Amorous Goods: Carter's Key

I cast my eyes around the apartment, then started towards the front door. As I raised the key, it yelped, "Not that one!"

"Why?"

"Because I'd like to see the next dozen or so eons from somewhere other than inside a spawn of Nyarlathotep. Let's try... Mmm, your bedroom instead. That'll get us where we need to go. Sort of."

"Sort of?"

"You are so full of questions! Yes, sort of. Just go, okay? I'll get you there."

With a shrug, I turned towards my bedroom door. I thought I'd left it open, but it was closed now. Closed, and sealed shut with chains the size normally seen attached to an aircraft carrier's anchor. However, I saw no kind of lock.

"Uh."

"You seemed a lot smarter when you were awake. Just touch me to the chains. I'll handle the rest."

Hesitantly, I raised the key toward the door. This was a dream, yes, but we'd already established that I could feel pain. The old adage that if one dies in a dream, they die in real life as well came back to me. I had thought it nonsense before; after all, if someone died in their dream, how would anyone know? Something in me now screamed, though, that this myth had its roots in reality.

With a flash, the room disappeared. Not just the door, but the entire room. I stood in a new place then, a corridor lit with torches, its floor covered with ankle-deep sand. In the darkness, somewhere outside the dim, flickering circles of light, I thought I heard movement. A sound like the rasping of leaves against a window filled my ears, reminding me of the times as a child when I pulled the blankets over my head during a storm. Then came a bellowing cry of something primal and monstrous, and I understood why I had hidden. The key shouted, "Run! Run, you damned fool!"

I lit off in a blind panic away from the noise. I mean that term literally, 'a blind panic.' Guttering torches lit parts of the passage, but only pushed back the gloom by a dozen feet, at most. I saw something like hieroglyphics on the walls, but the few glimpses I caught resembled nothing human: too many arms, eyes that didn't seem right, bodies twisted in ways a human's shouldn't. Not a living one, anyways.

The architecture of this place seemed wrong in a way that, even now, I can't quite define, its angles and intersections evoking a sense of distress as I try to remember them. At the time, though, I only cared to get away from the thing in the darkness. The thing that drew closer with each fearful, gasping breath.

I swear that I could feel our pursuer's breath on my neck when the silver bastard cried, "Turn left! Arm up!" I made a hard pivot, hand raised as if to stiff arm a blocker, sure I was going to die from listening to a goddamned key but also not seeing a better option. Another flash of light took us from that tomb or temple or labyrinth--whatever it was--and sent me sprawling, cursing at the damned hunk of metal in my hand. "What the fuck was that, you stupid--"

And there she was. Lisa.

Lisa! That was her name. Oh my God, how could I have ever forgotten? I lay on the carpet of our living room floor, gazing up at her as she puttered about in the kitchen. Singing. She sang like an angel! My angel. This was Heaven, and at long last, I had found my way back.

But then I saw the Devil, and he had my face. Beelzebub kissed my angel, stealing a peck on the cheek from the woman I loved. She leaned into it, smiling and making a cheerful noise, then shooing him away. "I'm making dinner, sir! Go shower." Then, in a whisper that I could still hear from that distance, "Don't worry, I'll have a nice dessert for you after the kids are in bed."

I hadn't heard her voice in so long. I felt overjoyed to finally remember it, but enraged to hear her words to him. He was me, but not me: chubby--in a dad bod sort of way--where I was lean; the beginnings of lines around his eyes from smiling instead of frowning; radiating a sort of amiable contentment that I envied beyond all belief. He hadn't just taken my wife, he'd taken my life. My happiness.

Hoarsely, I asked, "Is this real?"

My silvery companion responded, "As real as the world we left behind to get here, the one where you're still tossing and turning in your sleep. It's just a different real."

I stood and dusted myself off. God, the woman of my dreams was real, and she was here. But she was looking straight at me, and her eyes didn't see me. When I stepped forward, the key chimed, "You can't touch her. Only your mind is here, not your body. She can't see or hear you, either."

Lisa turned back to the counter, humming a tune from our youth as she assembled the ingredients for their supper. Part of me wanted to stay and watch her all day, but I sensed that my time was limited, and that I wouldn't get another chance at this.

My free hand clenched and unclenched with rage and anticipation. "But I can touch him. Right? I can... I can be him, right? Lisa can be mine?"

"... Yes."

I nodded to myself, then turned to follow my nemesis as he headed up the stairs to his bedroom—my bedroom—and into the bathroom. The key felt cold and heavy in my hand, its voice fallen silent. I remembered Mack's words: 'The key will tell you how.'

"How do I do it?"

It said nothing.

"Tell me how! How do I reclaim my life?"

"Your life?"

"Yes, damn you! The one that should be mine!"

"You mean his life. You want to take his life? Steal it?"

I snarled at the reticent hunk of metal. "He stole mine first!"

