The Lock Keeper

**Trigger warning for discussion of sexual violence**

Who knows what the Lock Keeper looks like? It’s only now, as your limbs seize like a farm gate in need of oiling, that you notice his cottage. The lock is a grave cut into the hillside, and the cottage a queer building overlooking it.

You are at the top of a flight of locks somewhere between Oxford and Banbury. Mill houses with ivy beards overlook the canal and chalk white cottages lay dormant.

Boats far down in the valley are moored up for the night; their windows lit and smoke rising from their protruding chimneys. You watch the lights from the darkening hillside as though they are a welcoming village just out of reach.

Your own narrowboat bobs in the water and sloshes against the frozen lock gates. It slops over your toes as you step across the bow of the boat and climb down into the lock. Two heavy lock gates enclose you while the sky is a neat rectangle high above your head. The wet walls of the lock are alive with moss and other silent creatures.

You climb into the snared boat and poke the glowing remains in your stove. You’re out of kindling and coal, and must watch the last embers darkening over the grate. The small windows, framed by hand sewn curtains, are blotted out by soil. Everything you own is here: books, clothes, childhood mementos, a rusting tea kettle.

It is no good; the last of the light is a hare kicking up its heels in retreat. The horizon bleeds pink as you accept that your boat is frozen in the lock. You leave your home and climb toward the sky on a slimy ladder.

The windows of the Lock Keeper’s cottage are warm and inviting. You step up onto the bank and approach the door of the cottage. The door is dark wood with a small stained glass window at eye level. An emblem of fox glows red in the centre of the window. Ivy creeps over the house and its fingers brush the top of your head. It is painful to rap once, then twice, on the door with cold knuckles.

A weak hallway light illuminates the small window and there is a shadow moving towards the other side of the door. Three bolts clang violently back and the door swings open. Warmth from inside touches your cheeks, beckoning you on. The Lock Keeper stands before you. You would describe him but- how familiar his hair and face is. You will say in a moment, when the colour of his hair comes to you.

"My boat is stuck in the lock," you tell him. "I have no coal for my fire. Do you have any to spare?"

The Lock Keeper nods. “Come in to warm yourself.”

You step through the door and he closes it behind you. Three bolts slide back across. You follow the Lock Keeper down the small hallway. The air is as musty as a reference library. You can taste old paper, and the sweetness of decay, but oh, the warmth-

The hallway walls are papered in ornate red and gold wallpaper, dull with age. Thin strips of red paper hang limply from the wall. Now you are away from the biting wind your cheeks warm in the tepid air. You look up for the Lock Keeper. He is at the door of a room, watching you. What colour are his eyes? You wonder again.

You follow him into a room where a large dining table dominates the room. Small glass lampshades on the walls are dark with grime and the light that escapes is no stronger than candlelight. Horseshoes are nailed to the uneven white wall. An open doorframe opens into an adjoining kitchen. Something is cooking in the large farmhouse stove.

The room is damp but a fire is roaring in the hearth. Your eyes fixate on it as the heat licks your cheeks.

“Your boat is frozen in the lock?” The Lock Keeper asks, appearing beside you. What soft footfalls he has, you think.

“Yes. I just need kindling and coal for my fire, if you have any to spare.”

He gestures to one of the six wooden chairs around the table. “Sit,” he says. Your heavy body drops into the chair. The smell of copper taints the air.

The Lock Keeper soon presses a hot cup of tea into your hands. The warmth is so much that your hands numb from it.

“Will you eat?” He asks.

“Yes, please,” you say.

You stare into the hearth. It is several minutes until he places a large plate on the table in front of you. The large ornate dish contains a bare writhing creature. Its thin legs are hog tied together. Beady dark eyes plead with you as bile fills your throat. Your body shakes.

“Are you afraid?” The Lock Keeper asks with a shade of a smile on his lips. Your breaths are coming faster and faster but the air isn’t providing any nourishment. For the first time you see the Lock Keeper clearly. How did you not recognise his yellow eyes?

The heavy wooden chair clatters to the ground behind you as you run from the kitchen, down the musty hallway and back to the front door. You pull at the handle and try to open the bolts with numb fingers. The world outside of the round glass window is black. You hear footsteps coming down the hallway towards you. You pound on the door and shout for help, thinking of the boats far down the hillside.

The Lock Keeper approaches you, not walking, or running, nothing that requires feet. He moves jerkily forward. Fading and appearing much closer to you, until he is before you, looking again like a man.

“Please don’t hurt me,” you say.

The Lock Keeper laughs. “What are you willing to give me?"

“Money? I have some money, not much, but-”

“I’m not interested in money.”

“Take my boat- my valuables- anything you want.”

“I don’t want your trinkets, or your shell, now I have the soft flesh inside.”

