KEY

Nov 14, 2009 16:26

Second week for November Brigitsflame contest. The topic was:

KEY

Sally lived behind a wall. The wall was so high that it seemed to be touching the edge of clouds, not allowing her to even dream of ever climbing over it.

Her family owned a large manor with many rooms, however, when not playing out in the garden, Sally usually remained safely hidden in her attic closet. Wandering about the house was not worth the trouble, really. Her older sister was a bossy teenager who would always get upset when she spotted Sally around, throwing tantrums about the girl possibly messing up her sofa, using her make-up or leaving prints on the TV.

Sally´s mother always had work to do, thus there was not a moment left to spend with the kids. After all, the manor had an infinite number of windows and all of them had to be sparkling clean. Then, there were the daily chores like ironing, doing the dishes, mopping the floor or cooking... Sally would have loved to talk to her mother once, maybe just a few words, but she knew any attempt at conversation was pointless. Mom wouldn´t have listened to her, busy as she was.

Her father was very old, so old that he couldn´t play outside with her or swim in their large pool. But he couldn´t even sit with her on the bench and listen to the birds song, even though his body would have allowed it, because her mother kept reminding Sally that dad needed his peace and that she was not to bother him.

Yes, Sally knew she had a brother, but she had never seen him in her life, although he also lived in the attic, in a room next to hers. She often tried to peek in through the key hole, but she was only able to see a bit of his wooden bed in the half light. When eyes failed her, Sally would listen to the sounds coming from behind the door. Most frequently, she heard frantic scratching of pen against paper. In other cases, muffled, peaceful breathing reached her ears. Then she knew her brother was asleep. The door wasn´t locked, but she never dared to enter.

As time passed by, despair slowly took hold of her heart, surrounded by threatening emptiness. Looking into the depth of her soul, Sally sometimes felt like if she were staring into the infinity of space, mysterious and hostile place. She could scream into this universe devoid of stars, but only the echo of her own voice would come back to her in answer. Emptiness like a black hole was drilling caves in her entire body.

Away, she repeated for herself, I need away from here... Until one day her body decided to follow her mind. She was in the garden in the moment when she realized this way of living has become unbearable, and her legs automathically began to move. Away, her feet were thumping on the grass. Away, her arms were moving in the rhytm of her wish. She was running with her head against the wall, hoping in vain she could make it fall.

„Ouch!“ Sally exclaimed, rubbing her forehead angrily. On the grass next to her, there was a pretty large and damn hard ball. It must have flown over the wall and hit her!

„Hey! I´m so sorry! Are you in pain? Can you please throw the ball back to me?“ Came a weak, unknown voice. On second thought, the voice might very well have been strong, but the thick layer of wall separating Sally and the owner of the voice was muffling it.

Sally tried. After all, it was an accident, and the person did appologize. She threw the ball up with all her power, but it just bounced off the wall back to her, landing on the lawn. "I don´t see how I could“, Sally sighed. „The wall is way too high for me to climb, and it surely is too high to get a ball over it, too.“ That indicent just made her realize her incapability to escape the dull life circumstances had forced her to live.

"Well, there is a door a few miles along the wall", the voice said again.
"I don´t have the key..."
There was a little pause before the person on the other side asked: "You don´t have the key, or you lack the will to find it? Isn´t it the very same thing like your family problems? You want them to notice you and love you, yet you never do anything to attain that."

"How do you mean?! They just wouldn´t talk to me!" Sally took a little offence at that. It wasn´t her fault that she had been born behind the wall, nor had she chosen her own family!
"Wishing for something is not enough", the voice informed her. "Sometimes you need will, strenght and courage, no matter whether it is opening the door or fixing your family problems you long for."

When Sally woke up laying on the grass, it was almost evening. She immediately lifted her hand to her aching head and was surprised to find out there was blood on her fingers. There was no ball on the lawn, and when she tried calling out, the voice on the other side of the wall didn´t answer. However, she remembered the entire conversation, and regardless of whether it had been real or simply a dream, Sally had something to think about.

It took a few days before she finally came to the conclusion that indeed, if she wanted a change, she needed to give it an impulse. She was still a bit too scared of her parents and older sister to approach them. But her brother... she felt slightly safer in his case, because she had never seen him, so he had not had the chance to hurt her feelings yet. Finally, she found herself standing on his doorstep one evening.

This time, she could not hear anything, not the sounds of a moving pen, not even the breathing. Slowly, she pushed into the door and opened it just a tiny bit. The room looked darkened and deserted. Has her brother gone somewhere? She had never seen him, but she always thought he was never leaving the room.

When she stepped in and her eyes got used to the darkness, she spotted piles of papers everywhere around: on the table, on the windowsill, on the bad, in the wardrobe, everywhere on the floor. Hoping they would give her some clues, she decided to collect them and take them into her room to read. There was a lot of them, so she had to return multiple times, and reading them took several days.

The words, sentences and paragraphs did not form any simple stories. They represented the heart and the soul of her brother. The more she read, the more of her brother´s essence penetrated her and filled her own heart. The papers she finished reading were disappearing into nothingness. When the last of them was gone, she became a part of her brother, who in turn became a part of Sally. That put an end to universe of emptiness in her soul and erased the hopelessness.

She knew now that a lot of work was still lined up in front of her until she would become the key to her own freedom, but she was aware of what she had to do to cross the wall, and finally, she wasn´t alone.


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