just_writing | Day One: The Door

I do not want to open the door.

It stands in the corner of the room, discreet, almost hidden behind the sofa. It has always been there. When I was eight, I asked my mother what was behind it and she slapped me. When I was ten, I listened with a glass pressed up against it for hours; a trick I learned from television. I heard nothing. When I was thirteen, I stole the key from my mother's dressing table and tried to gain entry; the key screeched loudly in the lock and before I could turn the handle my mother was upon me, pulling me away from the door and grabbing the key from my trembling hands. She raised her fist to strike me then, but recoiled at the terror in my eyes and instead drew her long sharp fingernails down her cheeks, red blood mixing with her tears to drip pink stains upon her white blouse. She held me close to her and wept, making me promise not to be so naughty again and the coppery taste of her wounds mixed with the snuffling snot in my throat as I sobbed and cried and stammered out an apology.

I did not approach the door for 5 years.

And then she died.

The house became mine and I fell into the rhythms of living that we all are part of. Each day I had my routine, and each night. The whisperings were easy to ignore, and the creaks and groans of the house I could ascribe to the timbers settling and the floor joists moving slightly under the boards. Justification becomes easier as you get older. The door was still there, and the key now sat on my dresser but it was not part of my life. Each day I ignored the door, each night I checked to see that I knew where the key was; that it had not been lost, that the door could not be opened.

I awoke this morning with my hand on the handle.