Key

Key

It took me a month to finish the painting. The image came from a dream. A house, a family, peering out from a window while a girl looked in from outside. She held an uncut key in one hand and a nail file in the other. She was trying to shape the key, filing it down to a blunt point. She wouldn’t stop trying.

            I knew I should have said no when the college wanted to display it. I’d hated the thing as soon as I’d finished it. It showed something I didn’t want to see.

            My older sister Saya had hung it in the living room. I took it down and let the college display it.

            “Kyo!”

I looked from my desk and to the classmate. I’m surprised she knew my name; I didn’t know hers.

“There’s some guy waiting in the hallway for you.”

            He was leaning against the wall, a lazy smile set on his face. I had the urge to run.

            “Hi! I’m Fane. I take landscape architecture here.” He stared in a way that made me uncomfortable. “Japanese?”

            I nodded, reluctant. It was pretty obvious. 

            “I saw your drawing near the reception.”

“So?”

“What does it mean to you?”

            “That’s none of your business.”

            He stared at me with blue eyes, “Your name is Key, right? I collect keys.”

            I stormed back into the classroom. He didn’t follow me.

***

I hated mobile phones; they were noisy and drew too much attention to the user. My older brother Akio had given me one as parting gift when I moved to England with Saya. It had never rung. I’d never heard Fane’s ring either.

            “You never wear skirts,” he said as he chewed his lunch.

            It had become a routine. I would eat my lunch in a vacant area at the college and he would find me. I’d given up on making him leave.

            “It’s too cold here. Pervert.”

            “Is Key scared of me?”

            “It’s Kyo!”

            “The girl in the painting was scared too. She was so scared she couldn’t stop trying to shape the key. Was it because she was outside or because she couldn’t decide if she wanted to get in?”

            “It’s just a painting.”

            He watched as I finished eating. “I want to be a landscape architect,” He pulled out a bunch of keys from his bag, searching through them with his fingers. “But my hobby is collecting keys.” He held one up, its end blunted and useless. “This was the first.”

            It looked like a car key. I scanned the others in his hand; they were undamaged.

            “It’s my twentieth birthday next week. Will you come out drinking with me?” He moved closer, one hand resting on my arm. “I want to pick at you more.”

            “I’m only seventeen.” His hand was gentle; I couldn’t bring myself to pull away.

            “I’ll get you in, don’t worry.” He smiled, his eyes looked sincere. “Stay outside with me.”

***

The late night air was helping to clear my head. I hadn’t drunk much. My bare legs were cold. It reminded me of home at winter, when I would stay up late to serve tea and snacks to my brother Akio as he worked until dawn.

            I had left the mobile behind when Fane came to pick me up. Saya’s smile at his appearance made me uncomfortable. Especially when she saw I was wearing a skirt.

            “Where are we going?” I asked the drunken Fane.

            He was stumbling on ahead of me, laughing to himself. “My flat! You live with your sister and I doubt she wants you to come back drunk. You’ll have to share my room. Mum’s back from the hospital.”

            I tried not to think about what Saya would think when she realised I’d spent the night. “What was wrong with your mother?”

            “Key shouldn’t go in her room. You shouldn’t be the first to go in the kitchen in the morning either. You might get scared.”

            We came to a halt. Fane crashed into a garden bush and snorted before leaning on a house wall. “Silly people putting a bush there. If I’d designed this place I wouldn’t have done that.”

            “Why do you want to be a landscape architect?”

            He rummaged in his coat pocket, trying to pull out his keys. They landed a few feet away. “All the keys are running from me!” He dropped onto the floor. He looked pale, the moonlight making his hair look white.

            I moved away, bending down to pick up his keys.

            “I want to control Mother Nature,” Fane said.

            “What?”

            He stared at me, his eyes serious.

            “Mother Nature is a bitch. Why should she be the only one to create beautiful things?” The grin was back. “Gardens, silly girl, I want to design gardens!”

            A light flickered on inside the flat. The door swung open.

            “Ryan, are you drunk again?” asked a woman. She was in her late thirties dressed in a black dressing gown. Her eye and hair colour matched Fane’s. She neither smiled nor frowned. I wondered if her skin would feel cold.

            “Mum, you’re still here?”

            The woman turned back into the flat, her footsteps fading. She hadn’t noticed me.

            “Come on in! I have a sleeping bag you can use.”

I helped him to his feet, letting him lean on me, trying to steady his shaking body. I frowned but didn’t say anything, half dragging him into the flat’s corridor and closing the door.

