Lockout

This item contains Edit Points ~#~ you can click to leave feedback right within item.

And the door fell closed with a chunky click. Tammy dove to stop it before the latch snapped up the lock.
"Oh, suck!" Tammy said to herself. She probably would've made it if she had been only an inch or two taller. She only moved about 5 feet away from the apartment building entrance to see if there was anyone out there to help her. Of course, there wasn't. It was 4:30 AM and not even the skinny, white skinned, white collared, white powder snorters who also dwelled in the building would be lurking. Thankfully, around 5:30 AM is when those same cokeheads kick out their catches of the night. Catch, kiss, release. Until then, she's trapped. Not trapped. Well, yes, trapped.. but not "trapped". You have to be inside to be "trapped". So it's the opposite of "trapped". No, that's "freedom". It's not the opposite. The cousin? Something like that. "Trapped", but not "trapped", because you cannot be "trapped" on the outside.
"Stranded" is the best word. Perhaps not the exact word, but it is the best word. Of course, the only reason she got herself "stranded" outside, was because she had been "trapped" inside with her intoxicated father. (She always found it hilariously ironic when she saw her dad drunk, because she was nearly certain that she had to have been conceived in a state of intoxication, considering her father's appearance. She considered alcohol a sort of third parent, being slightly responsible for her existence).
She wasn't sure if trapped or stranded was worse.
Not that she had any sort of choice. That fat lock made her choice for her.
She still tried, though. "Amy! Therese!" she looked up to the heavens - the heavens being the 6th floor balconies of her comrades. Of course, they were asleep. What little girl would be up this early? Or this late? She wasn't sure at what point in a night "late" became "early". “eat shit and freeze off your tits!" The silence seemed to answer back. She sat with her back against the potted plants a little bigger than her. No matter how much she brush off the concrete beneath her, she couldn't clear away the little bit of gravel and cement and maybe even glass that stabbed through her flannel PJ pants and into her buttcheeks. She unconsciously decided her two options were to cry or zone out her nose is already running from a bad cold which was catching up quickly, she didn't want snot running down and around her mouth like a gooey goatee. That would be no help. So she zoned.
When Tammy zones out, her mind defaults to picturing a barren desert or a construction site. Make sense, considering she's surrounded by both. Ah, the great outdoors of Phoenix, Arizona. A perfectly suitable place to raise a child, with its dangerous wildlife and high crime rates and golf-obsessed white dads..
Someone appeared.
Not in her crappy mind-desert. In her crappy reality-desert.
Some dude who reminded her of one of those hobo-clowns. Of course he probably wasn't either one of those things. He also reminded her of one of those slobbery Burmese mountain dogs, but not in a friendly Beethoven sort of way, more like a stoned Cujo sort. He was on the opposite side of the street. She cross without looking because she knew it was too ear-late for cars and she supposed it was too ear-late for cares.
The street lights washed out all color, draining everything to a dusty brown. Like a silent movie. Very noir, Tammy thought. How classic. Quiet. Mystery. A man. A woman. A 12-year-old woman. Two strangers. Searching. In the night. She walked up to him.
The stoned Cujo vibe increased with every foot that decreased in the distance between them. But it was cold. She was scared. And there was a box of pop tarts and I can of frosting in her bedroom. Pop tarts and frosting made her feel better.
"Hello, um, Im, um, locked out of my apartment, you wouldn't happen to, like, like live there, or know where I could go to, to like, get some help?" she tucked her chin to her chest and widend her eyes.
“I know everything, Missy. But are you old enough to do anything for me?” he gave her a sweet, fatherly smile. It was a joke. Almost certainly. But she dipped. She'd had enough of that. "No, thanks anyway." She said, and trotted back across the street to the potted plant, to the stabby gravel, to the tiny void in space that she and only she occupied.
As predicted, one of the catches of the nigh showed up, let her in, called her "hon", told her to be careful and safe. She also asked how long she had been waiting, “only an hour or so”. If this was a dream of hers, this lady would be a CPS officer, and she'd be whisked away, her father finally vanquished like a dragon, this cliché and that. She'd move into the home of either Amy or Therese, shed forget everything and feel safer for the first time in forever. But the lady just said “Awwwwwwww”. She looked like Tammy. For some reason that made it hurt all the more.
Of course, once she got inside the apartment building, she was still stranded. Her dad's individual apartment was locked... duh. Who would leave the door open for any old hobo clown or stoned Cujo?
Her half deaf dad would not hear her pounding, anyways. Of course Amy's and Teresa's doors were not open up to her. They might as well be deaf too.
Even if they did open up to her, the other doors, the little doors, those will never open. Like, maybe, if you know someone forever and ever they'll open up doors, drawers, and even secret floorboards. But still, you can go inside the four walls and see the furniture but you can't come through the door and know what made each stain, who picked out the colours on the walls and how proud of them they may be, or which chairleg Anthony stubbed his toe on, making a crack that he hears and his mind whenever he thinks about bones or breaking, or toes or whatever.
There are some doors, like, Jerry-the-mouse small that people will look at and think "why are you showing me this? I can't fit in here, we're too big.” They'd look at you like you just tried to explain the opposite of the word trapped (but not its opposite).
If they even stepped in, how do you give that tour?
“Come in! Come in! this is my pool filter, there are the flowers my cousin told me were scared and dying in that pool filter. Here is the singer of the drowned bee I grabbed by accident while trying to rescue those poor, suffering, flowers. Here is the Tupperware I kept a tiny lizard I found stuck in the pool filter, alive, and decided to keep as a pet, to protect him from scary dark nights and birds and pool filters. Here is the crispy dead lizard I found in the Tupperware a few hours after I put it in the sun, because I thought it needed warmth. Here is the image of a tiny lizard; afraid, baking to death in a Tupperware, thinking,’I don't want to die’ in whatever way a lizard can perceive it's will to live. Here is the straight-to-VHS cartoon movie I watched on repeat so I could burn the image of that lizard out of my six-year-old mind.”

Nobody would say, “thank you for sharing this with me let's have a chat about crispy lizards over cheese and crackers."

Tammy knew no one would.
So she waited in the hallway until her dad woke up.