Winter Ties There’s a snowy park in the distance. Although the buildings on the horizon are tall and dark, all I can see in detail are the trees on the other side of the field. There’s a football in one of them. It’s being held between two branches, both covered in snow and leafless, but it’s slipping. The football falls. It crashes onto the blanket of snow under the tree. The snow is very powdery; it crunches under my feet as I walk towards the football. I can hear the wind rushing past my ears. The cold makes them sting, and when I breathe out I see a cloud in front of me. I reach the football. There’s a tie tied around it in a bow; argyle, blue and green. It could have belonged to a schoolboy before the schoolhouse went up in flames. I pick up the football and unwrap the tie, wondering whether I can make use of it somehow. Turning the tie over and over in my hand, I can see no red or black marks. Maybe it wasn’t from the schoolhouse, then. I hear a little thump, and I look over to see the football that was at my feet rolling across the field. There’s a smell in the air - I recognise it as rubbing alcohol, from when my mother was a nurse. I wrap the tie around my hand, where it had started bleeding. In the corner of my eye, there’s a glow. “Give me back my tie.” the little voice of a young boy pipes up behind me. When I turn, a figure stands there. His eyes are sunken in his pale face, and his hands covered in ash and blood. “I want my tie. Please, miss.” he says. I can see that he’s in school uniform, but indeed missing his tie. “I’m sorry for hurting your hand, miss, but can I have my tie please?” I unwrap the tie from my hand. There are scratch marks - where the blood was coming from. I kneel in front of the little boy. Slowly, I begin tying his tie for him, as he beams at me. What an innocent child. Whoever set the schoolhouse on fire has a lot to pay for, should they still be alive. When I finish tying the tie, the boy jumps up and down excitedly. “Thanks miss! I’d been wondering where they put it! But now I have it, I seem a bit silly.” he says, playing with his tie. “What makes you silly?” I ask. He looks up at me, and his smile fades away. “I took something from one of the teachers. He smoked cigars, like Daddy. When I used it, it made fire! Even though Mummy told me not to play with it, I still wanted to, because it was all pretty! But then I fell asleep. And now I’ve woken up, and you’re here! And you got my tie for me! Hooray!” he says. I look down at the ground as he skips away. Accidents happen. I start to walk back to my house. My house is still black and burnt. A piece of timber falls as I walk towards it. The place smells horrible - the police force were incompetent enough not to move the bodies. My daddy smoked cigars too. He also carried a lighter. I like to blame things on him, but it never really seems to click into place when I put him as the cause of all this. My naiveté, like that of the child, is what caused all this. I’ve learnt, as time went on. But none of it really matters now. I walk back to the graveyard. The little boy is there, by his gravestone, smiling and waving at me. I smile back. I sit down with my back to the cold, hard rock, and cry for a while. Although I’ve thought about it many times, I can’t tell whether I should be sad or not. I can see my dad in the distance, with my mum. They’re on the other side of the graveyard. Suddenly, I hear voices. I look over the gates and see bulldozers, loudly shuffling towards the town. The voices are men in green glow-in-the-dark jackets. “Let’s get this over with.” “Why are you so apprehensive? No one lives here.” “This place gives me the creeps.” “It’ll be gone in a few days, don’t worry.” I lie down on my grave, staring at the sky. I’m still not sure whether I should be sad or not.