Alex pushed the door open wide and stepped into the darkness.  He lifted his hand and searched for the wall, shuddering at first contact at its coolness and then gingerly moving his hand up-and-down, side-to-side, until he came across a light switch.  He flipped the switch upward and squinted at the sudden brightness, blinking magnificently.  He turned and closed the door, and then slipped off his shoes.

      The air was crisp as he made his way deeper into the house, turning on more lights.  He coughed a couple of times as the stench of rotten apples and spoilt milk invaded his prominent nostrils.  He went into the kitchen and opened the window above the sink, his attention quickly shifting to the pile of mildewy pots and plates caked with bits of food.

      Alex then withdrew to the living room and stood there, his arms folded, embalmed by the disquieting silence that struck a dissonant discord of a past long forgotten.  His round golden brown eyes roved the room, and he breathed heavily as he took in the scene around him.  The framed eight-by-ten photographs of him and his brother Charles, taken the day of their respective graduations from university, that dominated the mantelpiece like bookends …  The frayed royal blue wool upholstered wing chair that sat in the corner next to the brown brick soot-stained fireplace, and where his mother retreated each night to read her large print Bible …  The dark cherry wood coffee table cluttered with unopened mail, receipts, and worn copies of Christian Reader and The Daily News, the local paper …  Two years had passed since he was last in this house … when his father died.  Now his mother was dead, and did this mean that he could, someone like him who lacked the concept of home, stop playing a part?

     It was the house, with its moody walls, where he was born and that summoned him whenever death lingered, but it could not claim him, hang onto him.  How long have I been running? he wondered.  Running from all that I am not, from all that I am … from the place where I was born.  It is a house, he said to himself, not home and I don’t live there anymore.  Yet, as he sat down on the worn leather brown sofa, he could not curb the unexpected urge to cry.
                                                         
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