THE KEY TO SOMEWHERE

I have always been meticulous about keeping my workspace tidy. Every evening, I always wipe my desk, align my notebooks and ensure nothing unnecessary clutters the surface. That's why when I find the key, I was certain it hadn't been there before.

It lay on the desk, small and ornate, with a swirling design etched into the metal-delicate and almost hypnotic. It didn't belong to me nor anyone who should've had access to my apartment.

It was too intricate to be for my usual locks, too old-fashioned to be for anything modern.

I picked it up, weighing it between my fingers. The metal is strangely warm, pulsing lightly as if aware of being held.

I felt something shift in my vision-a flicker, a momentary distortion of the air like reality has shimmered just for a second.

I spent the evening searching for locks it could open. Drawers, safes, doors even a few forgotten boxes in my closet-but none match.

Then I notice the book on my shelf an old one my grandfather had gifted me long ago. It had never opened. It was more of a sentimental piece than an actual read. But tonight, something about it called to me.

Sliding my finger along the spine, I felt a small indentation near the binding. A key hole. With an uneasy breath, I insert the key and turn.

The book did not open. The air around me did. A swirling void unfolded like a doorway into somewhere else-somewhere impossible.

And before I could take another breath the room was no longer my own.

I barely had time to register the shift before my feet touched the ground-thought solid ground was a relative term.

The space around me rippled as if reality itself were trying to decide what form to take.

I found myself in a corridor lined with shifting doorways. Some flickered between materials-wood, steal, glass. While others pulsed like living things. At the end of the corridor stood a figure, hooded and unmoving.

"You finally arrived", the voice said-not with a sound but with a thought. I felt it reverberate in my chest.

"Where am I?"

"You are where the unclaimed truths reside. Every lost answer, abandoned memory and unfinished thought ends up here waiting."

I look down at the key, still in my hand, its warmth now a steady pulse.

"You are chosen to unlock one."

A doorway nearest to me shuddered then settled on an appearance-carved oak with a handle shaped like an intricate knot.

My fingers brushed against it and immediately a wave of familiarity crashed over me-something deeply personal, something forgotten.

The hooded figure stands before watching me in silence.

Beyond the door was not a random room but a moment-my own past, a memory I hadn't realized was missing.

And now I have to decide-step into it and remember or close the door and leave it buried.

My grip on the door handle tightens as a wave of emotions surges through me-anticipation, fear and an eerie sense of deja vu.

The memory beyond the threshold isn't just a lost memory; it's something deeply personal, something I unknowingly buried. My pulse quickens.

I feel the weight of a choice pressing down on me. If I step forward, I risk unraveling something-perhaps painful, perhaps illuminating-but once I see it, there will be no turning back.

There is a strange pull in my chest, an almost magnetic force urging me closer. Is it curiosity? Regret? A longing to piece together something fractured.

The hooded figure watches silently as if it knows that I am teetering on the edge of revelation.

The warmth of the key in my palm becomes almost unbearable-like it too is urging me to act.

Then slowly I exhale and take the first step forward.

I step through the threshold and the world around me shifts like ink swirling in water. Shapes solidify-walls, furniture, the faint scent of old paper.

I know this place.

It's a classroom, late afternoon, bathed in golden light. The desk are empty expect for one, mine and sitting across from me is a girl-Clara.

The memory hits like a forgotten melody. I was seventeen. We had spent hours in this room debating philosophy, unraveling theories about fate and choice.

And on that particular evening Clara had asked me something something simple but impossibly weighty. "Would you change the past if you could?"

At the time I had laughed it off, brushing aside the question with some clever remark. I hadn't know-couldn't have known how much that moment mattered.

Because after that conversation Clara vanished. No note. No trace. Just gone. And now standing before me in the doorway of my own past, I watch as she looks at me-the version of her from that day, frozen in time. But this time something is different.

She sees me. Her gaze locks onto mine-not the memory of me but the present, the real me. "Theo."

The hooded figure had told me that this place is where unclaimed truths reside. That they were waiting.

But maybe this isn't just about uncovering a past memory. Maybe Clara never truly left.

My emotions surge in chaotic layers-disbelief, awe, fear and something deeper, something raw. I never expected to see Clara again let alone in a place like this.

My breath catches as I watch her-this isn't a memory playing itself out. She sees me. She knows I'm here.

There is a flicker of guilt beneath the shock, a quiet whisper in the back of my mind. When Clara disappeared, I had buried the ache, convinced myself that some mysteries were meant never to be solved. But now-now I have a choice.

A chance to understand what happened to Clara.

But an undercurrent of hesitation grips me too-what if she isn't real? What if this world, this corridor of lost truths is distorting something fundamental?

And then Clara tilts her head ever so slightly, as if sensing my doubt.

"You can still turn back." She says softly. Voice like an echo threading through time.

I clench the key tighter in my palm. No-I have come this far.

"No." I breathe, "I need to know."

And with that the walls around us begin to shift again.

The air around me distorts, a ripple forms taking me up. My feet are no longer on the ground.

As if waiting for the room to stop. I glance down, my feet once more on solid ground.

I'm still in the same room but a different memory. The hooded figure watching me. I look before me.

I see Clara smiling, beautiful Clara before me, waiting for answer to her question.

"Would you change the past if you could?"

I watch myself unable to say anything. No clever remark this time. The memory of this final encounter hitting me like bricks.

I shrug my shoulders, a complicate question that I am unable to answer.

This moment Clara doesn't see the real me. She only sees the past me.

The memory, the moment crashes down on me like a Tsunami. The last memory of Clara.

A tear slips down my cheek. I turn unable to look at Clara. A voice inside of me telling me to yell but I can't.

A question I won't answer is haunting me at this very moment. I want to say something. I am unable to.

I watch in horror as the last fleeting moment, a memory I wish to take back.

I watch as Clara leaves the school. Her long brown hair whipping in the wind. She turns back one last time. She smiles at me.

I desperately want to yell at myself to go with her. But something or rather someone is stopping me. Clara walks away from me. One last time is all I see. It all comes crashing down. Regret for not walking with Clara.

My regret eats at me as the final moment of seeing Clara is hitting me.

The memory fades away. The regret is there as I turn to the hooded figure but the hooded figure vanishes just like Clara.

The room begins to shift. No one is here expect for me. No one is watching me. My world goes black. In an instant I'm back in my apartment.

The memory of Clara is as vivid as the last time I saw her. The key is still in my hand. I open the book and put the key in.

I sit on the couch. I think about what I just went through, seeing Clara again. The last memory, the last moment. The regret of not walking with Clara. I begin to cry.

Outside of the apartment, the hooded figure watches, waiting for the right time to make her appearance known.