Wedlock

The door was ajar to a pokey room

All gloomy and morbid inside,

It gave off an air of despair and gloom

Not joyful, befitting a bride,

The couple arrived as I wandered by,

But she with her eyes on the ground,

While he simply glared as we passed on the stair

As if to say, ‘See what I found!’

I wasn’t that curious back in the day

For couples, they came and they went,

Those pokey apartments so full of decay,

They’d be better off in a tent.

But these two had stayed there much longer than most,

She rarely came out in the light,

And he placed a padlock from door to the doorpost,

Whenever he left in the night.

Whenever he left, and he certainly did,

He’d leave her in there on her own,

Though where he would go, I now think that he hid

For sometimes I heard the girl moan.

I’d feel the floor shudder, and hear the walls creak

While out in the hall it would whine,

And I would go searching, like hide and go seek

To be sure it was nothing of mine.

One night with a rumble behind their front door

I heard someone dragging a case,

That terrible screech on the lino, at least

In that something was dragged out of place,

Could that be a trunk, was he doing a bunk

With her body to sink off the coast?

I called in the cops as I thought she was lost

And they blocked the door off, he was toast.

They opened the trunk, took the padlock away

And that’s where she was, true enough,

When they questioned him why she was locked up inside 

‘She’s a penchant for travelling rough.’

They said did she mind and to this she replied

The woman, whose first name was Joyce,

‘He showed me the padlock and said it was wedlock,

I thought that I had little choice.’

David Lewis Paget

Reviews

[M. L. F.]

Wow, this one was creeeeeepy David! I like creepy as a horror genre woman, but this one sends a real shiver. Nice twisty ending.. :)

[Jane Winters Rogers]

Oh naive young Joyce with a dominant " man in a "man's world " where she had little say..... seems like she was only his .....arm candy..... I am glad she was released.... at last a good ending.!!

[Einstein Noodle]

wow! you got me hook line and sinker .. i expected your penchant for humor to give me a chuckle ... tragic the amount and kinds of locks women suffer at the hands of some ruffian buffoon ... more serious fair you have offered us :)
E.

[Barbz]

Wedlock.....a lot different from my definition of wedded bliss!! LOL, those were the days, for sure, before the woman's liberation movement. Hah, quite a honeymoon suite that "pokey" apartment so full of decay, and a groom with night flights. Oh, poor Joyce who seemed to be headed, locked in a trunk, perhaps for a dunk....and my favorite line, when he was questioned by the cops as to why she was so confined, "She's a penchant for travelling rough" Oh, David, your character really got my dander up.......I'd show him CHOICE!! But I was truly amused......Barbz

[ANTO]

I bet he was a coxswain with a h-u-g-e Ball and chain.

This gave me the chuckles David - you led us alll down the garden path with this one. lol
Very good - Happy Saint Davids Day my Welsh brother.