Picking, making, forging, designing. All he knew was locks.

Picking a lock was simple for Robert, it was what he grew up doing. The hard part of his job (his obsession) was creating them. He was talented at it, true. More talented than any man he knew. The problem was that picking had become magnificintly easy for theives in the past ten years. The problem was that creating locks was harder when one felt the pressure to create one that was impossible to pick.

Robert grew up in the Black Country, where the sky was only but a myth. It had dissapeared years ago when the mining of coal and iron began. He was born in Bilston and soon after moved to Coseley where the scenery didn't change. Collapsed buildings and mineshfts littered the landscape along with slag heaps of the tailings from the coal and iron. This wasn't a pretty place to call your childhood, but his father was a master locksmith and the Black Country was the place to live as one. Robert eventually began his own life in the trade as well and soon was exceeding his father. By the time he was the best locksmith the Black Country had ever known, he decided to move to London. London, where the women were more eager, the men, greedier and the money attainable. Especially for a locksmith who could pick anything he saw.

London was where he met Claira. The pretty little thing that waited for him every Sunday to open her door. She'd smile her pretty little smile and twirl her pretty little hair and Robert would fall into infatuation time and time again. He knew what she was, however, and because of this, he knew he could never love her.

The secret of Claira leaked out into the streets of London first as a whisper then grew to an outcry. She was a protitute. One of England's finest. Men with wealth would spend their savings just for a few nights of pleasure and men with little would scrounge with all their might in order to make enough for just one touch.

Robert would see her sometimes while he walked down the streets. It seemed strange to him to him that such a highly regarded whore would still have to walk in order to gain customers, but there she was. She would smile and twirl and Robert would remeber what he knew.

He knew locks.

Picking, making, forging designing. All he knew was locks.

He didn't know women. He didn't know love. He didn't know kissing and he didn't know sex.

Sometimes he would think a woman's heart was somewhat like and lock and he'd be able to pick his way inside. This is when he realized that God himself had created what he had always wished he could. A lock that couldn't be picked. This was the lock that kept and female from loving him.

rewind : play : fast-foward