The Key
by Steve Golds
She screamed at him
“go fuck yourself!”.
She said she didn’t care anymore. So he searched his trouser pocket for the key. The little brass key that she gave him eight years before and after a few months of looking and searching he finally found it in the corner of his pocket. Trapped in the corner of the cotton. His fingertips brushed against its smooth silken surface and then clasped it tightly. He held it out to the light, the light examined it closely and commented on what a beautiful key it had been. He blew off the fluff and then slid it slowly into her key hole, one last time. The lock clanked open and the door creaked ajar. They looked at each other one last time. She was looking for some sort of clause in the contract and he was looking for a single shred of evidence that might incriminate her, that might tell him she still cared.
He saw no such thing.
He walked out of her heart slamming the door behind him.
“I never liked it in there anyway”,
he shouted in the doors direction. It was too crowded, too cramped and towards the end, the roof had began to leak, DRIP,DRIP,DRIP, teardrops falling on his head, slowing driving him insane.
In the madness of the departure, he had forgotten a few of his belongings.
“You never know she might keep them”
a piece of him suggested. It was his hopeful side, he attacked his better side, pushing him over. He later heard through the grapevine that when his hopeful side had fallen he had smashed his head into pieces on the concrete and died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.
Another few months trickled away, evaporated away and one rainy, grey night he was digging in the soil of his mind and he discovered the key, her key. The brass was now encrusted with an aqua green and it was covered in dirt and shit. He stared at the key using the moon as a torch. He pondered. He concluded the key may still open the lock on her heart. Unless she had changed the locks of course. He wanted to try it in the lock now. He wanted to be inside the warmth of her heart again, but he decided to wait.
Seasons past and he waved off Autumn until the season was just a dot on the horizon and shook winters hand as warmly as he could manage. He had finally drank enough courage to attempt the lock and made his way there.
When he got there, he found the whole place to be derelict and decayed.
He went to the nearest bar
his heart sobbed, broke itself into little pieces
and he drank himself
to death.