A Memory That Serves Me

In undergrad I took a creative writing class. There was this guy named Luke who wrote beautiful stories. One always stood out in my head:

It was about a boy's experience one day with this old pink house that everyone in the neighborhood talked about. The story goes that an old man lived in there, even though it was abandoned and falling apart. He had eyes that glowed like two flashlights. He would scare anyone that came near the place. One day the boy was riding his bicycle with his friend and stopped in front of the house because it intrigued him. While staring at it, he sees this old man inside and he freezes. Then the boy notices the old man is not really scary, but sad. As if he lost everything.

Time passes and the boy grows up into an adult and gets married. His wife dies, I think...that part of the story is sketchy in my memory. He's had a full life. At some point, he hears the pink house in his old neighborhood caught fire. He decides to go back to visit it and his childhood for some peace of mind. He goes inside what is left of the pink house and remembers back to when he was just an innocent boy. Then as he stands in front of the window, he notices a young boy on a bicycle peering in at him. The boy looks knowingly at him, as if he can sense the sadness and loss that he feels.

It was really powerful when Luke read it in class, and I wished that we had shared copies of our stories in the class, but the instructor decided not to do it that quarter. The ending gives me chills when I think back on it. I got Luke's email address from the instructor and almost contacted him, but I didn't. Too bad because I loved that story. And he was cute.