The Golden Skeleton

The words to understand roll through the fingers of my thoughts, a skeleton key to the world. It's cold and harsh, the low candlelight glinting off the gold with innumerable implications.

But maybe if I put the key in the right doors in the right order, I'd find something warm.

I gulp down tears and series of possibilities, aware that the key can bring me nothing warm. Something real, yes - real and as harshly freezing as the key itself.

My thought-fingers curl tightly around it. For all the pain the accursed thing has brought me, I cannot (will not?) relinquish it. I can't remember how I lived (if I ever lived) without it.

What if this key is all I have?

Yes! This key was given to me for a reason!

I recognize the color of desperation in my thought-voice, the reflexive seizure so familiar and so startling.

Maybe I was given the key for a reason, but it is only a skeleton key. There are other ways to unlock those same doors.

My thought-fingers slacken from the gold, still cold despite the years of contact with my mind heat. I rip my gaze away from its insidious glint.

Progress.

The message light is blinking. Red, dark. Red, dark. How didn't I notice it before? Then I remember dismissing it for later, and later again, and again. Just how many messages are on there?

I almost leave the task for later (never) once more, but the alternative is getting lost in the key. So I push my chair back from the table (is this real or still in my mind?) and stretch.

My thought-fingers tighten around the molded metal without my bidding them to.

Startled and a little shaken (will I never be free?), I take the two steps across the room to the machine.

I don't even know how to say the number on the readout.

As I watch, it clicks over to just one figure, an eight sideways.

That's not overwhelming.

Fortunately, this is a special answering machine; I breathe a sigh of relief upon catching sight of the large button marked "summarize." (Yep, this is still in my mind.) I press it.

"Yo, mind! This is her body speaking. Stop screwing things up for her! I've got it handled. Stop playing with that golden skeleton or you'll make her into one. Yeesh! I know what I'm doing."

I blink as the display blips to zero. My body was apparently raised in New York.

I can't stand New York.

But the message means something, more than the filter of the skeleton key lets on.

My fist slowly unclenches, and my fingertips experience the alien rush of air as they lose contact with its chill form.

It is beautiful: the key, the words. Also amazingly useful, but not the answer. Sometimes the point is not to open the door, but to find the key (the one key) that fits the lock.

A slow smile ghosts over my thought-face, and my thought-fingers close over the words again.

I tuck it into my back pocket.

It was given to me for a reason.