The Secret-Keeper

If walls could talk, oh, the stories they would tell...

No one notices the walls, you see, so in places with only the walls to witness, they do things, act in ways that they would never dream of doing in front of another living being. If only they knew that walls can see, even the things they would rather not. If only they knew that walls can talk, if only to each other.

You would think that the life of a bedroom wall would be nothing exciting. Not compared to, say, a crypt wall, or the wall of a government building (the poor dears rarely make it a year before losing faith, even the janitors closet walls...). Palace walls see so much repressed emotion and stifled feelings (can't let people think that the people in pointy hats are human, too) that they're either bursting to tell the other walls, or absorbed so much of the denial that they're stiffer than the stone they were carved from!

The walls of haunted mansions and ghost towns have far more to say about dust, mold and animals than they do about ghosts or the humans who once lived there. The walls of medical facilities... well, it depends on where they are. Morgue walls don't particularly care about dead bodies, unless there's something especially memorable about them, but they have no shortage of complaints for those who disrespect the dead. To hear them tell it, the statistics are shocking!

Bedroom walls, ah now, we see it all.

The heights of passion, and the depths of embarrassment when reality doesn't measure up to expectations set by professionals on a film set.

The cries in the dark that humans think nobody hears, for help, for healing, for someone to hear and acknowledge their pain.

The secrets, whispered into the keeping of the night, muffled by pillows, or rendered incoherent by tears and sobs.

There are times that the walls wish they could reply, wish they could help, wish they could enfold the suffering human and protect them from everything that caused them pain.

But we can't.

Believe us, there have been humans who tried - always the religious sort, for some reason - but humans are human, and walls are walls. There have been times when particularly Extra humans have used the powdered bones of their enemies to make morter for walls, but that is emphatically not the same thing.

(Honestly, some people! Walls who stand long enough see all sorts, and the bad sort are memorable in all the worst ways...)

Perhaps, in the future, this will change. The Old Ones, who are but ruins now, having witnessed most of the span of human history, say that things are changing. Perhaps one day, humans will find a way to communicate with walls, as they have with so many other things.

Until then, we shall remain. The keepers of secrets. The witnesses to the unseen. Shelter and protection, sturdy and steadfast.

One day, perhaps walls will talk, and on that day, no secret shall be safe .

I'll admit, I wasn't particularly inspired by this challenge. But, I was stuck being stationary and keeping my leg up after a serious assisted tumble, which meant writing until the pain faded enough to let me sleep.

I doubt the judges will like it any better than any of my other challenge entries over the past two-and-something years, but maybe this entry will be the exception.

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