The Key Monster

Based on a true story.

The Key Monster

It was a Wednesday morning, and Arnie Morris was driving to work, shuddering. What was to become of him? He'd lost his keys, his plant security key, the transponder key to his beloved economy car, the keys to the shop's tool chest and tool cabinets! Each of those keys were one-of-a-kind and there were no replacements available, not without cost, and in each case, there would be dire consequences!

The lost keys problem was just today's new issue. Every day, every night, it was something. If there were no new problems, Arnie desperately re-hashed the dozens upon dozens of other crushing things that in their totality, weighed down upon his consciousness like a battleship resting on a pea.

Of course, the lost key set really was a problem. The car in question was in his garage awaiting a rebuilt cylinder head for the engine. He had invested a lot of personal labor and several hundred dollars in getting the work done, but the cost of replacing the only transponder key would be enough to scrap the entire project, and the car. There would be no way to start the car to get it to a dealership, no way to finish the work afterward, unless he had it towed a distance both ways. At work he would be in hot water for losing the security keys and especially the one-of-a-kind keys. Locksmiths would have to be paid to open cabinets and replace locks. With the sour economy and his tentative position at work, not to mention his nasty supervisor, it could be enough to get him fired.

And it was such a simple mistake. Arnie carried three sets of keys, including two that both held copies of the ignition key to his “beater”, the car he currently depended on to get back and forth to work, and two keys to his house. He had two sets so he wouldn't be stranded if he lost one. But he had to lose the third set! And he had no idea where they'd been lost. He'd called the grocery store, the Quikee-Mart, everywhere he'd been since yesterday when he'd locked up at work.

So today's monster was the Key Monster. There was also the Bad Weather Monster, the Car-Breakdown Monster. The Tax Monster, the House-Fire Monster, the Ex-Wife Monster. Although all of them had potential to become serious problems, none of them were, yet. But Arnie, as you must have gathered, invented or imagined possibilities, always negative, almost continuously. Yes, a fearful man, unfit to fly a plane full of people, or even to participate in a carpool.

At age thirty, Arnie had already spent half of his life working. Raised by a well-intentioned single mom in a small town, he'd never had a father around. So there was no one to emulate, no rules-maker to stand up to, and no one like himself to consult, beyond a busy and overworked part-time mother. The impact of it had been unrecognized by everyone, and Arnie's mother thought he'd turned out alright in spite of it. Truth be told, she had no idea.

So Arnie struggled through each day. To anyone else he just looked like an average man, walking from the parking lot to the plant. To Arnie, escaped lions from the zoo were skulking behind parked cars, and blazing, building-sized meteors were speeding his way from outer space. Background radiation from cell towers bombarded his brain, starting tumors that would no doubt cause excruciating pain, and result in his death. Live shells from a coming revolution crashed in the streets around him, exploding with extreme violence. He could feel the concussions and saw concrete shrapnel being driven toward his body. He even saw the shape of the piece of broken cement that killed him, gray, multifaceted, oblong and shard-like, tumbling toward him in slow-motion. Of course, all he could do was to watch it tear a ragged, gaping hole in his chest.

He reached the plant door and made his entrance, mentally pushing it all back for easy access later, perhaps over lunch. Concentrating on his work was the one thing that Arnie did have handled. Without the job, the battleship would at last crush the pea, and Arnie's life would be over. It was just part of his personal belief-system. Everybody has one.

But the day wasn't nearly the trial Arnie had imagined, because of the keys. His bitchy supervisor must have gotten laid the night before, because she simply chuckled and told him to call security to see if anyone had found and turned in his keys. It turned out, the tool chest and cabinets weren't locked, a detail his fearful imagination had overlooked. A new security key would be issued at the end of the day if the keyset didn't turn up. Of course, that didn't resolve the issue of the lost transponder key to his beloved older economy car. The call from security that someone had indeed turned in his keys, did.

Arnie hurried off to the security office to collect his keys. A haughty woman behind the counter looked him over, and noting his anxious expression, demanded his identification and slapped a form on the counter to be signed, acknowledging receipt. “Try to be more careful,” she scowled. “Lucky for you someone turned these in. They were found outside the plant. We would've had to change all the main locks!”

“I will,” Arnie replied, apologetically. Then, he drew up his six-foot-two frame and let go with a mighty sigh.

But alas, the Key Monster was not yet gone.

Arnie headed back to the his workshop, thinking. He hadn't realized he was so vulnerable to a catastrophe like that one. What if it happened again? How could he cope? The Monster prodded him with the usual sharp pitchfork. “It's gonna happen again,” it hissed. “And next time, they'll be gone forever!!” So with that issue nagging at his brain, Arnie finished up for the day. At no point in time did he even feel foolish for the worrying he'd done. Hadn't it all been justified? He really might not have gotten his keys back!

It was late in the afternoon, and Arnie had been driving home. But now he watched in horror as a school bus just three cars in front of him was struck hard by a speeding fuel truck. The bus driver had seen it coming fast from his right, apparently intending to run right through the red light, and he had cut the steering wheel hard-left in an attempt to avoid a collision. The bus heeled over just before being struck on its right front corner. The impact turned the heel-over into a fall-over, and it was obvious an oncoming vehicle also slammed into the fuel truck, after it did.

