Within my 33rd hour of being 33 years old, my sister hung up on me in a fit of exasperation. If you have a sister you know what I’m talking about; it’s ever the requisite drama. Next week, next phase of the moon, next whiff of old money in her shop wearing a skirt and a Black American Express card and she’ll have forgotten the whole thing. I get to be the elephant who files these moments by color in a war-era cabinet full of squeaky drawers I am forced to open again and again each time I sit down to a blank document in my lap and my cold fingers on the keyboard.

Sam has her own well-dusted memories, the ones she’s shadow-box framed like trophies on her mental mantel, evidence that the machines of the universe are in some serious debt to her lifetime of martyrdom. One of her favorites is the one she tells about how I would shut her in the closet when we were kids. Yes, that was me: Evil Sister Dearest with red eyes and flaming hair, Abuser and Scourge of the Universe.

Over time, obviously, I’ve learned that it’s simply easier to embrace the title than it is to deny it. Past, present, and future are all at the mercy of perception; given the exact same circumstances, two different people will look forward to, live through, and look back on two unique experiences. I, in my short life, simply elect not to partake in the stress of fighting it.

That doesn’t mean that I choose to forget the issue entirely. On the contrary, as a writer, I feel obliged–nay, compelled–to pick apart the motivation and understanding, the cause and effect. I examine each impressionist paint blotch with my mental magnifying glass, and then step back to see how it all melts into the bigger picture.

First, let’s examine the validity of the claim, shall we? We grew up in two houses in South Carolina, the first of which I spent the majority of the time in hiding under my bed (the wide headboard of which provided a lovely cave in which to escape from the world) and reading Archie digest comics into the wee hours. It was a typical seventies starter home, with a phone number only one digit different from the local K-Mart, and considerably lacking in any space sufficient enough to have been the scene of my crimes.

I was nine years old when we moved into the Charleston-style brick behemoth at the end of a cul-de-sac where we spent our formative years. There was enough space between the ballroom and attic to keep my mother cleaning constantly for sixteen years. And there were closets aplenty: sliding doors concealing wardrobes and washing machines and bags full of the junk that I stashed away every time I “cleaned” my room, shelves cram-packed with books and Barbie dolls. Only one closet met the qualifications for a Pesky Sister Penitentiary: the walk-in at the top of the stairs that rivals my current double-wide cubicle office for square footage.

Not exactly the claustrophobic hovel she makes it out to be.

Now, let’s think about locks on closet doors. There were no deadbolts inside our house, only the requisite regulation residential push-button or twist locks. Nobody puts the lock on the outside of the closet door–why would they? It makes sense to use a twist lock on the inside in case someone takes it upon themselves to actually wear the clothes in said closet and doesn’t enjoy the idea being disturbed in their dishabille. (It couldn’t be a push-button, or the owner would always be always unintentionally locking themselves out. I know I would.) But no one except scary Furies-in-Training actually uses closets to shut people in.

This means that every time I tortured my sister, it wasn’t something I could casually walk away from; it took both time and effort. It took strength to keep bracing myself against the tempest behind that raging door and, ironically, for the duration of her unwilling imprisonment, Sam had my full, undivided attention.

For my part, shutting my sister in a closet was completely logical, humane, and the least of any other possible teenage evil. Any trouble I might have gotten in would be about contributing to the tearing of hinges and not about cutting all her hair off or punching her lights out, both of which surely would have carried a harsher penalty. I could also be assured, for those all-too-brief moments, that I had boxed up my troubles, and I could live in some sort of twisted peace.

When Sam hung up on me, I was only stunned for a second before I laughed. I thought about her widely-publicized traumatic childhood, and my role in same. I thought about the famous closet story. And then I had an epiphany.

Closet or bathroom or bedroom; every opportunity I found to put a door between myself and the rest of the world, I did. Once I grew too big to seek sanctuary under my bed, I had to find another way to deny the big scary world outside my windows. In my room then, in my house now, I am Queen. I can control what I let in and what–most importantly–stays out, both physically and mentally.

But life is a fickle thing: the more of it we choose to live, the more monsters we find in the shadows behind us, sniffing our trail as we walk our path of life. I’m a lot bigger than most of these guys, no higher than my knee–including their horns–and drooling acid in my footprints. It’s the big ones we run from, the ones with the gnashing teeth, the stench of death, and the faces like mirrors. We can trick them into mental closets, brace our feet against the opposite wall, and push back against a force that makes Hurricane Sam feel like a summer breeze. The closets in our mind don’t have deadbolts either, so in order to keep those monsters imprisoned we must focus on them, give them all of our attention. And, eventually, we wonder if we’re really living at all.

As a writer, it is my duty to throw open those doors and set the shadows free, be they boogey-beasties with forty-inch fangs, or hormonal women with thousand-dollar works of art. A life unlived is a life not learned from, and I am ever the note-taking student. I choose to live, and all the mess that entails, until the monsters become nothing more than whispers on the wind and phone calls slammed into the cradle and shadows that fade with the dawn.

My blank document no longer worthy of the adjective, I can put on my hat and walk out into the sun. I’ll leave the mobile on for when Sam calls back.

Undoubtedly, my mother is reading this right now and having an epiphany of her own as to why the doors of her house were always falling apart. I can only hope she compares the ACE Hardware receipts of the nineties to potential hospital, salon, and psychiatric bills and decides that in the grand scheme, she’s come out ahead.

Alethea Kontis’s first publication was her essay in Apex Digest issue #3. She is now the author of AlphaOops: The Day Z Went First and the official Sherrilyn Kenyon Dark-Hunter Companion, as well as co-editor of the SF all-star anthology Elemental. Find out more about Alethea’s own plans for world domination on her website: www.aletheakontis.com.

In June 2008, Apex Publications released a collection of essays and memoirs from Alethea titled Beauty & Dynamite that includes contributions from Brian Keene, Tom Piccirilli, and John Ringo.

Beauty & Dynamite can be bought in the Apex Shop or along with the rest of Alethea’s books in the Apex aStore.