Ever since I was a small child, I was afraid of deep water. My father, scumbag that he was, brought me on a fishing trip one week. He believed being exposed to it would cure me of my, and forgive me, but this is what he said, “faggotry”.

He dragged me onto a rental boat, a dingy little thing, with a tiny cabin, and locked me there. I still remember the smell of old wood, wet with salt water that penetrated deep into my nostrils after I screamed myself hoarse, yelling at him to let me go.

He set sail and put us above deep water, few miles from shore, and only then he unlocked the door. I was scared, terrified, by the deep blue waves all around, so he dragged me out by my hair onto the deck.

“Either you calm the fuck down, or I throw you overboard,” he said.

Damn the man, it actually worked. After the first few hours, I stopped thinking about the depth beneath us, and by the end of the week I overcame my fear.

My father passed away several years back, alone and unloved, as he deserved, yet I still remember how he helped me overcome the phobia.

Now my Jacob, he is like me, but his fear is the closet in his room.

It’s an antique, already stood there when we moved in, smells like rust and dust, but only when the doors are opened, and has varnish peeling off of it. Holds clothes just the same as a new “eikeia” wardrobe.

Jacob always ran to my room, went to my bed and begged me to stay there, not to leave him alone with it.

The closet, it has a lock on the outside, with a long, iron key sticking out of it.

I got an old bottle of brandy from a sailor friend of mine a week ago, as a gift. Good brand, aged in oak. Smelled like smoke. Cracked it open. Drank a lot. Way too much. Almost the entire bottle. And then I started thinking. Dark thoughts, all dark. I was always a sad drunk, even before. And when Jacob came, snot running down his face, yelling about the closet…

It was a battle. Stuffing him in there, I mean. I hit him. Several times. But he kept on fighting me, biting, scratching and yelling. Really didn’t want to go in. It reeked horribly when he wet his pants out of fear.

I pushed him in, and quickly shut the doors. Turned the long, iron key. I locked him there. Inside of his worst fear.

I went to bed. Drunk the rest of the bottle. Went to sleep. I was going to let him out in the morning. He would yell at me, maybe fight me again, maybe he would hate me for it, but I didn’t care. I just. Fell asleep, dreamed of the deep.

I… God. Forgive me.

I never knew the closet is airtight.