The other me, the imposter, had stripped naked and stepped into the shower. I felt Carter's key vibrate, in the same way it did each time it spoke. Before it could form a word, however, Lisa entered the room, noiselessly padding across the tile floor on bare feet. As she drew near the shower curtain, the imposter cast it aside and dragged my wife, fully clothed, into the shower to the sound of her giggling, shrieking protestations.

I shouted at the key again, incensed, "HOW!"

It unhappily said, "Touch me to his head. Your dream self will overwrite his mind. Your body will die in the world you came from, and you will become him."

I raised my hand to strike.

"Almost," the key added as I reared back.

"Almost?"

Softly, almost consolingly, it asked, "Do you think you could be him? The man she's fallen in love with? The one she married and spent her whole life with?" I paused, my hand shaking as I thought its words over.

Lisa and other-Dan cavorted in the shower, laughing and kissing as the water soaked through her clothes. I remembered the way she and I had played in my dream of our life together, the way we mixed joy and affection and love and lust to create something so much greater than the sum of its parts.

I watched her with him now, and I saw the way she loved him, loved his dad bod and his laugh lines. Loved the past they shared, the comforts of their life and family and home together. He kissed her tenderly and lovingly; possessively, in a way, but only as one reverently holds something fragile but splendid.

He loved her. She loved him.

Him. Not me. Him, with his soft belly and easy laugh that showed me the simple joys of a life I hadn't l lived. Him, with a love that had surrounded her with those same simple joys. Him, that had given her the children that should have been mine. Oh, God! Jeremy and Anya, their names and faces so clear to me once more!

The railroad-track scar on my arm itched, reminding me of who I wasn't. Of who and what he'd stolen from me. He hadn't taken just her from me; he'd taken the me I could have been. Bitterness consumed me as I raised the key once more, angry tears in my eyes. This should be mine. She should be mine.

But he should be hers.

She loved him. Not me. I could never be him. Once upon a time, someone could have chosen differently, and I could have met her. I could have been the one that made her laugh and kept her safe. But now, all I could do was take that from her. He wasn't the Devil, the doppelgänger, the imposter. I was. Or I would be, if I struck.

And I loved her too much to do that.

Turning my back on the adoring couple, I left them to their perfect life. "Take me home. Now."

The room flashed as I walked out of their bedroom, and I awoke with tears in my eyes and still clutching the key in my fist. Its teeth had drawn blood while I slept, so firmly had I held it. It no longer spoke, nor did it shine or thrum or feel light as a feather. I held nothing more than a simple key, one which fit no lock that existed in this world.

Our sojourn had taken the entire night. Dreams are strange that way. I showered in the morning, thinking about what I'd learned and what I'd seen. What I'd heard, especially: her voice, her name, her laugh. It hurt to know I never would again; I won't lie about that. But I felt more than just hurt, so many more things than simple pain.

I hadn't been crazy. I mean, I had been, in my pursuit of the dream, but the dream had been real. She had been real. I was certain of that now. Lisa--God, just having a name for her made me feel more sure of myself--did exist. I did love her. I made her happy, and she made me happy.

And, yes, it wasn't the same 'me,' but that was enough. Knowing was enough. I could remember her voice again, and I knew her name. Most important of all, though, I knew she was safe and loved, and that she needed nothing I could provide her.

That hurt, too, but it also felt freeing. I had the chance to take her happiness by seizing my own, and I didn't do it. I loved her enough to let her go.

I let her go.

Not just when I could have stolen into her life by stealing his, but there, in the light of day, I realized I'd let her go. I hadn't realized how much of my mania centered on fears for her happiness. I needed to know my dream girl existed not only to confirm my sanity, but also to be sure that she was as content as she could be. I had to see she was safe and loved, the way I remembered from my dream those two decades past. With that realization, I could leave her in the past as a memory to be cherished instead of a dream to obsess over. I could find a future for myself.

The shopkeeper greeted my return as if he had anticipated it. "Dan! Come in, my boy. Come in." Two other people rushed out the door as I walked in; I had seen them there briefly before, when I'd passed by during my morning commute, a redheaded woman and a kind of lunkish-looking dark-haired man. For whatever reason, they had dressed as Mennonites today. I looked questioningly at Mack, and he shrugged. "They're off to procure an item for the collection." As if that explained anything.

I held the key, still dormant, out to him. "Well, here's one you can take back, at least."

Mack smiled broadly as he slipped it into his coat pocket, then patted it. "Oh, this one always makes its way back."

"Makes its way...?"

"Come in. We'll have some tea, and I'll explain."

He led me back to his office, gestured to the chair I'd occupied the day before, and poured me a cup. After taking a sip, Mack said, "Normally, most of the goods we procure--reclaim, actually--are... unpleasant. Diabolical, in fact. I won't go into the details. You don't want to know."

I opened my mouth to object, but he waved my words aside. "You may think you do, but you don't. Just know that there are things out in the world that are strange and powerful like Carter's key, but malevolent instead of mischievous."

