Short Story / Key
You find a key on the floor of an old house. You find it under the sink in the bathroom, while you’re unpacking your shampoos and body soaps. It’s brass and looks as though it has spent time in a leaking basement. You have a basement in your new house, so you take it down stairs to see if you can find something it fits to. The basement is small and smells like old books and dirty laundry. After you replace the dead light bulb that hangs from the low ceiling, you inspect your surroundings. There’s a door in the corner that looks like it might lead under the house. You try to open the door, smearing your hands with dust and grime. It seems locked, but there’s no place to try to fit the key, no key hole. At a dead end, you put the key in your pocket and head back to the bathroom to finish your unpacking.
The key ends up in the bottom of your washer as you forgot to take it out of your pants before they were washed. Your significant other finds it, fishes it out and puts it into their pocket. They think it’s either theirs or can be given back to you when they remember it later. It ends up following them to the bar that night, forgotten about at dinner conversation. In a drunken moment, they reach into their pocket, looking for quarters for the pool table. They find the key and discards it on the table, where it is left with a receipt from lunch and a few pennies.
Early that morning, the waitress clears off the table and finds the key along with the change. She puts it into her apron with her tips, without realizing what it was. Later she finds it and is puzzled by it’s presence. She can’t remember where she picked it up. She wonders if it belonged to her ex-boyfriend whom she just broke up with three nights before. She thinks it must have been one of his house keys that she forgot to give back. She decides to take it to him, along with his copy of “Farris Buhler’s day off.” A good movie, she thinks, but not worth keeping.
She goes to his house with the movie and the key, but he’s not home. She decides to leave the things on his door step, not wanting to use the key to go inside, not knowing she wouldn’t have been able to, even if she had wanted. She leaves and is done with the past, as it were.
A few hours later, a teenage girl walks past the house and notices something on the door mat. She doesn’t know who lives in this house, but she’s young and looking for something to fill up her hours. She finds the movie and decides she might be able to sell it for a few bucks at the local pawn shop. She finds the key, glances around for witnesses, then shoves it into her bra.
After going to the pawn shop and getting four dollars for the movie, she goes home and tells a friend of hers what she’s found. She says the key is obviously the key to the front door of this grand, expensive house. She says she wants to go back tonight and rob the place, and would her friend like to come? Her friend agrees and they met up at midnight by the corner store. When they get to the house, it seems that no one is home. They go up to the door and try the key. It doesn’t fit, because of course, it’s from under your sink and never belonged to the waitress’s ex-boyfriend. In frustration, they brake a window and climb inside. The ex-boyfriend happens to be a paranoid drug dealer with an alarm system. A silent buzzer is sounded and the cops arrive at the house to find the two friends with their arms full of treasures. They are both sent to prison. The key is left in the DA’s office for the next twelve years. The young girl got extra time for stabbing a fellow thief with a knife she made from bobby pins.
Upon her release, the girl is given back her things. The key goes into her pocket this time instead of her bra. She moves into a halfway house where the key is promptly lost in the house’s community couch.
A year later, a new resident pulls out the hid-a-bed in the community living room. This is his first night as a free man in over ten years. The key bounces on his foot. He picks it up and smiles at it, as though it were an old friend. The next day, he goes to see an old friend who once had been a lock smith. His friend looks at the key and tells him when it was made, what kind of lock it fits, how the lock works and who sold that type of lock when it was new. With this information, the man goes to the public archives and finds local addresses of houses that were built during that time. He finds a few residential areas containing ten to twenty houses each that fit that time period and money bracket. Then he goes for a walk.
He walks down Washington street and up Lombard street. He passes Stevens street but then heads up Richardson avenue, towards your house. Along the way, he notices what cars are parked in front of what houses. He looks to see who has dogs and who has big bay windows. He checks to see if a few of the houses are unlocked. He checks yours, and walks in.
The house is quiet because you’re out running errands with your grandson. He looks around and sees that the house is well lived in. Pictures and knickknacks clutter your book shelves and tables. Someone has left their cell phone on the coffee table. He picks it up and looks at the back drop picture. He smiles and puts the phone in his pocket. It clinks against the key and reminds him of what brought him here. He looks at the key again, turning it over and over again. He tries the lock on the front door, but it’s not a fit. He goes to the back of the house and looks at the lock there, but it’s brand new and would never accept such an old key.
