The Locked Room (Short Fiction)

This is day 22 for me (I started 1 day late) in @dragosroua's 30 day writing challenge.

Before my recent enforced time of rest and recuperation, I had started work on a novel titled 'The Memoirs of a Forgotten Man'. I managed to get about 7 chapters into it. At the end of the 30 day writing challenge that I am currently undertaking I will be putting more of my energies and focus back into that story. I will be rewriting (where necessary) and reposting from scratch.

I had started to develop the idea of a new opening chapter (or a prologue, perhaps, as it takes place earlier than the bulk of the story itself). That particular new opening for the story is posted below. It has a slightly darker narrative, but in keeping with the overall themes that I was developing in the Memoirs story.

Whether it ends up being included in the novel or not, this piece works as a stand alone back story and sets the scene energetically and thematically.

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THE LOCKED ROOM

Life wasn't always so filled with darkness. It didn't always seem to be weighed down with the murky remnants of past broken thoughts. I still remember times when the presence of light was noticeable. When it could be seen streaming inside, into the interior, from the far reaches of the world outside. A moment in history when the ravages of entropy and disuse had not taken their toll. Such a world did exist. I recall it, not so much vividly, but in the recesses of my dreams. In the hidden places where the darkness has been kept in check. A place where a garden of hope and longing still grows within. Untouched by the disease of external brokenness.

I still long for the light to return. To find a crack in the shutters, or a tangled blind left alone for too long. Stuck in place and of no use; neither able or willing to rise or be lowered. But still open enough for the outside world to notice. To notice me.

I don't remember what started it all. When the first sign of darkness first showed itself to me. It wasn't there when I arrived, when I made my first tentative appearance here. It showed up in my life at some point after that. I've tried to recall the flow of events. Where it came from. Was it invited? Not by me, I had no awareness of such matters. I was just a child. Weak and vulnerable. Food for the taking. And the darkness likes to prey on the weak. To feed on the helpless. I have come to learn of these things. I have begun to piece this together. But I am working backwards. I am merely reacting to events that have already occurred. Technically I am already too late.

Father didn't invite any menace in. He wasn't the type to actively court trouble. Not overtly, anyway. But that is the problem at the heart of the life I knew as I emerged into this familial realm. My father didn't overtly do much. Good or bad. He didn't court the darkness, but he never defended us from it either. He lived his life, resigned to a realisation of incompetence. A self imposed incompetence. Was he blind to the slow grinding suffocation developing around him? Did he not see? Or did he simply not care?

I have been told many times that I should be grateful I had a father around. Every child needs their father. I tend to agree; every child does need their father. But being there doesn't mean he was playing the role assigned to him. He may as well have been a thousand miles away. Maybe then the darkness would have followed him. And left us alone. Left me alone.

No, he hung around. A broken man. Splintered by god knows what. Failed dreams? Past resentments? Shame and regrets? I don't have the answers, just my recollections. He acquiesced to the darkness taking root in our family. Taking refuge, and setting up camp. He could have chased it away. He could have defended us. He could have been a father.

Was it mother who invited the menace into our lives? Was she the one who shuttered our house and boarded our world from the external? Did she prevent the light from having any more opportunity of penetrating into the heart of our little group? Into my heart and my soul? I do blame her. Father was scared of her. She had a temper. There was violence behind those eyes. She made others commit her evil deeds. Father walloped us at her behest. I watched him as the belt was flung back, generating a momentum and power needed to drive out the devil. I looked into his eyes. They were blank, soulless. He was a puppet, and mother was his master.

If I think hard enough, and remember far back enough I can still see it. I can feel the world as it was. Before the darkness. Before our fall. A time when life was happy. Why did it change? Why did the darkness encroach on us, on our world? And why did no one stop it?

The world itself doesn't hold any answers for me. I've looked. I think it was swallowed up at the same time as our internal world. Perhaps the darkness flooded all that is; all that was. Though I have looked, and I continue to look, I cannot find what I seek. Not out there. I am surrounded by strangers who wear masks of gold. But their eyes betray them. I have looked when opportunity has presented itself. Into their eyes. Into that same blankness that father had. No, there are no answers there. Just more of the same. Just more darkness.

Did the light still exist in high places? Did it still have a place to call its own? I climbed, I searched, I called out it's name. In multiple tongues, in muttered sounds, in strained utterances like I was prostrating myself before an unknown god. See me, shine your light upon me, before I drown in this sea of uncertainty.

Like the ancients I offered what I could. Did their gods ever answer them? I do not know, nor do I fully comprehend the dilemma I found myself in. A world that had suffocated from the poor choices of the angry pseudo-gods who ruled my world as a child. Except it was everywhere, in all the world around me.

But eventually there comes a time when a child must grow up. That is what I told myself. What I tried desperately to convince myself of. To rid myself of the repercussions of the choices others have made. From the twisted wreck of a world that enveloped the one I had once been gifted. I wanted that world back. The world before the darkness came down and stole it all away.

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I have my memories, but so many of them are jumbled. Distorted and twisted, pulled out of place. Perhaps pulled out of both time and place. I've tried to put them back together. To order them, and make sense of them. But it just doesn't seem possible. Not from this world, not from inside the murky undertow in this sea of oppression. I need to relocate to a new place. A different place. To a world that is not under this yoke.

I have such a place. A hidden place. One so hidden that it has taken me all these years to unearth it. Hidden away, by the actions of a child. By a young soul who saw the future. Who observed the charred souls at work in the mother and father who ruled his world. A child who knew something had to be done. A time capsule needed to be buried away from prying eyes.

A room was built. A lock was installed. A key was used, and hidden away. And inside that room exist memories. Of a world before darkness. Of a world destroyed by it. A captured light, calling for return. I have heard the call. It woke me from the inside. There are experiences hidden in that room that explain so much. That can explain it all. And it is time to unlock the door. It is time to enter that locked room.

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All images used with permission, and sourced from Unsplash.com.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. If you liked it then please like, comment, and follow.

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Notes From an Amateur Writer blog series:

Notes From an Amateur Writer #1 - The Search For Inspiration
Notes From an Amateur Writer #2 - A Call to Action: Interacting With the World Outside of Me
Notes From an Amateur Writer #3 - Facing the Challenge
Notes From an Amateur Writer #4 - The Soundtrack to Grief and Loss
Notes From an Amateur Writer #5 - Music as a Catalyst for Imagination: Jimi Hendrix's Little Wing
Notes From an Amateur Writer #6 - The Stories All Around Us
Notes From an Amateur Writer #7 - Introducing Nomad [A Cyberpunk Mystery in the Making]
Notes From an Amateur Writer #8 - The House at the Edge of the World
Notes From an Amateur Writer #9 - Making Peace With My Kindle
Notes From an Amateur Writer #10 - Learning the Craft of Story Structure
Notes From an Amateur Writer #11 - Adults Sit at the Big Table, Children Sit at the Small Table
Notes From an Amateur Writer #12 - The Time I Won a Lego Competition
Notes From an Amateur Writer #13 - Learning to Fly
Notes From an Amateur Writer #14 - The Tucker 48: Face to Face With a Million Dollar Vehicle
Notes From an Amateur Writer #15 - When the Levee Breaks: A Story in Song and Words
Notes From an Amateur Writer #16 - Monty Python, Keanu Reeves, and My Case of Invisibility
Notes From an Amateur Writer #17 - Dancing With My Muse

Short Fiction:

Bang Bang You're Dead
I Have No Name and I Must Scream
The Last Book Store
The Judge
The Man In The Mirror
The End of the World [Part 1] [Part 2]