Closed Doors

Written for 6/29 Flash Fiction Contest
Theme: Someone finding out a family secret
Word Count: 299

Closed Doors
MysteryBox42

It’s real, I tell myself, it’s really real. My body now fills the entire frame of the closet door, which is ajar. The last time that I stood here my head rose just above the knob, for I was ten years old. At least, I think that I was. That part of my memory has a way of chasing its own tail from time to time. A lapse, I think is what they call it. Laps, it sounds like, as if your memory and subconscious are racing with each other and one laps the other. Looking past the plain wood closet door and into the plain empty closet, no bigger than a phone booth, I’m struck with the same sensation that someone who tries to wake from a dream must feel, when they find that they are already awake.

The image of the closet door has haunted me my entire adult life. Haunted me in night-terrors and in cold sweat panic attacks that my doctor simply refers to as spells. Stress, she had said, from the writing of my new novel, my kids, my wife. For some reason whenever that closet door came to me it was located in the same familiar place. My uncle’s house. The home in which I spent the majority of my youth and where I now stand. In my dreams, I could never open that closet door. Now I could, and I had. It was sardonically empty. The only thing that it contained inside was memories. Memories of being led inside by a tall man. My uncle? Hands feeling up my shirt and under my pants. Pain, Ache. Fear. Being helpless. Repressed secrets that flooded back. I am no longer helpless. I close the door. No monsters. Some doors are best left shut.