The Closet

Bare walls surrounded a tired looking room. Lacie sat in the middle of the floor. Her legs crossed she sat like a stone statue. Her funny looking face filled with concentration. Her eyes filled with curiosity, her fingers itching to turn the handle before her. To stop herself she has her small hands crossed, her skinny fingers knitted together. It takes all the might in her small body not to open that door.

The door is green and battered. The handle has been turned by many different hands. That door is the focus of the room. A person’s eyes always go to that door. That door is water too the seed of curistoty that is in everyone. Although the colour of the walls and the people around it change, the door never does. It is always the same. It sees the young grow old, the old grow older, and it outlives people. Forever it will stand, the same. Because times and people change, but the closet does not. It is immortal.

She remembers the words her grandmother said to her. Never open that closet. People keep skeletons in closets. The secrets protect most live in closets. A closet holds the things people hide from themselves; one can ever open that closet door. Every home has a closet, in it are the cloths of loved ones who have passed away, it holds their smell, and it holds what is left of them in this world. One must ever open that closet door.

She remembers her mama. With her uncombed hair, broken nails and skinny hands. Those hands, with their protruding bones. Mama’s hands were older then she. She wore one big gold ring, it was out of place. For mama’s hands were old and poor, and the ring rich and new. How that ring would glint in the light, that ring was the one beautiful thing about mama. Her smell, of cigarettes and must. Lacie remembers the sound of her mama’s voice, harsh and cruel. Her mama’s pouting pink lips rolling stinging words. Those eyes. Bright Blue and as stony as diamonds. They burned in her aging face like a snake’s. An old uncle had died, how mama had said she wished it was Lacie. Lacie who now lay in the cold, cold ground. How mama wished it was Lacie who the worms would get. Lacie who would never again see the sunshine Lacie remembers what she said to mama, how she was dead to her, dead as can be. Laice did not love her mama. Lacie did not miss mama, know that she was gone.

Lacie could bear it no longer. She must see what was behind that door. She wanted to see the skeletons, the secrets, the cloths and the hidden. Her skinny legs carry her towards the door. It looms up before her childish figure. The door is bigger then her, stronger then her, older then her. In a trance she reaches for the handle. It is bronze. It’s round shape beaten out of shape. Lacie’s small, skinny hands can just about reach around the handle. It is cold. For a moment she pauses. Closet doors were not to be opened. Lacie takes a gulp of air, and then twists the handle. It’s locked.