured in photographs ? I don't know anymore. I didn't really remember what home felt like anymore.

Home, isnt it a funny word, a confusing word, something one could easily misinterpret. Did I still want to go home ? I did.

The winter was on its yearly visit, the streets were covered in white, soft-looking snow and people wrapped in different coloured wools and jackets, snow boots, beanies, caps and mufflers. I could hear the commotion behind, giggling kids, chattering old ladies, their annoyed husbands, young couples being all mushy and clingy, cars, horns and soggy footsteps. They ran across the street.

I clench my jacket, playing with the cigarette in my hand, fighting myself on weither I should light it or let it go to a waste, store it in my pockets with my lighter and pills or set it in fire, take a puff and let its smoke sink into my veins. I think of this often, I think of this and remember them, I remember Darvin, Larcie and Grace, the weeks I spent with them, I remember being sick and high on pills, I remember it all.

I threw the cigarette away. I threw it away because they would have hated it, hated the pungent smell and the white smoke, the effect it had and the chokehold it had me in, making me think and overthink.

Am I sick enough yet ?

Are they waiting for me to come home ?