The Extra Key

Photo credit: Robsalot (that's me!)

Have you ever looked between the keys of your computer’s keyboard? If not, then I suggest you don’t, because it isn’t going to be pretty, especially if you tend to eat a lot of sad desk lunches, like me.

So one day I was on a particularly boring Friday afternoon conference call when I became obsessed with the cleanliness of my keyboard. It all started off innocently enough, I peeled off post it notes one by one and ran them between the spaces of the keyboard. The amount of gunk and crumbs that came out was amazing, and yet, when I peered back between the crevices, it didn’t look like I had made a dent in the yuck at all. 30 minutes had passed and the call was still droning on, but it didn’t matter anymore, because on my desk was a pile of keys, and I was vigorously shaking my now key-less keyboard over my trashcan. By the time the call was over the keyboard was spotless, only now I had to remember where all the keys went. It is really hard to Google the layout of a keyboard when you have to type on a keyboard that has no keys. Still, I managed to get it back together, only the strangest thing happened, there was an extra “ENTER” key. I didn’t puzzle over it for long though, because by the time I got the whole keyboard reassembled and working it was 5 pm so I tossed the extra key in my desk drawer and hightailed it out of there.

Monday morning came all too soon, because that is what Monday mornings do. After procuring a coffee and catching up on the weekend gossip, I returned to my desk and found that extra ENTER key right where I had left it. I considered it a moment, and then I knew what to do, I grabbed my company issued glue stick (for sealing envelopes, duh!), slathered a healthy dollop on the back of the key, and stuck it to a blank spot on they keyboard. With a giggle I pressed down on my “new” key, but when my index finger touched it I was surprised that it depressed just like a real key would. I was even more shocked to discover I was no longer in my cube, but was instead back at home in bed, which was exactly where I had been wishing I was just seconds before… odd. Unfortunately I was still in my work clothes, and my bedside clock still reported it was 9:48 AM on Monday morning. I also had the sinking feeling that if I looked outside I would find my car was not in my driveway, but was instead most likely sitting in the parking lot work. Also, of course, I had a check-in meeting with my boss in exactly 12… oh, wait, now 11 minutes. If this wasn’t the most Monday morning thing to ever happen, then I don’t know what was.

Some Assembly Required

Grace didn’t know where she was. The last thing she remembered, she was riding her bike down the hill just below her house on a beautiful spring afternoon, and then? Everything was black and no matter how hard she tried her eyes wouldn't open.  Even worse, she couldn’t seem to move. Where was she? What was happening to her? She was starting to panic.

“Uh, Sir, I think something is happening,” Ben sounded nervous.

“What is it this time Ben?” Steven was getting quite annoyed, and why shouldn’t he be? It wasn’t his idea to bring the boy with him to work, it was his mother’s. Ben had always been headstrong, but things had gone from bad to worse when Steven married his mom. That is why she suggested sending her son to work with Steven. She thought it would perhaps help them bond a little better, and who knew, Ben might discover some deep seated interest in the work Steven did in his lab. So far, it wasn’t working very well though. Ben had been constantly underfoot , asking a million questions, and he had already broken three beakers and contaminated two very important samples when he sneezed on a set of petri dishes.

“WHAT is it Ben?!” Steven repeated, whirling around to face the now all too quiet boy. “Oh my god, the brain, we’ve caught one.”

“Huh?” Ben said, still unable to break his gaze from the wrinkly grey blob that was bobbing and weaving up in down in the jar of liquid.

“When they start moving like that, it means we have captured one. The experiment worked again!”

“Experiment?”  Ben repeated.

Steven was seriously beginning to question the boy’s intelligence, “Yes,” he sighed, “it is all part of the work I am doing, it began with an attempt to revive the deceased, but it soon became apparent that the people who, uh, were recovered, were not the people who initially inhabited the brains. My only conclusion is that the process I devised is somehow capturing loose soles that are floating in the atmosphere. I don’t know where they are coming from, I have not yet been able to keep one around long enough to find out, but perhaps this time.”

