I built these walls with my own hands. I built them brick by brick and row by row. Don’t go thinking it’s that easy to get to the other side. Most people think they’re over, but they’re just too blind to notice that there is another wall in front of them, even bigger and more daunting than the last. There is an infinite amount of walls and they just get more and more impossible to get past.
What is it that is so secret that all these walls need to be made to hide it? What is behind these walls? Is it the monster I have within me? Are the walls made to keep something in or to keep others out? Maybe it’s the tiny child in me, crying in the corner, afraid of the big bad world and what it has done to me. Maybe this ugly crying child needs to stay hidden; otherwise no one will want to scale the walls anymore. What if it’s nothing? What if in my paranoia, I started building walls with nothing to hide, and in the middle of it all, there is just emptiness, waiting for someone to fill it?
Someone to fill it….She tried scaling the walls too. She wanted to see what was in the middle. She made a promise to still accept me, no matter what it was. She said that she would be here, by my side, helping me face the thing behind the walls. Like a fool, I believed her. I stripped away parts of the walls and started putting in doors. Doors that were locked, but she had all the keys. It took a long time to break down the walls, but eventually, every wall had a door, and she had all of the keys.
She danced her way to the middle. Leaving an echo of laughter behind wherever she went. Laughter filled with joy, making anyone who heard it want to smile. I started smiling too. I started smiling and laughing along with her, dancing along with her. It was so odd, but I began losing the ability to stop smiling. Life was good, and she had kept her promise. What she found in the middle is something only she knows, but whatever it was, she had been okay with it.
She really did dance. She made me dance in the rain with her. She made me scream out at the top of my lungs on mountaintops. She wore these things. They were like bells around her ankles. Every time she danced they would jingle. She would spin and spin in her auburn dress, like a flickering flame filled with passion. Some people came and try to break these walls with just brute force. The big bad wolf huffed and puffed, but the walls still stood. She didn’t use force. Her gentle touch just made them melt and her longing gaze just made the doors appear.
Once a door is put into the wall it stays there. Taking doors down isn’t really an option. She was a gamble from the start. But I needed her, needed an excuse to build these doors. Without her, these walls would have just gotten bigger and bigger. She is the reason these doors were made, but she is also the reason they can never be opened again, at least not without the keys that I have. In the end, she was a rolling stone. She came to fix this broken mess and when she started seeing the results, she started moving away. The doors that would unlock just by her presence started getting dusty. It was over before it began, and what was once becoming fixed broke once again. The doors began growing old and tired, the echoes of laughter ended suddenly. It was so sudden; you would have thought she was just a breeze that had simply chosen to drift out of my life.
The doors are a weak spot in the walls, a fracture of sorts. The whole structure shakes and rattles now that the doors are there. People walk up o these walls and see the hints that point them away. They notice the “High Voltage” signs, the barbs, the height, and the never-ending length. But now, they also see a door. Just sitting there, in the dust. It must have never been used. It looks so out of place.
It looks as if it was once a very young and beautiful door. Maybe it was out for an evening stroll when it found itself in the wall. The door had finally found a purpose and it had fit so snugly, no one would have noticed that it was an afterthought. Except of course, the wall it had found itself in wasn’t a particularly happy wall. The wall was not meant to have children climb on and sit on the ledge. And so, even though the door did its very best to fit in, it just couldn’t. The door radiated joy. As if the only reason it was there was to be opened. The doorknocker looked as welcoming as a dinner table on Christmas day. The design of the door itself, carved so intricately, flowed as if to try and bring the vines of the forest with it. But time had made the door a mere shadow of its gallant self.
Now it simply stands there. Cobwebs hanging on the corners, it looks far duller than the polished finish it used to have. Even now, it catches the eye of passers by. They pause to wonder what purpose a door would have in a wall like this. Surely someone had intended to use it. That meant that there was something behind the walls, hidden from the world. And so the door becomes a crack in the wall. It reminds onlookers that there is indeed a way past the wall.
Soon, those who ceaselessly try overcoming the walls begin taking a new approach. They begin banging on the door. The door will never budge, but eventually, a far more cunning method is devised. It’s the keys that open the doors, and these keys become the new objective.
Every time someone asks for a key, just a chance to prove that they’re worth the gamble, I give them the first key. The poor fools don’t realize how many walls there are. In their joy, they forget to put the mask back on, and their real self is revealed. They eagerly open the door and make a complete mess of the other side. Once in a while, the gap has to be cleaned out and all the trash needs to be disposed of. The people who get this first key tend to take it for granted. They look at the wall looming behind the door and usually just give up. I always have plenty of spare keys made for these people.
The other doors are harder to get past. Those keys do not have as many spares. Once you go deep enough, you find doors with no spare keys at all. These doors are locked, and they will remain locked for a long time. All because of her. That’s what it all always boils back down to. The locked doors, the keys with no copies. She forged the keys. The doors were always open because she made the keys and never needed to ask for them.
When she left, she took the keys with her. She had not thought to ask me if I wanted them back; while I wasn’t able to come up with the courage required to take them from her. It took months of hard work before the keys were finally remade. But even then, the locks couldn’t be changed on the doors, and she still had the whole set. HAS. She still has the whole set.
If she ever decides to pry open the locked and rusted doors of the innermost walls, they will open for her. But she won’t. She left. She flitted away like the fairy she had been in the dreams we shared. Does she even know the power she has? That her keys are still functioning? Maybe she didn’t realize that these doors don’t have interchangeable locks. Maybe she honestly thinks that her keys are just a part of the past now. She’s wrong. She might think these things, but she would be wrong. In a way, all the keys I own are spares. She has the originals after all.
One day, someone will finally get to own one of every key. And hopefully, whoever it is won’t run away with them. If she doesn’t run away, and she gives me her keys in return, maybe the echoes of this dancing Tinkerbelle, her laughter, her joy, will no longer stay trapped. Maybe this new queen of hearts will finally allow the echoes to escape and fade. And maybe the new queen will be able to finally change the locks – if it is even possible.
If the locks don’t change, then I hope the past and the future remain separate. I needed her to help forge the doors. Even if the walls are weaker because of it, the doors add splendor and serenity. One day, these doors will be needed. Plus, the walls are weaker. This curse is also just as big a blessing.
The walls exist. Whether to keep something out, or keep something in, they exist. Until she brought these doors along, the walls were impenetrable. No cracks. Now there are cracks in these walls. No matter how tightly a door fits, there is always a little bit of room. The night fades away, as it must, and in the dawn of a new day, the sunlight seeps in through these cracks. To think, there was never a way to let the sun in before her. How foolish…
