Alkali

No, we put it in a box, put a twelve-tied chain around the box, put the chained box in a barrel sealed with wax and dragon’s blood, then threw the box into the ocean where it sunk to the bottom of the sea. If we wanted it back we’d have to fish it out, break the blood seal, open the barrel, unwrap the chain twelve times, untie the chain, unlock the chain, then open the box.

Yeah, it was too little. We took it back up and started over. We put it in a jar, we put the jar in a box, we wrapped a chain around the box twelve times, we tied the chain to itself, we put a lock on the chain, we took another chain and wrapped it around and across the chain’s links, we were confident that if struggles came up we could handle them with the same knowledge we had now but later, we daubed mud on the chain until it gunked the links, we poured cement on the box until it was a hardened cement block, we poured molten sand over the block until a case of glass surrounded it, we wrapped the case in paper, we coated the paper with wax, we covered the wax with wood planks, we covered the wood planks with knots and triangles of paper, we encapsulated the paper with a coffin of beaten metal, we stabbed the coffin’s door to the bundle inside using seven needle-thin rapiers, we melted the rapier’s handles to a iron bar that circled the coffin, we attached a long chain to the coffin, we tied a large raw lead ore to the chain and dropped the raw ore to the bottom of the ocean, and the coffin with it, we covered both objects with a featureless metal dome inlaid with osmium, the heaviest metal.

We scraped at the dome from both sides until we could shift it along the bottom, then swam under and dug a hole small enough for us to squeeze through and lift the dome using a extendable pole and a chemical reaction. Then we melted the chain with a blowtorch, and hugged the coffin and pulled it slowly and lead-weightedly up to the surface with our bare strength. On land we took a large hammer and chisel and smashed the arc bar and used the points attached to the case as weak points to knock it open, destroyed. We burned the paper and the wood and the wax and the paper, and for the smoky stained glass underneath we got far away and dropped a heavy spike on it, shattering it and sending broken glass all around. After covering the ground with cement over the glass we burned and cracked the cement, then poured metal-eating acid on the muddied chain and water to wash away the mud. We unwrapped the chain until we hit the other chain, which we meticulously unwrapped, once, twice, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, and pulled it off in a mostly untangled loop. The box we opened, humidity and damp and its long closure making it stick. Then we unscrewed the jar. And the lock was.

So.

It’s time to lock it again. This time, I’ll make it harder for me. Tied around it paper and string, the string wrapped so many times it looks like a ball of twine. Soaked in cement until it’s a hard ball, cast with another shell of bronze. A layer of gold, lead, until the pressure on the middle must melt it. Surrounded with cloth soaked with poison that paralyzes to the touch. Bound with words hand and foot, so that one must untie themselves before untying it. Ghost dust spread on it so most things pass through, made part ghost. Scattering of confetti for fun. Industrial strength glue spread over it, then industrial strength steel welded to it. A large, featureless ball. Sent rolling. Oh, there it goes, gathering speed on its own, till it chases the hills faster than the sun crosses the sky.

We ran up to the ball. When that didn’t work we flew up to the ball, struck it until it rolled sideways into a ditch. Hit the ball with a peal of thunder so loud that weakened its structural supports, shattered it with another blow. Hm. Now there were some metal shards stuck into it as well as scattered around it. The ghost dust, a slow removal, touch by touch, spread into the grass and the grass became translucent, the river and the river flowed into the earth. The words were as annoying as usual. A slow, meticulous process that made it very, very easy to give up and do something else. A slight unraveling, another unraveling. A match held in one hand, lit up, trying not to drop it on your own fingers. Trying to keep going, despite its annoyances… pull, extra hard, pull until it yanks against your wrist and your wrist yanks against it until it’s pulled up and you’re freed. The words break apart like bread in milk. The cloth… burning would send poisonous fumes up, so all there is to do is to wait… and wait… … and… … well, it’s changing color in contact with air. The precious metals inside are delicious to the metal-eating dragons that consume it as a human would with a giant wheel of cheese. The lead is for the poison-eating dragons. Bronze… a great platform is built over a fire, and the bronze melts off like color from dye. The cement cracks under the heat. The outer layers of twine go with it; the inner ones burn until all that’s left is a charred package of paper. And the lock was.

I am annoyed and there’s no need to easily reopen this. I will shut it and it will close and it will be made difficult to open again. Everything will be removed. It is the locks before with their keyholes erased into metal. It is the journey, finished, but with no end. It is the bottom of the sea. It is dust on the mind, and a forgetting of drowning, and the gentleness of a pillar stabbed through the body. There is no way to open a lock that has no way to open. A bare, fused piece of metal. The metal where a hole never existed. A hole that never existed. Metal, that was never a hole and never a lock, and in that case, did that ever really exist?