A hole in the sand

 Welcome to the Spot Writers. This month’s topic is “The door you locked is wide open”. 

This week’s contribution comes from Chiara De Giorgi. Chiara is currently in Berlin, Germany, doing her best to catch up with semi-abandoned writing projects. Her YA novel “Mi chiamo Elisa” was published in Italy by “Le Mezzelane Casa Editrice” in September 2020 and recently in Turkey with the title “Benim adım Elisa”. Her children's book “Şebnem ve Schrödinger’in Kedisi” was just published in Turkey by Sia Kitap and in Italy with the title: “Chiara e il Gatto di Schrödinger”.

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A hole in the sand

by Chiara De Giorgi

 

Photo by Guzmán Barquín on Unsplash

“What are you writing?”

“Ugh, I’m not. I’m this close to filling the page with an ominous saying like, all work and no play make Jack a dull boy.”

“Sounds scary. What is it, writer’s block?”

“Not exactly. It’s this assignment about a locked door that’s open instead. I can’t decide which angle to take.”

“Hm, let’s see... The obvious choice would be a ghost story, wouldn’t it? Something spooky.”

“Yeah, too obvious, isn’t it, though.”

“Okay… What about something metaphorical? You know, locked doors, burned bridges, and so on.”

“Bo-oring. Besides, I like burned bridges, but I hate locked doors, and I don’t wish for my evident confusion to become common knowledge.”

“When I was little, my parents bought a hut on the beach.”

“Did they?”

“Yes. I had problems with my lungs, so the doctor recommended I spend as much time as possible near the sea. They didn’t have much money and all they could afford was this thing on the beach. It was really a crumbling hovel, when they got it, but they patched it up so we could go there on weekends.”

“Fascinating. But what does this have to do with my assignment?”

“There was no door, at first, and my mom put up a curtain. At some point, my dad got an old door from someone who discarded it. For a while, however, the place was technically open, you couldn’t lock it up.”

“…And?”

“I loved to play on the beach and swim in the sea, that’s how I spent my days when we were there, and I never wanted to go back for supper. So, to make sure I’d stay inside during the night, my parents would tell me that the place was locked, even if all that separated us from the outside world was a curtain.”

“And you believed that?”

“I was a little kid, remember. I had doubts, but I didn’t feel brave enough to challenge their authority. And then my dad brought in the real door.”

“What happened then?”

“For a while, absolutely nothing. But I grew up and one day, for some reason, I thought back at the time when we had no door, and I realized my parents had lied to me. Of course, I understood that they had done so for my own good, however I felt quite dumb and a bit offended. We used to spend a lot of time together, and we were comfortable with one another, so lies didn’t really fit in, they were like unwelcome guests. I started wondering what else they had possibly lied to me about and, being a teenager, I felt resentful.”

“That sounds more like you.”

“Does it now? Anyway. One night I thought, why not? I had stayed in when there was nothing but a curtain to stop me, so now I would go out when there was an actual locked door. It wasn’t as if I wouldn’t be able to unlock it, after all.”

“Makes sense. So, what did you do?”

“I waited until my parents were sound asleep, and just went out. In my mind, that act had seemed the epitome of my rebellion, as if once I opened the door something epic was going to happen. In reality, it was all very anticlimactic. Once I was outside, a grimy stray cat ran past me snarling, as if I were going to snatch the fishbone it held in its mouth.”

“Did you go back inside?”

“Not at all! Now I was outside, I wanted something to happen. It wasn’t just a door I had unlocked, do you know what I mean? I felt like I owed some adventure to the little kid who had been stopped by a curtain and a parent’s lie. So I started strolling along the beach. I was barefoot, the sand was cold and wet under my feet. The sea was calm, it lapped gently against the shore; moonlight flickered on the surface of the water. I thought that the sea was dancing to the moon, and that the moon had given it a sparkling jewel, that swayed as the waves rolled by.”

“How very poetic!”

“I know, right? I kept walking for a while, breathing in the cool night air. Then I spotted a child.”

“A child? Out at night?”

“Yes. He was digging a hole in the sand, he was very concentrated.”

“I can’t believe this. What was a child doing on the beach, digging a hole at night?”

“That’s a good question. Apparently, he had not heeded his parents’ warning, and he had lifted the curtain to go out anyway.”

“What do you mean, the curtain?”

“See, that child… it was me. He explained it all to me: he didn’t believe the curtain could stop him, so one night he waited until mom and dad were asleep and sneaked out. It was a windy night, the sea was rough and he got too close, wishing to catch the dancing trail of moonlight on the restless waves. So he fell in. And he couldn’t get out again.”

“Stop it! What are you talking about? Are you trying to spook me?”

“He told me it was time for me to accept that we were dead, and to stop acting as if I were alive. So we could finally move on.”

“Stop this, I don’t want to listen to you anymore.”

“I don’t like the idea of moving on, though, I like being alive – or pretending to be anyway. So I stayed. And now you know my tale.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Because you need a story about a locked door that is actually open, of course. And it doesn’t look like you found it too obvious, now, does it? Until the last minute I wasn’t sure whether to go for ghosts or vampires, but a ghost seemed more realistic. What do you think? You’d rather I met a vampire instead? Let’s see… Maybe I bumped into a beautiful vampire, we spent a few lust-filled hours under the stars, then she turned me and now I’ll bite you. Would you like that better?”

“…”

“Nah, you wouldn’t fall for that, you’ve seen me out in the sunshine, after all.”

“If you try something like this again, I swear I’m going to make you a ghost for real.”

“Fair enough. In the meantime, why don’t you write the story before you forget it?”

“I’ll do that, thanks.”

“You are welcome. Now I can go back to digging that hole in the sand. See you later.”

 

 

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The Spot Writers—Our Members: 

Val Muller: http://www.valmuller.com/blog/

Catherine A. MacKenzie: https://writingwicket.wordpress.com/wicker-chitter/

Phil Yeats: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com

Chiara De Giorgi: https://chiaradegiorgi.blogspot.com/