Revels in the Dark

Where have my keys gone?

As I get up to leave, I pat pockets, rifle through coats, and dig through yesterday’s discarded clothes, but they are not there. My apartment is only so large. The desk-top is empty. The couch cushions are innocent: they do not hide my keys this time.

At first, I search carelessly. But my searching becomes hunting, my hunting, stalking.

The keys are not the first victim. Since moving here, eleven socks, three shirts, two notebooks, and a remote have vanished into the mysterious corners of my home.

I flop down on the couch. Steam vents from my nose with my breath. I have things to do.

I only have three rooms. How can my keys hide from me in three rooms?

Maybe I missed them under the cushions. I throw the cushions to the floor. Did they get under the couch? I lift it. Maybe the clothes pile.

Maybe they’ve fallen down a hole.

There must be holes in my apartment. Holes from which greedy creatures with beady, glinting eyes squirm, hands grasping at my discarded things while I sleep.

But to where do they drag them?

To the earth behind the earth. To the tunnels that run underground to a thousand holes in a thousand apartments. Tunnels behind the grey buildings, and the blue sky, and the green earth, where dark shapes crouch over mounds of molding possessions and smile, wringing their hands.

My keys might lie with the glove of a Victorian gentleman, or the left sandal of an Egyptian housewife.

Or maybe the holes don’t lead to tunnels, but to the stars. Perhaps my keys float, tumbling end over end, in the azure and saffron gases of a nebula, or glow red hot in the warm and brilliant light of a star. Could they be hurtling through the black, coursing along with a pack of asteroids? Or perhaps they are still, stairing, awestruck as a glowing passes them by. Something all together beyond comprehension flitting through the void, and glimpsed only for a brief but wonderful moment.

What glens and dales of earth could they have slipped into? What forests and meadows? What times and epochs long gone from mind? What tales have they heard around dim campfires? What wonders could they have seen, falling down those holes?

I stand and pull on my coat. The door cracks and I slip out, leaving it just open behind me. While creatures from tunnels beneath the earth might slip into my apartment at night to steal my things, the friends of mine living in my building will not. It is time to go for I have things to do. As I walk, I wonder. And I think.

I would very much like to know where my keys have gone.

For perhaps I would like to follow after them.