Take Me Back to the Memories (Short Story)

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He found the photographs in the attic.

Yellowed with age and worn with time, it seems as if the world was trying to wear away at the memories until nothing was left. His fingers caress them gently; he runs his finger down the soft edges of the paper, staring down at the smiles from long past. He ponders the mystery, wondering who is in the snapshots of time, wondering what happened before and after these moments, smiling down at pictures that don’t exactly show the full story, just part of it.

One picture seems to catch his eye. There are two boys in the picture, laughing, perhaps at something off camera, perhaps an inside joke. He smiles sadly, wondering exactly what happened, knowing that he’ll never really know. 

He moves on, now looking at a photograph of an older boy, his eyes full of sadness. He carries the weight of the world in his eyes. The other boy is no longer there. He wonders what happened to him, perhaps a mystery he will never know the answer to.

There’s a picture of a bride and the groom, holding hands, staring into the depths of each other. They smile at each other, not knowing the future, young and in love. He smiles sadly, wanting to tell the couple that love is not what they think. He knows he’ll never meet them again.

He seems to shuffle through all the pictures, looking at every one carefully, lost in his thoughts, dreaming through possibilities, until finally he sets them down.

He pulls out an old phonograph, covered in a blanket of dust. Digging out some old records, he puts them inside, and some music begins to play:

Take me back to the memories

When the sun shined and leaves blew in the breeze

The world was so much simpler back then

Take me to the memories, take me to way back when

He starts to sing along, voice cracking, barely able to be heard. Take me back to the memories…

He remembers the days back when he would play with his best friend for hours, the day when he lost the person he most loved, the day he met the person he thought he would be with forever, the years he watched as his children grew up before his eyes. The music takes him back to past days better than the photographs ever could.

But he is not the same person he was way back when. He can no longer understand the days from way back when, he cannot go back.

Take me back to the memories...

The days feel like they happened seconds ago, but also centuries ago at the same time.