“Oh,” Ben looked more confused than ever.

Steven rolled his eyes, “listen, the next thing we have to do is hook up the computer, with it  we can start communicating with whoever is now in that brain, here, help me plug in this microphone and speaker.”

Suddenly Grace realized she wasn’t alone, she didn’t know how, or why, but she could feel a presence nearby. Perhaps, if she could somehow speak, she could get some help, and then she could figure out what was wrong with her.

The equipment wasn’t working and Steven had no idea why, then Ben spotted the problem, as he plugged the power chord into the wall a deafening scream emanated from the speakers, and echoed through the lab.

Celebrity Crush

There is a rectangle of light in the otherwise black room, the morning sun trying to invade the room. She rolls away from the window, pulls the duvet over her head, and breaths in the unmistakable smell of hotel laundry detergent. What hotel was she in? Safe in her cocoon of blankets she tries to remember where she was. She listens to the silence of the room, the hum of the air conditioner, and she remembered, L.A.

She sighs, throws the covers off, and rolls out of bed. She pads to the window, opens the curtains a crack, letting a sliver of sunlight invade spill into the darkness, and looks out at the valley below, shrouded in a purple blanket of fog. That’s when she notices him, a man with a telephoto lens the size of his head, skulking about the parking lot below her window. Fucking L.A. she mutters, pulling the curtains shut again.

She runs down the street, her high heels clacking as she tears down the sidewalk. She hopes the director is getting this, it’s fucking difficult to run in heels. She really hates these Hollywood tropes. She is wondering when in real life would anyone run full speed down the sidewalk in six-inch heels? That’s when the car hits her.

She is awake, but something is wrong. She is in a room, but it is too bright. Did she forget to turn off the lights last night? Did she forget to close the blinds? She tries to roll over, but something stops her, she can’t seem to move. She looks to her left and that is when she sees the machines she is hooked up to. She is in a hospital.

A man, who was sitting in the corner of the room, just outside her field of vision, rises and walks to her bedside.

“Morning,” he says, “How are you feeling? This is probably worse than you thought, huh?”

She finds she can’t respond due to a breathing tube that has been shoved down her throat.

“Well, it seems you are at a loss for words,” he pauses, chuckling at his uncouth joke, “I am Jack, and I am here to let you know that the operation was a success, you now look nothing like you. Also, we have your new home all set up and waiting for you. As soon as the doctors give the okay we will send the helicopter to whisk you away to your new life.

That’s when she remembers, Celebrity Crush – “We crush your celebrity status so you can be free to be you.”

Of course, the car that had hit her! When she signed up for this they told her they would fake her death when she least expected it. It was all part of the ruse to get her away from this life. Unfortunately she didn’t get to choose her new home, but it didn’t matter, because now, she was finally free.

Alone in the Hot Tub

Photo credit: Robsalot (that's me!)

So we bought a hot tub, and it wasn’t too long after it was installed that something rather strange started to happen, our neighbors started to talk to us. First were Hunter’s parents who lived in the little blue house across the way. No Hunter wasn’t their kid, it was their cute little dog (don’t ask me why we remembered the dog’s name and not the owners). Hunter’s parents are on a similar morning routine to us, and we often see them heading out the door for work at the same time we do. Some mornings we would even exchange a cursory head nod, or maybe even a wave, but then one day, out of the blue, they started actually saying “Hello” and “Good Morning” to us. Things progressed from there; they would start crossing the street in an attempt to engage in actual conversations with us, and it wasn’t just them either, all the neighbors started doing it.

Chuck would catch up with us when we returned home from work. Was he waiting in his living room, peaking through his blinds, watching for us to come home so he could rush out of his house to say hi?

Then there was our next door neighbor, Joan Rivers (okay, that isn’t her real name, we made it up, we don’t actually know her real name, even though somehow she knows ours). We started running into her every Thursday morning, while racing against the garbage truck to get our trash cans out on the curb at 6 am. Getting sucked into a conversation with my neighbor who had never said a word to me before was the last thing I wanted to deal with that early in the morning.