"Mischievous? You call that thing mischievous? It almost got me killed!"

He shrugged. "Did it? Or did it merely scare you? Did you actually see the thing that 'almost' killed you?" I had no response to that. "The key isn't one of 'ours,' not one of the demonic items the previous proprietor of this shop put out into the world. Nor does it fall under the auspices of a counterpart of ours, an NGO that safely warehouses similarly dangerous items, but ones that don't share the same ill-intent as the items we track. They're the ones that found the key, though. Or it found them, maybe."

Mack sighed. "The key can't be contained by them or by us, though. We've tried, and it's... Like I said, it's not malevolent, but if you try to make it stay where it doesn't want to be, it gets mean. Destructive, rather than playful. So we keep it in with the 'normal' stock and let it call to the people it wants. In exchange, it allows us to vet the ones it finds. And if we agree--which we usually do these days--we let it go off with them, and it eventually makes its way back. And that keeps its... misbehavior in check."

"So... it's like a puppy? You take it for walks, and it doesn't tear up the couch?"

The old man laughed riotously at the analogy, wiping a tear from his eye. "That's- Oh, God, that's great. I'm going to have to tell Marty at the Warehouse that one. Yes, you're not far off. They don't have a safe way to get it out for 'walks,' so they let us handle it, even though it's not exactly in our wheelhouse."

"Why did it tell me to run, then, if you have an agreement?"

"Because the shiny little twerp thought it would be funny. It's done things like that before, just to watch me chase some poor bastard down the street. Like I said, mischievous. But now you've taken it out for a walk, and it should be happy for a while. Hopefully." He smiled sympathetically. "And you? Are you going to be happy?"

"... Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Wait, how did you know I wasn't going to..." I fell silent, not wanting to admit what I'd been so tempted to do.

"The key was sure you wouldn't. Like I said, it calls to people, and I vet them, but the vetting is a formality these days. Still, though, I could tell how much you loved her. Worst case, it would have woken you up to keep you from doing something you'd regret."

We chatted for a little while longer after that. It turned out most of the people he had to deal with when it came to the objects--the items which he referred to as cursed--weren't as affable as me. Beyond that, I completely understood wanting to talk freely about things that would make most people believe you were completely nuts. I happily listened to the stories he told me, most of which I could tell were still fairly sanitized. As much as he'd helped me, it seemed the least I could do.

In fact, he and I hung out from time to time. Not on any kind of schedule, but if I had a free afternoon, and if he wasn't out of the shop trying to prevent a demonically possessed scythe from enacting a Satanic fertility rite--as you do--we'd sit around, have a couple drinks, and shoot the shit.

A year later, I'd made some genuine changes in my life: a new job, a better apartment, healthier habits. A friend had scored a couple of tickets to the theater and couldn't go. It wasn't exactly my scene, either, but I knew Mack enjoyed it, so I figured I'd drop them off and he could find a date. When I got to the store, I opened the door to the shop--holding it open for Vikki (the redhead) and Dylan (the lunk) as they rushed inside with a suspiciously lumpy Oriental rug--and looked around for the older man.

From behind me, I heard, "Excuse me, sir? I'm looking for Mack." I froze in place. The voice. Her voice. "Sir?"

Before I had turned halfway, Lisa gasped, "Dan?!" She looked so different, but still recognizable. Not quite gaunt, but noticeably thinner than the woman I remembered, with a couple of gray hairs and more worry lines than laugh lines. But it was her. It was her happy, hopeful smile I saw. Her warm, loving embrace I felt as she rushed forward and flung her arms around me.

Lisa held the key in her hand, inert and covered in a patina as it had been in the dream, clearly dormant. The puppy had gone for its walk once more, and now it was ready to come home, dragging its temporary minder along. I saw a brief, silvery gleam, a flash from Carter's key confirming the friendly mischief of the cursed object that wasn't cursed. The one that called out to the people it needed and showed them what they needed. The one, I knew, that helped us both let go of our pasts so we could once again become each other's future.

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This one, of all my stories, is oddly autobiographical. I had the dream of the girl with the curly hair and our twenty years lived together once when I was a teenager. I didn't go off the deep end like Dan, but I did spend a few weeks being down in the dumps and knowing I couldn't tell anyone why without them thinking me mad. It happened in the late 80s, not the early 2000s, but I can still see her face and hear her laugh. Like Dan in the story, I also I can't remember her voice or name.

Thirty-five years later, now that I've lived longer than the dream, now that I've met and married the actual love of my life and had children, I still remember the girl. I wouldn't trade the life I have now for that dream existence. Sometimes, though, late at night when I can't sleep, I worry that perhaps this, too, is a dream. I'm briefly seized by a fear that I'll wake up in that small bedroom in rural Texas. I don't know if I could do it again. I hope I never have to find out.

seraph_nocturne beta read for me on this one. As always, I rely on her for her good advice and supportive spirit. I can't thank her enough.