Locked

Locked

  by V.K. Scott

  Copyright 2014 V.K. Scott

  Table of Contents

  Locked

  Deeper into the darkness…

  Acknowledgments

  Author Bio

  Copyright Information

  Locked

  When I was a child, my older brother locked me in the bathroom for an entire day.

  Twenty-five years later, I’m staring down at my own child. Toddlers never look smaller than when they’re lying on hospital beds. He wraps one of his blond curls around his finger, sucks on a digit from his other hand. The blood is still wet on his pink cheek.

  He growls at me, a dying machine noise from the back of his throat. I shiver. It means he’s tired.

  I expected the groans and beeps of machinery, IVs, heart monitors maybe. But the injury’s not serious enough for that, I suppose. Just a cut, I had told myself on the drive over to keep my hands from shaking.

  But a deep one. I try not to look, try not to think about the scarring.

  My wife busies herself on her phone, texting to family, making arrangements for the night. The battery on my own device is dead, so I have only my own thoughts to keep me company.

  *

  When I was three years old, my older brother locked in the bathroom for an entire day. Dave tells me that I’m stupid, that it didn’t happen the way I remember it, that I wouldn’t remember it anyhow, I was too young. But he wasn’t in that room. And he’s a liar.

  He was supposed to be watching me while my mother took a nap. Two white pills and she was out. Davey, five years older than me, was in charge until she woke up.

  I was potty-trained, of course, but still wore diapers during nap time. I was on the cusp of full independence from the disposable undergarments, and Davey had no patience for slow learners. He would always be ahead of me: socially, academically, even romantically.

  I felt him snap the elastic on my pants.

  “Stop,” I said, and pushed him, which accomplished little to nothing. He stood a hundred feet taller than me, his long black hair swinging around his shoulders. I had a constant childhood fear that he would pick me up and throw me down the stairs. As if he could catch me in his talons and fly me off to be devoured by baby ravens.

  “Just checking for poop, you little baby,” he said.

  “I don’t do that anymore, you worm!” I had just learned that insult from one of my shows, and was eager to use it. Davey didn’t even flinch.

  “Behold, ladies and gentlemen,” he yelled to the stuffed animals in our shared room, “The Pooper of Pants!”

  “I do not,” I said, stamping my feet, shoes lighting up with each stomp.

  “Show me.”

  “What?”

  “I knew it.” Davey started laughing again. “Pooper baby! Pooper baby!”

  “Stop it! No, I’m not.”

  “I bet you don’t even know how to use the potty.”

  “Yes, I do.” Davey had, in fact, been in charge of my bathroom routines for a few years, putting away the diapers, cleaning up the spills. He knew very well that I was capable of using the restroom on my own.

  “Fine, then.” Davey took me by the arm, harder than I would have liked, and dragged me out into the hall. It was dark here, with no windows to let in natural light. One of the bulbs overhead was burnt out, but the other, thankfully, still shone.

  Pictures of my mother and father loomed from the walls. I didn’t understand at the time that they were from the wedding; I just thought it was a weird version of Halloween, grown-ups dressed up in white and black.

  They may as well have been Halloween costumes. The marriage had seen better times, and my parents would divorce by the time I was ten. On this particular Saturday, Dad was off at an extra shift at the plant. Money was tight, and, now that I think about it, we ate noodles more often than a family should. Secretly, later, I thought that Dad took the overtime to get away from all of us.

  Davey, still holding my arm, shoved me towards the bathroom. Even from the doorway, I could smell the mildew and urine. The towels hung faded and frayed, a color that might have once been orange. This was the bathroom I shared with Davey. His things—toothbrush, comb, disposable cups, hair gel—lined the sink, while my children’s toothbrush and paste were pushed into a dusty corner.

  “Mom!” I yelled at the bedroom down the hallway. I could see her pale arm through the open door on the bed. She shifted slightly, maybe moaned a little, but didn’t get up.

  “I’m in charge, remember?” Davey said. “Now, Mom said you have to use the potty before nap time. So go.”

  “Fine,” I said, starting to push the door shut. I wasn’t quite tall enough to reach the door handle, but with the help of a stool I could just make it. I was a short child, the one you always saw in class photos in the very front, the one in the corner staring off into space.

  Davey’s hand clamped over mine. I glared at him, wishing him away. “I need privacy.”

  “Nope. I need to make sure the little baby doesn’t poop all over the floor. I don’t want to wipe that up anymore.” I took my hand off the door, and Davey crossed his arms. Sulking, I positioned myself in front of the bowl and put the seat up.

  “Well?”

  “I don’t have to go.”

  “I can wait. We’ll just wait for the baby, won’t we?” I didn’t know who he was talking to. Now, years later, I wonder.

  “I can’t go.”

  Davey sighed and rolled his eyes. “Okay, but you’re going to wet the bed. And I’m not going to clean it up. Here, let me help you get ready.” He reached down for my light-up shoes. I held on to his arm to steady myself. One shoe, then the other. I should have been more suspicious of his kindness. He grinned, then turned around and grabbed a towel from the rack. He ran to the door, locked it from the inside. Then he turned off the lights, ran out to the hallway, and shut the door behind him.

  You see, Davey knew a lot about me. He knew that I couldn’t run as fast as he could. He knew that I was too short to reach the door handle. And he knew that I was terrified of the dark.

  I sprinted, guided by the light coming in from under the door. I banged on the wood as hard as I could, yelling and screaming. “Let me out! Let me out! Davey! Mom!”

  I could only hear laughter as the sliver of light from below turned to darkness. Davey had stuffed the towel into the crack. I tried pushing it out, but he had either wedged it in too tightly or put something on top of it.