Even the nurse and the professor who lived on the other side of us began to go out of their way to talk to us. (No, I don’t really know their professions; I just assumed based on their clothing choices, again, I had never said more than 10 words to these people before they suddenly started roping us into random, mundane, conversations).

As you can imagine, this was all very disconcerting for a couple of introverts like us.  Then, one evening, we heard a commotion outside. We peered out our window to find all of our neighbors gathered in the street, talking and wildly gesturing toward our house. Now, our house is a little 100-year-old bungalow, and the sound proofing isn’t the best, so with our ears pressed to the door we listened in on the conversation. They were talking about us… and our hot tub. It seemed the neighbors had a little bet going regarding who would be the first to score an invite to use our Jacuzzi. Of course my husband and I knew what we had to do, we retreated to our backyard oasis, where we cranked up the bubbles to maximum (ensuring the whole neighborhood could hear the jets), and settled in for a nice long soak, alone.

Emergency Supplies

Photo credit: Robsalot (that's me!)

The square of sunlight pooled in the corner of her room. She couldn’t see the sky from the window, just the grey concrete of the building next door, but that patch of sunlight let her know the world was still out there, somewhere. She could tell time by the sun too, not just because of its steady march across her floor, day in and day out, but the way it changed as the seasons passed, long languid summer days brought a golden hue to her otherwise stark white room, while winter ushered in a cooler, more subdued glow. Or at least she assumed she was reading the seasons correctly, but she couldn’t be sure, since she couldn’t see the sky. 

There were other clues to the passage of time as well, the sound of footsteps in the hallway outside her room, the opening and closing of doors, the rhythms of the world, just outside her door. In fact she could hear the footsteps now, the main door closing, morning shift must be starting. But no, these footsteps were different, they should have turned and started growing fainter, but instead they carried on drawing nearer. That’s when she knew, this time, they were coming for her.

She felt the panic rise up within her as she sat frozen on her bed. She thought perhaps if she sat perfectly still and didn’t make a sound, the footsteps would carry on, past her room. She heard the click of the lock, the squeak of the hinges, and her door started to swing open. She closed her eyes tight, bracing for the hand on her arm, the prick of the needle. She braced for what would happen next. Where would she wake up? Who would she be this time? What would she have to do?

She heard the footsteps crossing her room until he was so close she could hear him breathing. She felt his rough hand close tight around her forearm, the cool needle against her skin.

The screams echoed down the hallway. They sounded more animal than human. Then there were more footsteps, urgent footsteps, thundering towards her room. The latch on her door clicked open. Now there was more yelling, she heard “red alert”, and “get the emergency supplies” and “one of the units has broken it’s programming”, before the emergency barrier descended, trapping her in the corner of her room. Then all was quiet again. She lowered herself to the floor, careful to avoid the pool of red seeping under the barrier. She curled her legs under her, rested her head against the wall, and watched the last rays of sunlight fade into the darkness as night descended again.

Upside Down

Photo credit: Robsalot (that's me!)

The scream echoed down the hallway, sending a shiver up my spine. Damn, and I swear Billy was maybe, possibly, just about to kiss me.

“What the hell?” Billy cried as he ran back down the hall to his room, where he found Mary, sprawled out on the ground, surrounded by slices of pizza strewn upside down across floor. We just stared at the chaos in disbelief.

“Wha-what happened!?” Billy finally exclaimed.

Mary, looking like a deer caught in the headlights, (a dear smeared with tomato sauce and pepperoni), burst into tears.

“Okay” Billy softened, “why don’t you just get yourself cleaned up and go to bed, I’ll deal with this.”

Mary blubbered something unintelligible through her tears as she swayed unsteadily back to her room.

