(A mini-exercise in writing a setting with a character)
Aaron reached for the door to his daughter's room, his hand trembling to balance unseen weight as it passed through some repelling force radiating from the knob. The more he willed himself to turn the handle, the stronger the door pushed back, like a sentry barring access to some forbidden world. Over past weeks, Aaron attempted this same maneuver, only to abandon the act before the door creaked open, retiring each time to his bed, armed with a sleeping pill and premature darkness from fully drawn shades, subsequently waking a half-day later, a bit less shackled in his heart than the day prior. This time, after the handle turned, the door relented and gently eased its grip, gradually dissolving into view a perfectly preserved moment in time, one that Aaron began to revive with little fragments of his brittle soul.
On the ground to his right, lay Jordan's favorite Halloween costume, with its ornamented tiara, pair of angelic wings, and a matching wand that was broken from too much roleplay. He stepped into the room and to the side of this hallowed spot, looking upward and scanning the mirrored door of a closet as it reflected back the full view of a lost world that ached to be reunited, once more, with the present. Aaron lightly brushed his hands across a small cluster of fingerprints on the mirror, vestiges of a precious life once residing in this space, a life that he could almost see forming anew in a vapor of light and shadow behind him – or perhaps it was just sun rays undulating through guarding limbs outside the open window. He closed his eyes, drawing a temporary curtain on this dizzying outer world so he could regain a foothold on the inner one of his memories -– the world he most trusted.
After some moments, he blotted his eyes and studied the area of the room to his left, as he took a deep breath to gird himself against waves of longing. On a particleboard computer desk that functioned as Jordan's entertainment center -- her hub of involvement with life -- lay schoolwork papers gently rustling in a light breeze; a bottle of perfume and a half-eaten bowl of grapes, both giving a faint but competing scent to the room; and an unexpected treasure -- her writing journal -- which he carefully lifted like a precious find of archeology and nestled under his arm. This was something he valued more than any photograph, as it preserved her internal world of thoughts and feelings, speaking to him from the past, yet consoling him as if in the present.
Further across the room, scattered on the floor and on top of an unmade bed, were various dolls, stuffed animals, and scrapbook drawings, all frozen with an air of expectation and hope for the eventual return of their friend that had blessed this room with light, and given them life. But it was the far corner, suffused with near-dusk rays, that added so much weight to Aaron's heart, and which was no doubt the mystical source that both rebuffed and compelled him these past three weeks. There in the corner resided an altar of Jordan's unfulfilled dreams: her acoustic guitar canted listlessly to its side, and her little karaoke machine and microphone.
Aaron could hold back no longer, and with weakened legs, settled to the floor and wept.