Subprime
25 October 2010 12:53 PM Categories: Quotidian existence | Writing prompts
The house is empty now. The concrete front porch, cracked and unstable, falls in on itself. The paint flakes and powders in the wind. Thirty years, twenty years, ten years ago, someone planted flowers and pulled out weeds. They painted and caulked, patched the cracks. They grew old in place. They got sick. Their eyesight weakened. Their knees gave in to arthritis, until finally the people moved or died or were wheeled away. Only the man was left, too preoccupied or addled or unlucky to keep it up.
It’s not the only empty house in our neighborhood. There are a few of them, stucco bungalows limned with cracks, their front yards crackling with dead grass or lush with weeds. Passion vines crawl across windows. Tattered curtains veil darkened windows. The subprime mortgage crisis, the lousy California economy, are creating more of these houses. Our rental house, which is under foreclosure, could end up being one of them if our attempt to buy it fails. There are a dozen houses within a mile of us that may be going to auction in the next month.
Six weeks ago, I noticed a pile of junk in the driveway of a house around the corner where a white truck used to park. Every morning I would pass the truck as it warmed up. Some afternoons the grandma would be in the yard tending roses. Now No Trespassing notices are posted in the windows and a For Sale sign hangs out front. For Sale signs are everywhere in the neighborhood and I wonder: who will be buying?
The elements take over. Roofs sag, rain soaks into floorboards. Mold creeps, weeds tangle. Animals nibble at the crumbling edges. They nest in pantries and silverware drawers. And the property values, the property values. They fall all around us.
Image: An abandoned house in our neighborhood.
Originally from a prompt, Abandoned. Back to the Round Robin.
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