Stuck in the Closet

Don't forget: ABCotD is still in road trip mode! We'll be back to our regular posting schedule in late June/early July. Thanks for reading!

Story Sent in by Charles:

Cassandra, who was a freelance writer, and I met online. We arranged to go out to dinner at a restaurant convenient to both of us.

When I met up with her in front of the place, she said, "I was kind of having second thoughts about dinner."

"Why?" Perhaps she wasn't feeling well.

She went on, "When I was three, my cousin locked me in a closet and wouldn't let me out for two hours. It kind of gave me a fear of people in crowded places."

I tried to make the connection, but I couldn't figure it out. Still, a phobia is a phobia, and I wasn't about to give her a hard time about it. I asked her, "What would you like to do, then?"

She thought for a moment, then said, "Can we just sit down somewhere?"

I found a bench in a little walkway between stores. We sat down, and I was about to ask her a non-related question when she stood up and said, "I'm sorry. Maybe we can take a walk?"

I stood and asked, "Everything okay?"

She replied, "Yeah. I'm sorry. Just sitting here on the bench, it reminded me of the time my cousin locked me in the closet when I was younger."

"Okay."

We walked for a couple of blocks. I asked her to tell me more about her writing. She said, "It's mostly dark. Probably a result of having been locked in the closet when I was younger."

That shut me up until a few moments later, when she stopped walking and said, "I'm sorry. This walk... it's just making me feel trapped. Do you know what I mean?"

"Not really."

"It's like being a three-year-old and being trapped in a closet."

"I see."

"By your cousin. You know?"

"It must have really affected your entire life, that horrible experience."

She nodded gravely. "You have no idea."

"Oh, I have some," I said, "Want to call it a night? Everything that we do seems to remind you of that awful experience."

"Yeah. I'm going to go to bed."

Tongue-in-cheek, I asked her, "Won't that potentially remind you of your time in the closet?"

She said, "Probably, but I can't let it control my life, you know?"

"Of course." And that's how it ended.