Room Writer

“Am I Broken”, thought Sarah. She often felt lonely and miserable. She found friendship in almost everyone and nobody at the same time. People were complex, but for her everything was black or white, right or wrong. And, once her trust was broken, she would become silent, and you would be erased from her circle. This was an unbreakable cycle. People came into her life, made through her iron wall, and were abandoned.

It was a summer of 1990. Sarah was out playing with her younger sister, Stella, and the neighbor’s son, Kev. It was a sunny day and all the adults were inside their homes, taking nap. Kev was younger than Sarah, but they were good friends. Kev’s family moved in a year ago. His father worked at the quarry and the mother was a homemaker. Their rental unit was nothing more than a remodelled garage, with windows all around the unit, and a large door at the entrance.

Sarah was nine at the time, and over the years she had become quite an observer. She knew a lot of things happening in her school and her neighborhood. She liked playing small pranks with her friends, and she was an excellent storyteller. She made up stories about ghosts and magic, all sort of fantasies. These stories were almost always conjured based on what she saw around. Like those weird looking spider webs, feet like things growing from the trunk of the tree, strange flowers at the door of a weird looking neighbor.

That day, when she was playing with Kev and Stella outside, she noticed something unusual. Kev’s mother walked inside their rented garage and locked the door, in the middle of the day. She would always keep the doors of the garage open during day time, even while she took a nap, so that Kev can enter without disturbing her. Sarah thought, maybe she just needed to change her clothes. They played for a while, when Kev wanted to take a water break and went towards their garage. The door was still locked so he started knocking at the door, calling out his mother. Sarah saw that and immediately went to help Kev.

Both Sarah and Kev started banging the door, but his mother wouldn’t open. Sarah told Kev not to worry, maybe she is asleep. Being the oldest and the tallest one, Sarah started walking towards one of the windows of the garage, so that she could take a peek and call out Kev’s mother. The window was shut. She thought, perhaps the back window is open. Her heart was now beating fast, and she was worried. What is wrong with Kev’s mother, she thought, as she walked towards the back window.

The curtain was tucked and only the bottom half of the room was visible. There were two feet in front of her, in the middle of the room, with one stuck at the handle of the pile of storage boxes and another hanging in the air. Sarah couldn’t comprehend what it meant but she knew something was wrong. She pulled the curtain to clear her view. Kev’s mother was hanging by the neck from the ceiling fan, her eyes popped, staring lifelessly at Sarah.