| Fiction |
WHISPERS IN THE DARK
Whispers in the dark is a weekly short story in which weird is the norm. An exercise in strangeness, the stories are never to be taken too seriously, but should never be taken too lightly. For if you lay awake long enough in the dark, you’re bound to hear a whisper sooner or later.
The Key
by Dana Place
A few weeks ago, a buddy of mine started wearing a small key
on a chain around his neck. This wasn’t unusually in as much
as he just kind of threw different types of styles together
and ran with them. He has not problem showing up at “The
Point” every week wearing dogpiles pants with Timberland
boots and an expensive diving watch. So none of the guys
really seemed to notice, at least not enough to ask. And at
first it didn’t really seem that strange to me either. But,
after a few days, with different styles and the same
necklace, I kind of started to wonder. Was there a point to
the key? So, after a few beers and a Mavericks loss, it
started itching and I just had to scratch. So I asked.
We left the guys at the Million Dollar and I took him back
to his house, I asked him about the key. He laughed a little
and ran his thumb and forefinger over the key. Get off the
freeway here and pull into that parking lot there on the
right he said and I obliged. A simple question had just
turned into a neat little riddle I had to have the answer to
before my buzz wore off.
The key was to a lock attached to a storage unit in a 24
hour U-Haul garage. We got to the 2nd floor and he pointed
to the farthest unit on the left. I was actually getting
excited. Like some strange mystery I just had to know what
was in that locker. It took forever to get to the end of the
hall, and even longer for Kevin to get the key from around
his neck. He turned the key in the lock and pulled the door
up. The smell hit us just before the blood from the naked
woman’s body pooled around my shoes.
“So, I don’t forget about her”. He said as he put the key
back around his neck.