It was the party at Scott’s house that did it. Scott was a buddy of Billy, Brian, and Eric, the second year boys that lived in our otherwise freshman dominated dorm. Scott’s house was a typical college rental, a single story tan ranch with a dead lawn and shag carpet that probably wasn’t originally brown. I decided it was best to keep my shoes on as we went inside. A case of beer sat open on the coffee table. I eyed it skeptically while I perched on one of the stained hand-me-down couches that littered the living room. After my experience at a frat party a couple nights before, I didn’t quite know if I was ready to try beer again.

As it turned out I didn’t have a choice in that matter, because the guys announced we would be playing a game called “Never Have I Ever.” It was a game I knew from high school. The point of it was to disclose your entire sexual history to the people you were playing with. Of course my friends and I were just seniors in high school then, but now I was a freshman in college, surrounded by people I didn’t know, including a boy I had a crush on, and I wasn’t sure I was ready for Billy to know all of my, uh, history.

So here is how the game goes, one person says “Never have I ever…” and then ends it with something they haven’t done, like, oh, um, have sex in a vat of pudding. Now anyone in the group who has had sex in a vat of pudding would hold up one finger. The game ends when someone has all ten fingers up. Apparently, though, in the college version, instead of holding up a finger, you take a drink. I made it through two beers before I decided to bow out of the game. Mary made it through a lot more, and after we stumbled our way back to the dorm we decided to get some pizza, which Mary then used to redecorate Billy’s dorm room. I should really thank her though, because once Billy and I finished picking congealed cheese out of his carpet, he finally kissed me.

Just the Right Touch

Photo credit: Robsalot (that's me!)

Erin had a tree house in her way-backyard. Well it wasn’t really a tree house because it was missing two very important defining factors. First, it wasn’t in a tree, though it certainly was as tall as one; and second, it wasn’t really a house, just a plywood platform perched on two-by-fours with an aluminum ladder running up to a hole in the center. Still, we called it our tree house, and we could be found there nearly every afternoon, once we had been released from the daily torture that was the 7^th grade.  

As soon as the bell rang Erin and I slung our backpacks over our right shoulders (it didn’t matter how heavy they were, or how it tweaked our backs, wearing them any other way would cause us to be immediately ostracized), then, despite the magnitude of the things we so urgently needed to discuss, we walked slowly towards Erin’s house (everyone knew 7^th graders didn’t run, it wasn’t cool to run, only elementary school kids ran).

Once we were safely through Erin’s gate we sprinted across the grass, flung our bags over the fence, and squeezed through a crack into the way-backyard, which was just a forgotten strip of land between two housing additions, where the tree house was located. Finally alone we clambered up the ladder and sat cross-legged facing each other on the plywood platform that overlooked the neighborhood.

“Okay,” Erin exclaimed breathlessly, “so you have to tell me exactly what he said.”

“Shh,” I admonished, “Don’t let the whole neighborhood to hear!”

“Sorry,” Erin whispered.

“Okay,” I was trying hard keep my own excited voice to a whisper, “I saw him in the hallway between 4^th and 5^th periods, and I just, like, handed him the note, I didn’t even say anything, and then when I walked out of class after 5^th he was there, waiting…”

“Oh my god,” Erin interrupted.

“…and he handed me the note back!”

“WHAT WAS HIS REPLY?!”

“YES!” I squealed yanking a triangular sheet of notebook paper out of my pocket, “He said he would go with me!”

I was so nervous, my very first middle school dance, and I was going with a boy. A cute boy who just transferred into the school. That was probably why he had agreed to go with me, he wasn’t aware that being seen with Erin or me was social suicide. Oh god, what if someone told him, I thought as I entered the gymnasium, but then there he was, smiling at me, looking a bit uncomfortable in a plaid button up shirt. As I approached he extended his arm out to me, and I placed my hand softly in his. My palm was sweaty, that much I was acutely aware of, but then his fingers grazed the back of my hand and suddenly I felt something new bubble up from deep inside me, awoken by the electricity in his touch, and just for a moment all of my insecurities disappeared.