Author’s note: This piece was written for Sandie Dapoz, she of the mythical ‘zine Queen’s Knight 2 fame.

The Last Closet

©2001 by Kayla Rigney

She stood in front of the Last Closet, almost afraid to open the door. It wasn't as if what lay beyond was any great mystery (it was, after all, her closet); but it contained bits and pieces of a life lived.

There were people she knew who didn't bother to live, and as a result, their closets were never full.

She knew, to the exact dust bunny, what was inside that Last Closet. She also knew what she wanted to be there. She had a list:

Children of Paradise, restored, on DVD.

The gray matter ripped from her brain by a drunk driver nineteen years, five months four days and two hours ago.

The Loew's Delman

That diamond ring she accidentally flushed down the toilet

Abby, the Scottie Dog who taught her to love ghost railroads

All of Harry Nilsson's unreleased music

Guilty Pleasures -- like Buckaroo Banzai and Lathe of Heaven

Tulsa, Oklahoma

The Honky Dreds

"Far Beyond the Stars"

That one perfect performance of "A Christmas Carol"

And finally, although she already had a copy, a First Edition of Jack Finney's Time and Again simply because... It's not really a novel.

Other people set great store in the Last Closet; but she knew the truth.

The Last Closet inevitably holds those once-treasured pieces of life that get left by the

wayside to make room for reality.