Excerpt from "To Speak of it Again"

To our right was a vast, wooded area bordered only by a small garden and wooden fence. To the left sat a house? At least I think it was a house… Yeah, it was a house or at least a resemblance of one. Did people really live like this? 

The wood shake siding was falling off, and there was tar paper covering what was left of the roof. A single, blackened chimney pipe extended out of a hole in the roof and thick, black smoke billowed into the air, happy to make its escape from the torture chamber it had been created in.