Then he notices the door to the basement and takes the stairs down. He clicks on the light that hangs from the low ceiling. The place is packed with boxes that haven’t been disturbed in ten years or more. He looks around and sees a door on the far wall. He moves a few boxes and makes his way to it. He puts his hand on the knob, but it won’t turn. He looks for a key hole, but finds none. Frustrated, he kicks one of your boxes of old sweaters. The box cracks and moves, sending dust everywhere. The man kicks another and more dust, more clothes. He kicks a third and finds that it’s filled with books and he groans in pain. He bends down to rub his discomforted foot. His hand brushes against something on the floor. A hinge.
He follows the edge of the hinge with his finger and finds another hinge farther down the same board. He moves some boxes and reveals a door inlayed into the floor. He works his fingers between the boards and opens it. There, beneath your basement floor, is a set of stairs that you have never seen. The man walks down them, the first person to breath this stale air in over a hundred years. Ghosts whisper at every step he takes. He lights a lighter to see by and grips the key in his other hand, still determined to find it’s matching lock, driven by an unspeakable desire to know.
At the end of the short stairway was a short hallway that leads under your house and past your pipes. It curves around to one side and slants more down hill. Roots have broken through earthen walls and bugs run from the light. They run to the edge of a door frame and dig their way into the darkness beyond it’s threshold. The man puts his hand on the door handle and it seems almost warm, but locked. He looks for a key hole and tries the brass key there. It fits. It unlocks the door and the man turns the handle.
He opens the door, and the key slips from his fingers, landing in the dirt. He steps over the threshold and the key sinks into the earth, disappearing. The man closes the door behind him and never opens it again.
He is walking through a dream he once had as a child. He ascends a grass covered hill in the summer glare. The man takes off his light wait jacket and folds it over his arm. In the dream, he had crested this hill to find a plum tree, ripe with fruit. In the dream he had sat for what felt like hours, hands and face covered with sweet plum juice. Eventually a woman came and sat next to him. She was naked and reminded him of Eve from the Garden of Eden. He had wondered if he was suppose to be Adam. She told him about the life he was going to live, about some of his trials and some of the battles that he would have to fight. She told him that he would return to this place as a man, and when he did he would be ready to start a war. She said this was his destiny and he should never try to change it. She also told him that he should look for a key that would lead him to his future, and so he had. He has been looking for this key for twenty years. There is no going back.
The room the man doesn’t see is little more than a closet with curved earthen walls, floor and ceiling. In the center, resting on nothing but air, floating a few feet off the ground, is a green flame the size of your hand. There are no windows, but the flame flickers just the same, dancing on a wick that doesn’t exist and will never end. It splashes emerald light on its confines. The bugs and small animals that find their way to this place stay for years, transfixed by the glow. They get caught in the illumination, crystallized in a state of frozen animation. When they leave, they are as young as when they arrived, untouched by time. The room sleeps in solitude for all of what we call time, unnoticed except for those it calls to, and it never called to you.
Later that day, your grandson is looking for his phone. He knows he left it on the coffee table, but now it’s nowhere to be found. You tell him he’ll find it eventually, but right now he needs to take a bath. He goes into the bathroom and searches under the sink for a new bottle of shampoo. In the back, next to the pipes, there’s a brand that he likes. Underneath it is a brass key that he has never seen before. He pulls it out and brings it to you. You’ve seen this key before, but you strain to remember where. You put the key in your pocket, thank him for bringing it to you, and tell him to take his bath.
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Great story. I found myself intrigued by the puzzle of this key and what significance it would play in the overall conclusion. The style of writing is plain, but effective. At first, I thought the decision to not name any of the characters was a good one as really, the main character in this story is the key itself. Now I’ll give it another read through and list what pops out at me.
I think the first two sentences could be combined, “While unpacking your shampoos and body soaps, you find a key under the sink in the bathroom.
