Thread: A Room Locked Away

The door opened before her, revealing in an elegant cloud of floating dust, a foyer of mahogany panels and sleek oak floors, with layers of Persian carpets and, as her eyes scanned towards the ceiling, a glittering and prodigious crystal chandelier, shouting in a miserably wretched voice to be remembered. She rushed under the chandelier, smoothing her hand over the slick railing of the winding staircase hoping and hoping and skipping steps to reach the top the top oh! she needed to reach it in time and if she didn’t it would make her sick absolutely sick and…

Soft white curtains moved quietly across the broken window of the attic, and under it, a misfortune of brittle glass pieces, newly cleaned and glittering, like diamonds, in the sunlight that streamed through the leftover window frame. She couldn’t move – not her hands, her mouth, not even her delicate and grieving blue eyes.

A breath escaped her crescent shaped lips and in a dash she lifted her pale white muslin skirts and ran down the long hall towards a room that rarely received any visitors. She reached for the dark and peeling gold knob, gripping her soft and polished fingers around it, shivering as she hesitated, then, conjuring all the effort she could, she pushed open the door against her judgment, her logic, her best efforts to keep it locked away from her mind; she pushed it open against her heart’s very wishes. She pushed it open, her eyes closed, her face twisted with an inner suffering only a young woman of passionate and miserable wrongdoings could afford. She opened it, regrettably.

The delicate sound of a harp being played touched her senses like a wild rose, and before her, in this room reserved for only tragic memories and horrible lies, she found her daughter seated on a simple wooden stool, plucking the strings of a golden harp in emulation of an angel. Her blond hair, glowing in the sun, tumbled down her back in excess. Her dress floated about the ground, thin and white like that of a Roman goddess’. Yet among her thick, beautiful locks, her face eluded the eye.

“Daughter.” She whispered breathlessly, but it was too late. The innocent girl had been consumed by her mother’s terrible past doings. Like Dorian Grey, this poor mother had hidden her secrets too, and had, for so long, cleverly contained them in this room with the chipped golden knob and delicate golden harp. Each string was a memory; a lie, an affair, a forgotten friend; and this song was the harmony of it all, played gracefully by the innocent pale fingers of a child completely lost.

With violently shaking hands and wet fingers she stepped towards the door, weeping as she did so, stepping lightly across the floorboards to keep her daughter unaware of her vulgar impending doom. She lifted her hands towards her daughter’s head, stroking the girl’s clean and blessed curls once more before she swallowed, catching her breath in the center of her heaving chest. And, with a regret as honest and as sincere as she had ever felt in her life of remorse, she twisted her little girl’s neck to the left, and fell to her knees as her one and only blossoming joy collapsed into the dust of her mother’s gruesome past.

Too many adjectives. They pile up and get in the way of reading at points.

First of all, a very dark and emotionally laden piece. The subject matter being one I can only guess at became something I could never imagine myself. For that I would say the piece is very well done.

The following paragraph simply came out of nowhere and attached to nothing however...

"Soft white curtains moved quietly across the broken window of the attic, and under it, a misfortune of brittle glass pieces, newly cleaned and glittering, like diamonds, in the sunlight that streamed through the leftover window frame. She couldn’t move – not her hands, her mouth, not even her delicate and grieving blue eyes."

On my first read through it completely destroyed the flow I was able to gain by skipping it entirely on a second read through, I would remove it from the piece, or find a way to make it actually connect somehow.

It was a heavily descriptive and somewhat disjointed read, however because of what I saw it to be, this seemed fitting. In my mind this became the lament of a womans memories of a child she never allowed herself to have in more than private imaginations of memories within her mind. A kind of raising of a child that could have been but was 'stopped' from ever being by the choice of the mind in which this piece plays out. I have no idea if I am on the right track as to what the intention of the piece was to be, but that is where it took me. As I said a dark and emotional piece, I would be interested to know if I followed the right train of thought or if I am way off base.

All the best,
TW