The Forbidden Door

The door stood locked. As far back as I could remember I was denied what was on the other side of it. Locked away was the only thing I wanted, freedom.

As a boy my father had instructed the men who work for him to make sure the door on the outer wall of his land stays locked. The father said the door needed to stay shut for their protection and the boy thought that meant something was trying to get in but he never heard anything on the other side.

He remembered it being opened once before and nothing bad had come though it. The only thing that went through the door was his mother after his father and his men and forced her out. That was the last day he had seen her and the day the boy decided he no longer wanted to be inside protected, that he wanted out.

Now a man himself and wanting nothing to do with his father or these walls, he decides he will leave this place as well. It had been years since his mother’s exile but he hoped she would be waiting for him.

The only thing he didn’t know for sure was if his father had lied. Was there truly something on the other side of the door that wanted to harm them or was his father lying to keep him from leaving.

He waited until the night was at it’s darkest to make his move. Slipping past the guards into his father’s room, the boy took the key that locked him inside. As he made his way outside he knew that if he took the first step to the other side, there would be no turning back. In his heart he knew he would never see his father again, but a prisoner he could be no longer.

The lock on the door had rusted from years of no use and being out in the weather. The boy found the key barely fight but once he got it in the door unlocked. A loud creep echoed off the courtyard walls as the door swung open and in the distance he could he his father and the guards stirring to see who or what had caused the disturbance, not knowing that by the time they would make it to the door the boy would be long gone like a distance memory.

The land on the other side of the door was barren of life. There was no trees like there was outside the southern door of his father’s house. All the boy could see was hills, sand, and death. Dead trees, the bones of dead animals. The boy ran in this direction still, he ran so long that he could no longer see the place he once called home or hear the men he thought would be chasing him.

It was at this moment he realized he didn’t know what he was looking for. His mother was somewhere out here but did she stay nearby or had she gone and made a new home for herself. There was a chance that she had passed away, not finding shelter or food in this waste, but that was an idea the boy would not give second thought to. He forced himself to believe she was still out there.

When he came upon the largest hill he had seen, he saw where someone had carved a message into a dead tree. “Look for me in the town just over this hill and we can be a family again.” The note was left by this mother, the boy believed, there was still hope.