Happiness had escaped through all of the nooks and crannies of that property long before I had arrived. Throughout the entire structure, only two doors remained. A lock sits on the pad of the main entrance, perpetuating the reality that one can never truly escape where they come from.

          Sitting in the dining area requires that one be content with languishing. Sitting still for too long in the plastic-mapped chairs consumes all physical energy from your body, like a succubus, until all that is left is a shell of the person that you were before you ever knew that building and its inhabitants existed.

          The wilted tablecloths and rust-infested sinks allow you to utilize sixth grade English skills as you construct an all-too-vivid mental movie of the ecstatic people that could have inhabited the building before it was taken over by grandfather and his cult.

          The lock that sits at the front door is covered in an ombré of browns and oranges. It has lost sight of its purpose. Whilst every member viewed the lock superficially – as a deterrent for their impossible exit from the world grandfather had built for them – I was wiser.

          I saw – and have come to appreciate – the profound ridges along its base, and the hollowing sound it produced as grandfather clasped the two pieces together indefinitely. It is surreal as if you are up on Abe’s balcony watching this man seal your fate as he simultaneously seals off the only exit for what seems like a millennium.

          I spent my entire childhood trying successfully, but failing inevitably, at taking that stubborn lock off the front door. I realized later on that the lock was not meant to be taken off by me. It was a test for the man that I had to leave behind when mother planned our great escape from the compound.

~

          After some time had passed, I went back to that building, and the lock was gone. For a brief moment, I felt delivered…he was free. It laid there on the kitchen table so lifeless and weak, and with my maturing hands, I held the aged lock, peering at it through welted eyes. The lock had won. Though it was lifted off of its throne it had done its job. It had eroded him down to something less than sedimentary fragments. This man-made creation had subjugated him until he became unrecognizable to me.

          As a child, I was so consumed by the symbolism of the lock that I had become indifferent to how far its destructive tendencies reached. It took hold of the man who unknowingly required protection from it the most. The lock reinforced the tirade that plagued his psyche, dissected his brain matter, and sat idly as it metamorphized into carrion. He was the first person that the house had completely obliterated.

          The lock was lifted, but he couldn’t leave. He was fused to the twin bed he had been occupying for what seemed like forever in my adolescent mind, destined to remain fixated at the white popcorn ceiling above him, until grandfather gave him permission to do otherwise. But grandfather was long gone, and he remained trapped inside while I peered in from the outside, through opaque windows.