Under Lock and Key

kitty ☼

I had looked everywhere. I had searched my mansion from top to bottom. Our staff had searched our mansion from top to bottom. The ancient lock my mother had given me for my 13th birthday. The one she had promised would bring me and my family wealth, fame and fortune. Then one that was gone.
If you haven't figured it out yet, me and my family are very, very rich. And me? Well, I was very, very, panicked.
That lock had been in our family for generations. Decades even. And I had lost it. Of course. Which was odd, considering our family had a long, long history of good luck.
Like strangely good luck.
Good luck that was so strong, it seemed my whole life was just one long streak of perfect.
And, what do you know, I was starting to hate it.
Everything. Every single thing that happened to me was perfect. I messed up perfectly, even. I never, ever, made mistakes.
Until now.
When I look back on my 13th birthday, it was an odd day to say the least. That day I received that old, silver, polished, beautiful lock from my mother.
So many odd, strange, and wonderful things had happened on that day.
When I asked my mother what it was, she had simply smiled. A secret sort of smile. The type of smile that was sad and happy all at once.
And with that, I remembered.
I remembered how much I hated that lock.

☼

I had awoken with a start on my 13th birthday. Now, it wasn't a normal awakening. It was a cold-sweat, nightmare one. Glancing at my clock, I blearily read the numbers. It was exactly 12:01 am. I clenched my hands into fists. Sweat dripped onto the floor. I felt as if my blanket was suffocating me. I needed to breathe. Needed to get away.
It was February 18th, 1991.
My birthday.
My mother had told me of this day. Ever since I was a toddler.
"You're getting older, my sweet," she had said, stroking my face, gently.
I had glanced up at her, her lovely soft curls ringing her rose blushed face. So much raw beauty and power. Her cheekbones we high and pronounced. Cold, marble, gray eyes. My mother was beautiful.
I played with a rocking horse. I swayed back and forth. Creak. Creak. Creak. The old nursery was one of a kind. Blue, covered in peeling wood, and coated with a soft carpet that felt like lamb wool. Old toys covered the ground. A cradle rocked gently by the window, blown by the soft summer wind coming through the small crack. The air smelled of windflowers and honey.
My mother had taken my small hand.
"Kitty. What do you see?"
"I see the sun, mother. I see Benjamin." I pointed at my younger brother playing in the corner, drawing. "I see you."
She had shaken her head. I'd giggled at the way her silken hair had brushed my cheeks.
"Soon, my pet, you will see so much more."
This memory raced through my head. My mother had never been the same.
I glanced out the window, watching snow drift and descend into the darkness below.
Somehow I knew that the day she had spoken of was today. My stomach burbled nervously.
I walked into the hallway, trying, and failing, to be stealthy. I stubbed my toe and yelped. I clasped my hand over my mouth.
Walking down the hallway, I saw the room to the nursery. One of the only rooms me and my brother weren't allowed inside. We had spent years weaving spooky ghost tales and stories of what had happened.
I twisted the knob. The blue paint was peeling off the door, making the happy scene of clouds and a sun seem dreary, old, and broken down.
I glanced inside. Everything seemed exactly as it had in my memory. Except the whole room was coated in a thick layer of dust. The rocking horse rocked back and forth.
And then my head was speared.
Not literally of course, but figuratively. It felt as if thousands of bees were inside my head, trying to make their way out.
Then the room shifted.
Suddenly the happy blue paint was on the ground, peeling, moldy. Termites crawled out of the rocking horse's eyes and ears. The wood was splintered and peeling. And the carpet. The carpet was made out of living larvae, the white and pale kind. It writhed and wriggled as I futilely tried to retrace my steps out of the room.
Something was in the corner. Someone was in the corner.
A young boy.
Benjamin.
"Ben?" I whispered, terrified.
His head rotated unnaturally. His black eyes looked into mine.
Beetles were climbing out of his ears, his eyes, his nose, his mouth. He wore old blue and white striped pajamas, spattered with something dark. I opened my mouth to scream.
Except I couldn't. I looked down.
I wasn't dressed in my old comfortable fleece robe anymore. I was in a white, wool, nightgown that touched the ground and scratched my skin. And something was coiled around my throat. Something choking and black. A noose. I was in a noose. And I felt it go taunt. My neck snapped with a sickening crunch. I realized someone was screaming. I was screaming. The type of scream a wounded animal makes.
Everything went black.

☼

My mother had found me like that.
Standing in the middle of the nursery room, screaming. Screaming at nothing. And then I had collapsed on the ground.
I had been thirteen then.
When I had come to, something had been pressed into my hand. Something hard. Something shiny and metal.
A silver lock. With a scrap of paper.
"Perfect comes at a price."
And then a single number. Written on the back.
"39."
My mother was nowhere to be found.

☼

Later in my life, slowly everything started to go my way. I had a huge house, a dog, and a perfect boyfriend. But I never, ever, forgot about my thirteenth birthday. And I never quite understood how my mother, and all of my living female relatives disappeared off the face of the planet the next morning. "A coincidence", you may whisper to yourself. "After all, Kitty only had a grandmother and a mother." But consider this; there are no records of my grandmother or my mother anywhere. At all. It seems as if they never had even existed.
This morning, when I had lost the lock, a million thoughts raced through my mind. I had tried to get rid of the lock before. I thought it was cursed. The lock was the reason why my mother went missing. The lock is why I went temporarily crazy. But every time I threw it out, somehow it always made its way back to me. No matter what.
For example:
I had just finished throwing the cursed lock away into the garbage. My friend had asked if I wanted to go shopping.
We went to a flea market.
My friend, whose name was Rose, was looking for different objects to put in her home. She's a collector, and loves anything old or antique. Rose lived with her boyfriend, and he'd proposed to her last month. So we spent most of the time in that section if the market. I helped her browse.
I was looking through a display case of old keys. And then, a sparkle caught my eye. I pushed aside some of the rusty, old keys, to look at what it was. It was a lock. My lock. I had gasped, pushing it out of site. My vision had turned black again. I frantically grabbed Rose and ran out of the store, worried that the hallucinations were going to start again. Rose looked at my as if I was crazy, and put a comforting hand on my shoulder. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," I managed to gasp out. My stomach heaved. Rose looked skeptical. She dropped me off in front of my house, saying she would take care of my car. Saying she would be back tomorrow. Before she left, she held out a small bag.
"I saw you looking at it before we left."
With a sickening feeling, I reached into the bag, pulling out the silver lock.
With everything I had, I managed to whisper "Thanks."
On the way back to get my car, Rose was killed in a crash.

☼

My name is Kitty Da'Lune. I am twenty-six years old.
My luck is changing from good to bad.
And my story is one of two.