Locked inside

Photo by Nino Barbieri on Wikimedia Commons

George was locked inside his own head.

He couldn't get out. He didn't want to get out. He was quite comfortable, locked inside his own head.

The inside of his head felt safe and secure. Everything inside his head was familiar. Outside his head the world looked scary and unpredictable.

And so George sat there alone with his own thoughts, playing games inside his mind. He never played with the other children, even when they asked him. He was comfortable on his own, free to be himself, inside his own mind. Inside George's head, everything was possible, there was no-one to tell him what to do, and no-one could make him feel sad.

The other children looked at George and were curious. They tried to talk to him, but George said nothing. He wouldn't even look at them. They tried to get him to play with them, but George just sat there, staring ahead. In the end, the other children got bored with George. Then they called him names. Then they ran away laughing. They left George alone, locked inside his own head.

George was always alone with his own thoughts.

One day, George began to wonder what it might be like to escape from his own head. He imagined what it would be like to unlock the door in his mind and go outside. But he couldn't. It was scary outside his head, and he began to get anxious about leaving his safe place. So he stayed locked up inside. All around him, the children played and laughed and danced, and ran. And George just sat there, staring ahead, and locked inside his own head.

Until, one day, Maisie came along.

She looked at him and wondered what George was thinking. But George just sat there, staring ahead.

So Maisie gently touched his hand. George looked down, and then he looked at her. She had a nice face, he thought. George smiled, and suddenly the lock in the door inside his head began to turn. It opened and the light streamed in, and George didn't feel unsafe any more. In fact he was happy. His smile began to widen.

He jumped up, and soon he and Maisie were running around, laughing and playing together. As they ran between the trees and through the long grass together, he thought 'this is fun!'

Maisie agreed, and her tail wagged with joy.



Locked inside by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.