“…looks as though it has spent time in a leaking basement.” What does a key look like that’s spent time in a leaking basement? Probably the same as a key that’s spent time under a leaky sink. My point is, I think here the author steps in and replaces the narrator. The phrase is a tad convenient. Perhaps scrap it and dedicate the next sentence to the character, the “you” wandering around the old house trying to figure out where it goes to. Of course it doesn’t fit anywhere, and then character realizes to check the basement.
The “It seems locked, but…” sentence could be tightened up to give it more clarity. “It’s locked, but there’s no place to fit the key, no keyhole.” Having said that, “no keyhole” is redundant.
find the key and discards it / discard it
puzzled by it’s presence / its
“Farris Buhler’s day off.” / Ferris Bueller’s Day Off—No need for quotation marks.
“It doesn’t fit, because of course, it’s from under your sink…” In terms of boundaries, I think this is one part where it steps out of them. Given the story’s narrative point of view—omniscient—and the changing focal characters, the “you” here is intrusive. “….from under the sink…”
they brake a window / break
The “The ex-boyfriend happens to be a . . .” seems to me, contradictory. No way would this guy want anything to do with the cops if that’s his profession. He’d probably have a few attack dogs though. Maybe a cop drives by and sees them breaking into the house.
A suggestion, “The key is left in a locker with the rest of the young girl’s belongings for the next twelve years. She got extra time . . .”
“He checks yours, and walks in.” Again, I think the “you” is breaking down the fourth wall here. Perhaps give the address of the house in the beginning and then have the man find the house with the same address. The opening “you” was a character, this one is addressing the reader. Same goes for the rest of the story that’s not describing the opening character. In most cases, “the” could be substituted.
book shelves and tables. / bookshelves
The “There, beneath your basement floor…” could be, “There, beneath the basement floor, is a set of stairs. The man walks down them. He’s the first person to breathe this stale air in over a hundred years.”
still determined to find it’s matching lock / find its
short stairway was a / stairway is a
darkness beyond it’s threshold. / its
“seems almost warm” is awkward. Try, “The man puts his hand on the warm door handle. It’s locked. He finds the keyhole…”
his light wait jacket / lightweight
“resting on nothing but air” can be cut as what follows says the same exact thing.
“…and it never called to you.” This sentence if filled with poignancy, but if the only reason for using the “you” in the story is to tie in this point I would consider sacrificing it.
The last paragraph is great! It gives the story a cyclical quality—like nature.
Overall, the story is highly ambitious and written in a simple, yet literary style. The theme here seems to be the casual effect of destiny, the influence of karma, and perhaps reincarnation. The second person POV I liked, but writing in this style is difficult because sometimes it comes across as a “make your own adventure” book. You’ll probably scoff at this, but after my second read-through, I would humbly suggest naming the opening/closing character and only them. The progression of time I liked as well. Great story, thanks for sharing it.
-Curt
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I like the overall idea of this story, the disappearing, reappearing, traveling key. I liked how it came full circle in the end, clearly ready to start over again. It’s a little unclear where the convict ended up. Does the key make him hallucinate, so he’s actually still sitting in the closet? Of did he actually go to another world or plane of existence? Maybe you don’t want the reader to know. The writing is pretty good. What it lacks I think is more physical description. For example all we know about the house is that’s it’s old and had a cellar. The description with the convict in the tunnel is done really well. That part really drew me in.
Personally, I didn’t like the use of the second person (you.) It didn’t make me feel like part of the story. I think this would be much more gripping written in first or third person. Give this person an identity. None of the character’s really have an identity here, we know nothing about them. To draw the reader in we need to care about what happens to the characters. For that we need to get to know them. This almost reads more like a synopsis, than an actual story.
About using the second person, check around. I know it’s not used a lot, but find out how other readers feel about it. If it’s just me that doesn’t like it, I wouldn’t worry about it. Either way though I think the reader needs to know more about the characters, descriptions, personality traits – you don’t need a lot, that can bog down a story, just a few more details here and there.
“of an old house.” Your old house, otherwise it sounds like it’s someone else’s house.
“Farris Buhler’s” Ferris Bueller’s
“they met up” meet
“they brake a window” break
“He checks yours, and walks in.” I would never leave my door unlocked.
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