At his words, you peel back your shirt with shaking hands, exposing pink breasts to the cold air.

“Is that what you’re willing to give me?” He asks. “Because I am in the shape of a man?”

"What wouldn't I give to live?"

He smile is wider than any she’s seen. A red slit from ear to ear crowded with gleaming teeth. "That’s not what I want.”

“Then what do you want?”

He draws closer to you and you press yourself flat back against the door. “You’re shaking. Do you feel powerless?”

“I don’t have anything else to give you.”

“You have more to give, I think, than your sex. So I will be your villain."

He shrinks in your vision. The room grows larger, and you, smaller. Your limbs pop back on their joints. Your nose lengthens. Your legs are wiry muscle. Your tail, a rust coloured brush.

He turns into a creature with brightness in its eyes, and you skitter, claws on wooden floors. You are quick, quick, nervous. Where is safe? There, there, under the dresser that is as large as a mountain. You press yourself under the legs of the furniture.

You see his footfalls, now four legged.

A wet nose protrudes through the gloom. A long tongue slobbers over shining black gums. He howls, a circular sound that you’ve heard before over meadows following red coated horsemen. The hunt is on. You dart out from your hiding place and run across the floor. You are pursued into the kitchen, and you spent with ease into old farmhouse counters, small paws clattering through dishes, splashing through spicy casserole. Large yellow teeth snap up at you and block each path you take. But there, there- the top of the fridge. The white mountain, you leap for it, landing against it, your black claws scratching, scratching. But you have no grip and pull far back, your lithe spine against stone tiles.

Then the Lock Keeper is above you, rank breath breathing over your sensitive nose. You roll to your front, crouched.

You flatten your black ears against your head and bear your teeth at him. Your fur stands upright and you dart past him, under the dining room table and the struggles of a hairless creature, into the hallway and up the bare wooden stairs. Even with your powerful haunches each stair is an uphill jump. The hound pursues you, snarling at your haunches as you try to reach the top. With your increased senses you can smell his musk, his saliva dripping mouth and his excitement. Safe, safe- you think.

But what does safe mean? Safe is ground. A safe can be locked. Safe from wolves. You know there is no safety to be had. But you keep looking, because to do otherwise is to die.

You run into a bedroom, putrid with damp. Under the bed, until jaws snap at you and the instinct to dash into the open is impossible to resist. The Lock Keeper stands in the shadows of the bedroom. "You've stopped shivering. Are you still afraid?"

You curl your thick tail around your body. “Why are you doing this?”

"You know that you are meat,” he tells you. “You are worm food. You are waiting to die.”

But I am so small, you think. You turn and run, small legs bounding off each stair until you stand at the bottom, the stair below you is a long way down now as you pass it on sand coloured paws.

Large muscles flex in your haunches. You dart into the kitchen, the space underneath no longer suitable for your large bulk. What are you? A cracked tea kettle on the ground offers an adequate reflection. Large flat face, small shell round ears and a large jaw. You are a lioness.

“Do you feel powerful?” The Lock Keeper asks. He is a hound again, yellow eyes glowing. “You are a predator, look at your haunches. Your jaw is a steel trap.”

You press yourself backwards like a too large house cat.

“All the strength in the world and you would never feel powerful,” the Lock Keeper tells you.

You press backwards again, but there is nowhere left to go. Your limbs are smooth once again, and your hands grip your hairless ankles. The tiled floor bites at your naked skin. “I don’t want to die,” you say.

The Lock Keeper chuckles and the sound is as light as stones on a river bed. “Few of us do. Death may be wearing a cable knit jumper when it comes. It could be a warm cup of tea and the kindness of strangers. A brush of wolf fur. “I will strike a bargain with you," the Lock Keeper says. "You will choose what to give me."

“I don’t have anything,” you say, thinking of all that he’d refused so far.

“I think that you do.”

"I will give you what I can.” You look down at yourself, confronted with your nakedness. What use is your body to you? “I will give you my legs.” It isn’t so bad, you think, instead of running they kept you frozen in place. He used your legs to keep you pinned to the muddy ground.

You hear the smacking of the Lock Keeper’s lips as he strips your flesh from your limbs. “More,” he demands, his speech slurred around the flesh rolling across his dark tongue.

You hold your arms out before you willingly. “I will give you my hands.” It isn’t so bad; they are the hands that were not strong enough to push him off. They are pathetic.

“More,” the Lock Keeper demands. His stomach is expanding.

"I will give you my lips," you say. It isn’t so bad, they are the lips that were afraid to call for help. That could say nothing to stop it. The Lock Keeper peels them from you like a fresh scab.

"I will give you my teeth," you say. It isn’t so bad, they are the teeth that didn’t bite down on his penis.

The Lock Keeper sucks on the teeth then spits them onto the ground like gleaming corn. He is even fatter now. He is the moon blocking out the sun. “More.”

