About the Contest

This story is an entry to @tristancarax’s 31Sentence Contest. The contest is exclusively on Hive.

If you fancy participating, you can find the contest here.

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Prompt

Here is the expected sentence order:

18, 19, 4, 31, 8, 14, 23, 28, 26, 22, 25, 13, 26, 21, 27, 16, 29, 17, 2, 7, 20, 15, 11, 10, 3, 6, 30, 5, 9, 1, 12

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The Old Dreams

The stinking water seeping through the walls had worn-off the shoddy mortar work revealing the cracked concrete bricks. His last encounter had led Arnold to reflect on his life and the dreams he had as a child.

“You have a visitor.”

Arnold’s thoughts were momentarily interrupted by Sherman’s coarse voice echoing through the floor, but he managed to gather the fragments of his muddled past and painstakingly pieced them together back again. He had all but forgotten those childhood days.

Walking through the noisy corridors reminded him that stinking walls were never the dream. Growing up in a neighbourhood where scarcity was the only abundant thing, Arnold wanted to be a doctor, helping those in dire need.

“You have fifteen minutes, thanks to your influential friend out there,” Sherman bellowed as they reached the end of the corridor, “see if meeting him helps you good.”

Arnold always thought that Sherman was the kind-type, the one who was not fit for his job and cared too much for those he should not.

“I will,” Arnold got thinking that Sherman was the person that as a child he hoped that he would one day become. Arnold zoomed to the recent past when he mugged that Asian chap and punched him unconscious to flee the scene, only to be caught later. But fate had a way of dealing with the hopeless and the damned.

At the trial, Arnold was carefree, awaiting his inevitable judgement, something that he had grown accustomed to, but what he wasn’t ready for was the judge.

“You can speak in your defence Arnold if you wish,” the judge gave an unusual permission, but Arnold was in defiance.

“Only if you had become a doctor, Arnold,” the judge touched a raw nerve which brought Arnold’s fake world crumbling down and left him gasping for breath.

Tears swelled as Arnold was choking, “It’s you,” he said and was holding himself from crying.

“Yeah, it’s me, James, your best pal from school,” the judge said, and Arnold could hold no more and let the child come out and cry out his heart. Arnold’s past flooded his mind, his wrong decisions and the wrong choices, which made him a convict.

“It’s you.”

“He was the best back in school. The nicest kid with the kindest dreams to make a difference to this cruel world,” the judge said about Arnold.

“Alright, you are on your own now,” Sherman got Arnold back to the prison door.

Arnold approached the lawn, “never thought I would see you again.”

“Never thought I would see you over here,” James said.

“I f*cked up.”

“What happened after I left, Arnold?”

“I think that’s what happened,” Arnold said, “you left, I found new friends, bad company, bad jobs and peers asking me to do things that I never dreamed of doing.”

“You can still change buddy.”

Arnold sighed and picked up a fallen chick, “how?”

“Hmm. Help people like that chick and see your old dreams coming alive.”

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Image Courtesy: @tristancarax