“Locked”

By: Kathryn R

It was locked.

I don’t know when it got locked, or why it got locked, or who locked it, but it was locked, and that was just a fact of life.

I’m sure somebody has a key, maybe. And I’m sure that there is something inside, possibly.

Or maybe I was just never sure in the first place, that has been happening a lot recently.

Though one thing that seems to be for certain these days, is that I was simply not destined for a life of unlocked things.

No unlocked boxes, no unlocked doors, no unlocked interpersonal connections with other living breathing human beings that don’t look at you with disgust and pity in their stone cold little locked and chained eyes. Not that that’s been on my mind or anything.

Sometimes I wonder what’s behind the lock, what could possibly be so important that it must be securely bound from the rest of the world, and kept from the prying eyes and hands of those whose presence is deemed unworthy.

It might contain secrets, or desires, or troubles, or power, or something that can’t possibly be fathomed by the mere imagination of a poor dull soul.

But I don’t think about that all too much. Well, I’m not supposed to anyway. I’m not supposed to do too much thinking at all really. They don’t like it when I start to get creative or have ideas. That’s too dangerous. I don’t really get why, but I’ve always been told that I don’t get a lot of things, so I would assume that this would be no different. The truth of that is debatable, but it wouldn’t matter anyways, nothing would change. Things around here aren’t accustomed to change. From the walls, to the people, to the air, I can’t remember a time when they have ever strayed from their good ol’ bleak, and bland, and stale.

Though sometimes, if I’m lucky, someone will decide that the rooms are too stuffy, or too warm for them, and crack a window down the hall. There typically aren’t windows in the rooms I stay in, but if there’s an open one somewhere I can oftentimes catch the caw of the crows or the breeze rustling the nearby trees.

I love the warm and stuffy, window cracked days.

Or at least I did.

I did before.

I did before the noises, the sounds, the shrieking.

Sometimes the shrieking was my own. Though more often than not they came from behind the lock. The seemingly perpetual gaze of the lock burnt holes deep into the walls, the doors, into my tear ridden eyes. The screams echoed through my ears and ricocheted off the inside of my head, digging divots through my skull.

The birds’ songs don’t sound like gentle melodies anymore, they just sound like locks and cries while the leaves just sound like footsteps, clacking down stark, white halls.

And the door was still locked. Day in and day out. Scream after scream.

…To Be Continued…