  The light still entered from the vertical cracks, where the hinges turned. I heard the click of a light switch. Davey must have turned the lone hall light off. The bathroom turned pitch black.

  I pounded on the door until my fist felt raw, like mashed hamburger. When it was clear that no one was coming, I sat down on the cold linoleum and sobbed my four-year-old tears. When that didn’t magically open the door, I slapped my tiny palms on the floor in frustration. The contact made a sickening slap that echoed in the empty room.

  Once my sobs had subsided, the only sound I heard—at first—was my own heavy breathing. Calm down, calm down.

  I tried waving my hand in front of my face, but could make out nothing. I’ve read it’s like that in caves. Not that I’ve ever been (or ever will be) in one.

  It’s true what they say about other senses being heightened when one is cut off. Within minutes, I became aware of dripping water from somewhere in front of me.

  Plink, plink.

  Maybe the toilet. Yes, it was too far away to be from the sink. The sink. Which side was that on again? I had already forgotten what the room had looked like. Right? Left?

  I put my hands out to either side, waving them. My right hand hit something, and I followed along its edges. There, near the top of my reach, a circular knob. The cabine
t under the sink. Not that it mattered much that I had found it. It didn’t get me any closer to getting out of there.

  Then I remembered. Dad had bought me a small step-stool, a pastel yellow and green, so that I could be a “big boy” and wash my hands by myself. Brush my teeth by myself. Open the door by myself. “By yourself,” he would say with a grin. I was never sure if he was proud of me, or whether “by yourself” really meant “away from me.”

  The stool. Davey liked to hide it in the tub behind the shower curtain. But if I could get to it, I could use it to reach the door handle and unlock it.

  It just meant traveling across the bathroom and back. I tried remembering how many steps it would take. I’d run to the tub many times, always trying to get in before Davey took his long showers, shoving me away. But how many steps? I didn’t know. I’d never counted.

  Plink, plink.

  Shaking, I took a step forward, again waving my arms around. It was the only way I could think of to avoid hitting a wall. Another step. Then another. My footfalls echoed around the room. The scent of urine grew stronger. I must have been getting closer to the toilet.

  Another step. And something odd. I almost continued on, but then it registered. My last step hadn’t echoed. All the ones before, but not this one. I curled my toes, tapped them on the floor. The ground was solid, my feet still attached. But there had been no echo.

  I stepped forward again, and the familiar echo returned. I sighed and waved my arms.

  Pain! Red! Ouch! I grabbed my wrist and rubbed where it smarted. When the pain left my body, I reached out, searching for the culprit. My palms smacked against something big and hard. Something fuzzy stuck to my skin, and as I rolled the substance between my fingers, I realized it was a thick layer of dust.

  The toilet. I had hit my arm against the toilet. It felt like I had been walking for hours, and only now had I gotten this far. The smell of the commode attacked my nostrils. In those days, my mother spent less and less time cleaning. It was supposed to be my brother’s job to do the bathroom, but this wasn’t monitored very closely. And was I supposed to do it? This four-year-old go under the sink and fetch the ammonia? Never going to happen.

  I began to breathe again and walked towards the tub. My hands hit something else, something light and slippery. I tugged at it and heard sharp rasping metal from above. The shower curtain. Davey had pulled the shower curtain shut.

  Grasping the curtain in my little fist, I pulled the material over my head and threw it behind me. The curtain danced on my back, tickling the hairs on my neck as if moved by a breeze, but the overhead fan definitely wasn’t spinning. I suppose, now, that it was the inertia. But I wonder.

  Where was that stool? The air behind the curtain felt colder, as if it had been trapped behind the threads for a thousand years. I shivered. There was nothing else to do. I plunged my hands into the darkness, feeling around for the implement of my escape. Immediately, I knocked something into the bathtub. It hit hard, and I heard it roll around until it came to a stop. From behind me, I could still hear the water dripping from the toilet. I felt the shower curtain hot against my ears. My heart still pounding, I continued my search.

  The side of the tub felt cold, dead, too smooth. Nothing at first. Then my fingers met something sticky, gelatinous. I yanked my hand back and shook it, but the sticky substance wouldn’t let go. It combined with the dust from the toilet and turned into a grainy slime. I rubbed it on my shirt, smelling the sickly sweet scent of children’s shampoo. I must have knocked the bottle over just a moment ago. But how had the cap come off? I didn’t remember it being loose from the last time I bathed.

  Again, I put my hands into the darkness. They brushed against something with raised bumps. Success! The stool I had been searching for. I yanked on it and turned around. I tried ducking under the curtain, but the fabric was too long. I put the stool down, then lifted the curtain over and behind my head.

  I reached down for the stool and came up with air.

  Where had it gone? My hands searched, frantic, as if they had minds of their own. What would I do without it? Maybe my mother would never wake up. What would I do for food? What if I ran out of air?

  I went down on my hands and knees and pawed for my salvation. I tried reaching to my left first and—ouch!—smacked my head against the toilet.

  How had this happened? I had put the stool down right behind me. There was no choice but to search in the opposite direction, to the right. I rubbed my head, convinced the collision would leave a bruise.

  Off to the right I padded, knees slapping against the floor. The echoes seemed louder this close to the ground. I began to wonder how far away the wall was, when I caught hold of the familiar rubber. The stool! I felt above and around it, getting my bearings.

  Odd. The stool was flush with the wall. I ran my hand over it, not quite believing my senses. I knew I hadn’t moved the stool there.

  But there would be time to figure that out later. I picked up the stool, and turned in the direction of the door.

  That’s when the growling started.