She woke slowly, almost lazily and opened her eyes. At least she thought she did. She blinked and still the darkness closed in on her. Her head pounded heavily with a nasty ache that started at the top of her spine. She tried to bring her hand to her face and discovered that it wouldn't move. Quickly, on the edge of panic she tried to move the other hand and discovered it too seemed stuck. Her muscles worked, she could feel her fingers flex and her wrists twist, but the space around her was too tight for her to be able to do much more than that. Suddenly she was scared. Where was she? Why was the space so small? How did she get in here? She tried to talk but all that come out was a low moan and that frightened her all the more. She screamed.

She had no idea how long she screamed for. Sweat had drenched her body and as it had run down her legs and arms she had imagined tiny spiders running all over her and at that point she had become hysterical, a tiny switch had tripped inside her head and she had lost herself completely until the darkness swallowed her up.

When she came aware again, her throat was dry and sore. She could now only make a raspy pathetic sound that scared her again. This time she fought for control and managed to keep it for now. The smell of urine filled the air and she realised with horror that she had wet herself. She hated the smell, just hated it. She knew what it always reminded her of and she didn't want to think about it in here, in the dark but she couldn't stop it from happening again.

Suddenly she was four again, playing on the orange mat in her brother's room. She was playing with her Mr Potato Head, the one she got for her birthday. She had kept all the pieces in the box. Mustn't let them spill on the floor. Mummy didn't like a mess. She heard a sound at the doorway and looked up to see her mummy standing there. She smiled, but mummy didn't smile back. This worried the little girl. Then she saw the strap in mummy's hand. She stood really quickly, the fear in her obvious.

'Get undressed' mummy said.

Her fear turned to terror and a part of her registered the warmth running down her leg. She watched, fascinated and horrified at the way her urine pooled at her feet before it soaked into the mat.

She looked at her mother, trembling, knowing that she had committed an awful crime.

'I am sorry mummyyyyyy.' The last word had risen in pitch as her mother had flown across the room at her and started tearing at the clothes on her.

'You dirty dirty girl. You naughty, evil girl. I wish you hadn't been born.' When she was naked her mother had punctuated each of the words with a stroke of the strap, again and again and she had curled herself over her own wee and protected her head while her mother went to work on her back and bottom.

She pleaded at first, 'Please mummy, I will be a good girl, please mummy please.' But eventually she fell into a whimpering much like the sound she was making now.

She shook her head vigorously to chase away the memories that tormented her. Pain shot across her brain and she moaned softly. She was six now, a big girl, and mummy didn't hit her with the strap any more.

She needed to think clearly. She closed her eyes tightly so that sparks of light shot out of the darkness and tried to remember what had happened. She had been playing outside with the dog. It was her sister's dog, a silly old Dalmatian called Lady. Lady had been playing rough and she remembered her mother telling her that the dog would hurt her. She had listened to her mum and kept playing with Lady anyway.

She remembered the dog running toward her really fast and knocking the feet out from underneath her. She remembered the pain in her head as she hit the ground and the sky looking really blue but there was nothing after that.

'Mummy?' she whispered to the darkness. 'I promise to be good now. I wont be the naughty girl anymore.'

She heard the snap of a switch and small pieces of light found its way around a door she could now make out. The door opened and her mother stood over her.

'Oh baby girl, what are you doing in there?'

The little girl started crying again as her mother lifted her out of the locker that her father had left lying on the garage floor. Her mother covered her in kisses and she was happy to be saved. Mummy opened the garage door and took her inside the house for a nice warm bath and gave her some biscuits and warm milk, cooing and gurgling to her little girl the whole time.

It wasn't until much later that the little girl remembered that she didn't know how she had gotten into the locker. It wasn't until later that she wondered how she had managed to shut the lid. She wondered when she had taken off her clothes and she wondered why she had gone to the garage in the dark. She wondered why her mother never told anyone what she had done. She thought about it for a long and quiet time. And when she had thought about it enough, she put it in a place with other things she didn't like to think.

She loved her mother very much.