            The flat was dark and bare; the walls a cream white that had been splashed with red.

            Fane grabbed the door handle of the nearest room and stumbled inside. The room was nothing special. It was small and plain with pale blue walls. Somehow I thought it would be different. The only thing that stuck out was a sketch of a garden design stuck low on the wall opposite the bed.

            “Here you go!” He flung a sleeping bag at me and collapsed on his bed, face down.

            “Your mother called you Ryan.”

            He lifted his head to answer. “Fane means joyous.”

            There was a small bookshelf, a photo resting on top. It was of Fane as an early teen with someone his double. One of them stood there while the other had his arms flung around his brother, smiling. I guessed that one was Fane, no, Ryan. His smile was real.

            Fane was mumbling to himself.

            “Does your brother live here?”

            The mumbling stopped, replaced with a sigh as he buried his face further into his bed. “He went away.”

***

I was an early riser, a habit I’d grown up with. Breakfast at six when Akio was finally asleep and then time to sketch.

            He had warned me not to go in the kitchen first.

            Fane’s mother lay on the floor, staring towards the window. Her bleeding wrists cradled each other, held against her chest. She was still wearing the black dressing gown, its long sleeves pushed up and exposing bare white arms. Her hair rested in the blood on the tiles, both sides of it stained. She must have deliberately turned her head to do it.

            “James?” Her voice was weak. She was still looking towards the window.

            I stumbled back and hit the wall near the door, wincing. I looked around for a phone. “Fane! Wake up!” I was out of the kitchen, moving towards his mother’s room.

            No phone.

            “Where’s the phone?”

            “Why?” Fane asked, stumbling out of his room. He took in my appearance and turned to enter the kitchen. “You don’t waste any time, do you Mum?”

            “Where’s your mobile?”

            “Stupid woman! Why in the kitchen? Can’t you ever slash your wrists in bed and pretend to look peaceful? Is it too much to ask?”

            “Fane!” I grabbed him, shaking him. “She needs an ambulance!”

            “Why bother? Let her get it over with. It’s too tiring.”

            I stared at him.

            He smiled.

            “Get the phone if you want, but she’ll only do it again. Am I supposed to care every time she does it?”

            I found his phone under his bed. He was eating toast when the paramedics arrived, still in his pyjamas. They glared at him but said nothing as they took her away. I watched them leave.

            “You had to see this, Kyo. We have to be careful that doesn’t happen to us.”

***

I’d almost refused when he dragged me out of the flat, but I knew we should see how his mother was. I hadn’t expected this.

            “Why are we here?” I looked at the small park we were in, seeing only a swing set, a small slide and a chalked hopscotch on the ground. I could hear cars from the road close by.

            Fane sat on the graffitied swing. He began swaying. “Don’t you want some fresh air? The flat stinks of blood.”

            “Why aren’t we going to the hospital?”

            “You have to wait around there. People should never stay still.” He began to swing higher, back and forth. His laugh made me jump. “I just realised! Our old house had the phone in the kitchen. No wonder she goes in there.”

            “What?”

            He was a blur as he swung past. “She answered the phone that day.” Fane’s hands released the chains holding the swing in place, staying on by tensing his legs. “And I was waiting in this park for him to come get me.”

            “James can have her! He was the good one she loved, the quiet one. I used to talk for the both of us. He was my shadow around other people. I was the one who went out past curfew. That night I was here, beaten up by some secondary school students. I called James. Mum wasn’t there so he took her keys to come get me, even though he was too young to drive. I waited all night.”

He sighed and my hands curled up into fists.

            “I don’t want to live like her! I miss him, I do, but I can’t stay outside it all. We have to decide. Now!” He swung his legs up and fell out of the swing a few feet away. He began running the moment he touched the ground. I sprinted after him.

            I grabbed his arm and yanked him back before he could step off the pavement. A car horn sounded and then drove on.

            “It must have hurt,” he whispered.

            I couldn’t say anything, only gripped his arm tighter. Despite his strange personality I didn’t want him to disappear. I didn’t want my decisions to force us apart; not like Akio. “Come on, let’s go.” I carefully released my grip.

            “What?”

            “You can’t go back to the flat yet, and there’s no way I’m letting you go off on your own. You can stay with Saya and me for a while.”

            Fane stared at me before giving a little smile.

            I didn’t want him to die.

            “Why? Is Key going to save me?”

            I grabbed his hand.