The Key
One suitcase and three cardboard boxes.That was all that was left after twenty-five years of marriage. A perfect epitaph for the end of something that had once pretended to be love.
Now Adrian was trying to start over in an apartment that always smelled like mothballs. Calling that cramped little hole anapartmentwas being generous; something he didn’t deserve.
Among the few pieces of furniture that came with the place, the old TV ruled the room, humming endlessly. It was the only thing he’d managed to carry out of his old life.
In the weeks after the divorce, the place began to take on Adrian’s personality or maybe his decay. It smelled exactly like the picture she’d painted of him in court, a picture that kept echoing in his head like a curse:“A pathetic drunk, useless, who wasted twenty years of my life.”She’d said it all right there, in front of the judge, with a smile of relief as she signed the papers.
At fifty-seven, Adrian’s world had shrunk to the size of that miserable little room. He was alone, at the tail end of his life, with nothing left but a dull routine: a job that barely covered the bills and long, silent nights in front of the TV. Not even a cat for company.
“That woman wasn’t even good enough to give me a child,”he thought.“I could die right here and no one would notice.”He tried to calculate how many days it would take for someone to find his body, but gave up halfway through and took a long sip from the whiskey bottle perched on top of the TV.
The divorce had hit him like a brick, but the pain had long since faded into numbness. He no longer cared about the piles of dirty dishes, the bills collecting dust on the table, or the phone that never rang. This was his stage now: a slow, quiet rot he’d agreed to take part in.
One night, just like any other, Adrian was half-listening to some obnoxious talk show blaring from the TV when he started digging through the drawer of the side table next to the couch, looking for a lighter. His fingers brushed against something familiar.
When he looked closely at the small object, he recognized it: the button from the dark green blazer he’d worn on the day of the divorce. The same blazer he’d sworn to fix, to look whole, successful, to prove to everyone, maybe even to himself, that he could live just fine without his wife. Of course, the button was never sewn back on. He’d shown up at the courthouse with both his blazer and his soul hanging by a thread. Disheveled, unshaven, underfed. The look of satisfaction on that viper’s face when she saw him like that. He’d never forget it.
“Your Honor,”the echo of her voice still rang sharp and cold in his head.“I ask for nothing but my freedom. Twenty-five years in this prison of a marriage... I just want him out of my life.”
“That opportunist...”Adrian muttered, tossing the button against the wall.“If it was that bad, why did she wait so long to throw me out?”
Lost in a storm of anger and self-pity, drowning again in thoughts of her ingratitude, he kept rummaging through the drawer, still looking for that damned lighter. When his fingers brushed against something metallic and cold. All thoughts vanished.
A key.
Cold, heavy, almost the size of his hand. Forged from some dark, gleaming metal, etched with intricate, delicate patterns that spiraled like tiny vines. It looked expensive.
“Another one of those useless trinkets she used to collect,”he muttered, thinking of his ex-wife and her endless supply of tasteless decorations.“Probably tossed it into one of my boxes, just like she tossed me out with the rest of the junk she didn’t want.”
Under the weak light of the bedside lamp, he studied the metal’s surface. The patterns were too fine, too deliberate. It couldn’t be hers. If it were, it would’ve come wrapped in bad taste and cheap drama. But... where could it be from?
He squinted, bringing it closer to the light, trying to see the engravings more clearly. As his fingers tightened around the key, he felt something inside himclick, like a mechanism snapping into place. It was as if some deep part of him suddenly remembered. Every fiber of his being seemed toknowthis wasn’t just any key. This wasThe Key.Not to any door.TheDoor. The one that keeps the things outside.
“You shouldn’t have found this.”
The voice spoke inside his head, intimate and distant at once. It could’ve been his conscience, if he still had one.
Trying to shake it off, he laughed in a dry, awkward sound while rubbed his thumb over the key, pretending not to care. His eyes followed the patterns again, searching for a hint of familiarity in the strange object.
“And why not?”he asked aloud, to the emptiness of the room.
No one answered.
Trying to cling to some shred of reason, Adrian wondered what difference it would make if the key actually opened something.
“The Key that opens The Door... guess the whiskey’s embalmed my brain for good,”he said, laughing out loud, just to drown out the voices in his head.
If he was lucky, whatever the key opened probably didn’t even exist anymore. Still, it was too beautiful to be left forgotten in a drawer. He’d hang it on the wall: a showpiece for the friends. The thought made him laugh again. He didn’t have friends anymore. All that was left were scraps, crumbs of a life he barely recognized as his own.
“Alone, and an extra in my own story,”he muttered, taking a long swig from the whiskey bottle, ignoring the sharp burn of the fumes. At least the drink never left him.
He tossed the key onto one of the boxes in the corner of the room, planning to hang it on the wall tomorrow. For now, it was time to drink himself numb and pass out on the couch under the ghostly light of the TV. On the screen, some movie played; a meaningless noise to rock him to sleep.
He found the lighter in his pants pocket, lit the stub of a cigarette forgotten on the couch, took a drag, and lay back, trying not to think about anything at all.
The dark metal of the key caught his eye again, glinting faintly.
“What kind of metal is that? And why is it so heavy?“, a last flicker of lucidity before the alcohol pulled him under.
In his feverish dream, the key was in his hands again. The cold of the metal felttoo realto be just a dream.
The key dragged him through empty streets, toward the city center. There stood the old telephone company Building, tall and crumbling, fenced off with rusted wire. In the basement, a blood-red door pulsed in sync with his heartbeat.
Then came a scream: a thousand torn voices in unison before everything vanished into a black screen:
“COME.”
His body jolted awake. Cold sweat clung to his shirt.
The TV was still playing the same movie. The clock on the table said maybe thirty minutes had passed.
"Drunk dream,”he muttered.“Just my brain fishing garbage off the screen.”
On the TV, a sad girl and her dog. Nothing, absolutely nothing, that could’ve birthed that nightmare.
Adrian tried to settle back down, to slip into sleep again, but the word still echoed in his chest, reverberating through his bones.
“COME.”
Conveniently, the whiskey bottle was empty. Since the divorce, he couldn’t sleep without it. He’d have to walk to the 7-eleven market up the street.
Maybe he’d walk a little farther. Maybe all the way downtown. It wouldn’t hurt to take a look. Just to be sure. He’d bring a flashlight, just in case.
He was trembling. Not from withdrawal, but from the dark anticipation that had taken hold of his body.
