The apartment was dark and musty; the fingers of sunlight had not brushed the living room in days. The whole building was buzzing with the news. Everyone three floors above and below had heard the fight – the screams, the insults, the words.

She hadn’t moved from her spot.

The TV was showing some black-and-white movie from a bygone age, detached from her mind, filling the room with the low hum of static.

The book was still on her lap.

Much as she loathed the damned thing, she couldn’t bring herself to pick it up and throw it away, because she knew – she knew – that if it was placed in the wrong hands…

So she had to keep it.

And with that choice, she had sealed a fate that could have been brighter, happier, fuller. She could have lived peacefully, in ignorance.

But she knew that would never happen.

Not to her.

No, the door was now shut; even if she could see the tendrils of blessed light crawling out beneath the cracks, the door was barred from one such as her.

Now and forever.