Owen lives in a small apartment complex on the third floor. I face away from the room. I’ve never seen the place that I guard so well, but I have a great view of the outside hallway with black railings and tan concrete floors. On most days, black clouds and smog-laced skies cover the sunset.
Once, someone I’d never seen before came by on a night when he wasn’t home. They stuck a pin in my lock and wiggled it around for a couple of minutes. They weren’t very patient and left soon after. People need to learn to be more patient.
My acute listening skills make up for the lack of conversation between us. I listen to the slow music that mismatch with the beeps from the microwave at dinnertime; the slight groans Owen lets out before he folds himself onto the couch to watch TV, or when he whistles while boiling water in the morning until the tea kettle whistles back. I always seem to be in the way of something. I’m keyed open carelessly and pushed to the side. He doesn’t speak much when he’s alone.
He only talks when a mailman asks for him to sign something. Or when a company with a telemarketer calls and tries to make him spend money. He goes to work on weekdays. When it’s the weekends, Owen goes out at eight and comes back at eleven, sometimes stumbling up to the apartment. I hear his voice when a girl comes with him up the tan stairs, and they drink a glass of wine and then go to the squeaky bed in his room. The girls always leave before the sun can rise behind the black clouds and smog-laced skies. I stay behind unnoticed.
I now reminisce to you because Owen hasn’t come out for some time. He hasn’t received any new packages, or gone to work, or stumbled home with a girl for some time. For the first few days, I would hear the phone ring out for some time. It stopped now. All is silent. No one has come to check on him. I wish I could see him one last time.
Artist’s Statement:
“Gatekeeper was initially a post for a class assignment. The prompt instructed me to write from the point of view of an inanimate object. The object’s view needed to be different from a human perspective, depending on what it was.
I started looking around my house for ideas. Writing from the perspective of a chair, table, or couch bored me. The object needed to have significance and represent something. My eyes floated to the front door. I thought it would be an exciting concept to have a door that couldn’t see inside its own house. And it just tickled my peach to think about an inanimate object being in love with a human.
Owen seems to be very depressed, and his lifestyle is the central insight into that sadness. At the end of the piece, what happens to him is up to interpretation, although I have my theories.”
