Day 318 - Locked Away

 Locked Away

Matthew Ryan Fischer

 

He took pictures and locked them away, in drawers, cabinets or buried deep in stacks of boxes.

“Remember,” he would tell himself, and then he would lock them away and set them aside.

They would bring him their trinkets, their stories, their pain. He would take them and put them in drawers or cabinets or bury them deep back of storage sheds.

“Forget,” he would tell them, and when they left, they seemed a little lighter, a little happier. He did them a service, he would tell himself. He did them a kindness.

There was a locket, one that lovers would put pictures in. The silver chain was broken, but he kept it anyway. His mother’s, or at least it was in a box of her things. He hadn’t known his grandmother. Or her great grandmother. It could have been any of theirs. He didn’t know and it was too late to ask.

There had been pictures in the locket, but he had removed them. He didn’t know who they were or why they were special. They were just faded, black-and-white images of the past. If they had ever existed at all, any secrets they held were long gone.

The locket there were concentric circles intermixed with a maze of some sort. It looked like chaos, but he supposed it was supposed to seem mysterious. Maybe his great grandfather had been a hypnotist and his great grandmother had worn this by his side. The design entrapped and confused the viewer and made them more susceptible to suggestion.

There were symbols sketched on the back. Icons growing out of a vine of sorts. He recognized the ankh and what looked like a star. There were symbols he didn’t recognize. Cuts and divots that might have been an ancient language like cuneiform, or something more modern meant to look old. And there was a pyramid with an eye staring back at him.  

All seeing and all knowing, he thought. It was like the image on the dollar bill. Masons or Illuminati or something like that. The spirit guide that would lead us all to some sort of mystical promised land. Which of course never really came. But it was enough of an idea to inspire followers and a million mysteries and conspiracy theories.

He had only meant to help people. Release them from their pain and suffering. Let the past be the past and let it fade away. It was a noble goal. He was sure of it. But noble or not, things didn’t always work out as planned. It turned out that “forget” was often more powerful than “remember.” Whatever he was supposed to gain from their loss, it hadn’t quite worked out that way. He seemed to be losing just as much as they were.

What did the symbols really mean and why couldn’t he remember who it had belonged to? It would have been easy to be scared. Easy to let himself be swept away in the moment of lost memory.

“Remember. Remember.” It was his mantra, his chant, his desire and his goal. “Remember who you are.” Please. He could have said please. He could have begged and cried and negotiated, but there was no one to barter with.

He read their palms and turned the cards and sometimes the voices whispered something in his ear. Sometimes the whole world was at his fingertips. But most of the time things were blind and blurry and lost to him.

There was the noise of fluttering and rustling wings. The birds were on the move. What secrets did they know and why wouldn’t they share them? The owl told no tale.

“Never Forget Who You Are.”

The importance of the phrase and the mystery of the locket were lost.

Somewhere buried deep inside, he felt the fear that everything around him knew the answers he so desperately sought.

He closed his hand and grasped the locket tightly. Alone and lost in the world, with only one meaningless clue. There was no path forward, only the fog of mystery that buried him so deeply.