“I will give you my breasts.” It isn’t so bad, he used them to solely measure your worth, and that you having them invited his violence. They are mutinous.

The Lock Keeper is now gigantic. He is a flurry of birds darkening the sky. There is no longer any light- just his enormity.

“I will give you my eyes," you say. It isn’t so bad, they are the eyes that didn’t recognise an unsafe path, that didn't see the danger coming until it was too late. That didn’t recognise the true intentions behind a trusted face.

The Lock Keeper reaches towards you, his hand wavering in the air like black smoke. He picks your eyes like ripe blackberries, leaving empty sockets. You hear the sound of chewing and tongue swiping around his jaws. “More,” he demands.

“I will give you my heart.” It isn’t so bad, if you no longer feel. The Lock Keeper reaches beneath your ribcage for the last piece of meat, and as he takes it from you, you don't feel its absence. You can feel little of the floor beneath you. You don’t know if there is any light or warmth. You shouldn’t be alive, but here you are. How curious, you think.

“More,” the Lock Keeper roars. He chews on your arm bone, but it remains intact as much as he shakes you to and fro. “More.”

“I have nothing left to give you,” you tell him.

“Because you give yourself away. You have no teeth, no legs to stand. You have no eyes to see. Have you ever felt so powerless?” You understand somehow that he is sniffing around where your ears were. What is this other sense?

With no eyes, you can only look inward. “Yes.”

“Oh?”

“I’ve been raped before.”

“What was taken?”

“I don’t understand.”

“I want what was taken,” the Lock Keeper says quickly.

“I can’t.”

The Lock Keeper bears down on you. “If it can be taken, then it can be given. You care about what was taken.”

You think of what was lost. “It’s nothing you can hold, or touch.”

“Yet it was still taken from you.”

“Yes.”

“So I want it, I want it all.”

“I can’t…” you say, but his weight pins you down and jaws snap at your face. “All I have left is a story.”

“Give it to me!” Saliva dribbles from his black mouth and drips onto your gleaming bones.

"I give you soil in my mouth and leaves in my hair,” you say. “I give you the impassable gulf from friends and family. I give you the illusion of safety, that I didn’t see until it was taken from me. I give you the person that I was, who I no longer recognise. I give you the scraps that I give to lovers. I give you the lies that I tell to make people more comfortable.”

The Lock Keeper begins to cough. His dark bulk shudders as he retches again and again.

“I give you, ‘people don't want to hear about such horrible things.’ I give you; your every human need, emotion, and want, disregarded at once.”

It’s like being eaten alive. You raise your hands, and the saliva damp finger bones fascinate you. Why are you still alive? You have been devoured, and you are still here, you think to yourself. This shouldn’t be enough to live on, but you are alive. “I give you the lesson that you are nothing more than a feast for the appetites of others.”

The Lock Keeper coughs, clutching his throat as though something is lodged in there. “More, give it to me!”

“You’re choking, but you still want more?” You laugh at the realisation. Because, what is left of you for him to consume? “What more can you want? I am just a sack of bones with a story. You’re choking on it.”

But there is something keeping you animated. You once again look inward for the source. And there, at the heart of you, is a spring, that flows into a deep well.

“I know what you want,” you tell the Lock Keeper. He is just a shadow now, and his voice only a croak. “You have no source because you have no story,” you tell him. “You are insubstantial.”

The Lock Keeper had once blotted out all the light in the room, but now you can see the edge of a cracked windowpane and the plaster covered wall.

“I know what you want to eat, but you can’t,” you tell him as he moans and scuttles across the wall. “Look- you’ve made yourself sick. You can’t nourish yourself, you can only consume.”

Turning your back on him, you lift your hands towards you. “I forgive my hands,” you say, feeling the flesh wrapping and growing around finger bones. “I wasn’t strong enough to push him off.”

“I forgive my teeth,” you say, feeling them crowd your mouth. “I did what I did to survive. I forgive my tongue,” you say, feeling the heaviness sit behind your teeth. “Nothing I could have said would have stopped it.”

“I forgive my legs,” you say, feeling muscles like strong rope wrap themselves around leg bones and knee caps. “I could not have ran, or kicked long and hard enough to prevent it. My freezing was not consent.”

“I forgive my breasts,” you say. “My body didn’t invite his violence. That was his choice to make.”

“I forgive my eyes,” you say, feeling the orbs of flesh pop back into your eye sockets. The world comes into focus again. “How could I have known someone I trusted would hurt me?”

The Lock Keeper is a shadow of what he was. The dark mass of him hovers in the corner of the room.

“I forgive my heart,” you say, and the resounding beat of it is a shudder of a train. “I forgive myself.”

The dawn light is streaming in through the window. You stand, looking once more around the room.

The Lock Keeper is gone.