Arnie froze only for a split-second, as he observed its contents nearest the rear emergency door; the bus was on its side and fully loaded with school children. He slammed his transmission into park and was on the way through his car door before his hand was off the lever. He was the first to reach the bus, by far.

While pedestrians gathered in gawking groups on the sidewalks, only Arnie was tugging at the emergency door on the rear of the bus. The impact with the pavement had been enough to tweak the body of the behemoth bus just enough that the door wouldn't open. The bus was lying on the side with the main door, and he ran around to see if the bus was new enough to have emergency exits on the top. It was, and there were. But the driver must have been injured and the children were too young to know how to open them; there were no exterior handles. The big fuel tank of the truck had been ruptured by the second impact of a construction vehicle, and fuel was flowing freely down the slight grade beneath the bus. Without thought or hesitation, Arnie climbed the suspension and gained the top, which was the left side of the capsized bus. He waved children away from a window and then kicked it in, and quickly climbed inside. Then he opened the three emergency exits on the roof, and worked his way through the children to the rear emergency door. Shooing the children aside, he vaulted the two rearmost seats and delivered his full body weight, feet-first, against the door. It gave, but didn't open. The second hit, however, knocked it clear, and it landed on the pavement behind the bus.

By this time, people had lined up behind the bus and were helping children to exit. Arnie shouted, “Keep the group together and get them away! Well away!” Then, he began carrying or helping the children that were too small or too frightened to move out of the bus alone.

Soon the children were all evacuated and had been moved as a group to a point about a hundred meters away. Arnie noted the bus was filling with smoke, and it smelled electrical. He went for the driver and found a middle-aged man, who had been thrown against the bus door at impact, and then had been knocked unconscious by the toppling of the bus. Arnie wrestled the man over his shoulders and carried him out, with some difficulty, past the tops of the seats, walking on the windows that were against the pavement. As he approached the door, the flowing fuel caught fire, and orange flames soon roared up around the bus. The clear picture of Arnie carrying the driver through the emergency door amid flames made the front page of every major newspaper the next day, right alongside the photo of the blackened bus, taken after the fire had been put out.

There had been no serious injuries to any of the children, just bruises and abrasions. Had Arnie not acted as quickly as he had, it seemed likely the outcome would have had a very different conclusion. People were slapping Arnie on the back and congratulating him. A reporter soon had him identified, and attempted to corner him. She asked, “Weren't you worried about the danger, didn't it seem foolhardy to do what you did?”

Arnie looked at the reporter with genuine incredulity, and frowned. “Are you serious? What about the danger to the children?”

It would be the only statement the press would get. A police officer approached and asked Arnie's name. “I don't want you to have it,” was his simple reply. “I just want to go home and get some supper.”

The cop placed his hand on his weapon in mock seriousness, held out his other hand and said firmly, “License and registration, please.”

“What?”

“Your car is parked in the street. License and registration.”

Arnie smirked as he extracted his wallet and handed his license to the officer. “I think you'd better forego the registration. It's in the glovebox, and the car's a little tied up right now.” Both men looked over at Arnie's third-hand Olds, which was surrounded by firehoses and firemen. It looked like the paint on the hood was a little singed by the heat, as well. Everyone else had moved their vehicles, but Arnie had been a little too busy.

“Arnold Morris,” the officer noted, handing the license back. “It's all I wanted to know. You should be a cop, you know that? You would make us proud. That took some guts.”

Arnie shook his head. “Guts, nothing,” he answered, “Anybody would have had to do that. Anybody. There were kids in there.”

“Okay, but they didn't. You did. Tell you what, how about meeting us over at Herlihy's in about an hour? We'd be honored to buy you a couple of beers.”

Arnie smiled. “I don't drink.” But then, more cops joined the conversation and the friendly banter started. It was unlike anything Arnie had ever been exposed to, and he felt like more of it. So, he assented.

A couple of hours later, he was seated in a large downtown bar with no fewer than twenty street-dressed police officers, a couple of cold ones into it. Everyone was talking and laughing.

“Hey Alan,” one of them said, “Tell us again about the coolest thing you ever heard anyone say?”

One of the bigger officers stood up, and offered, “Well, as you know, I used to be a truck driver.” Hoots and jeers followed. “There's nothin' wrong with driving a truck! Anyway, my buddy and I had a full load of chicken crates on, headed for the packing plant. I was drivin', my buddy Adam was just along for the ride. We were coming down a long hill that ended at a 'T' intersection.” He looked right at Arnie. “We were supposed to stop!”

“About halfway down the mountain, I realized that my brakes were out. Not completely, but there definitely, definitely was not enough braking power to stop that rig. I wasn't all the way down in low gear, either, and we were moving too fast to drop it. I didn't want to get it coasting, you know? So the intersection is usually pretty busy, and I told Adam we wouldn't be able to stop. I'm workin', pumping the brakes and trying to get us slowed down. I'm thinking, maybe we can make the left turn, but if anybody's coming, we're screwed! So about thirty yards before we hit the intersection, I yell to Adam, 'Quick! Look both ways, and see if anything's comin'!!' I glanced over at Adam, and he wasn't looking anywhere, but right at me. He says, cool as ice, 'Does it really fuckin' matter?' ”

While the cops, who had heard the story a few times before, were laughing it up, Arnie was sitting back in his chair with one arm over the back. He was expressionless as he circled the top of his beer mug with one finger.

“So, was anything comin'?” The room erupted in hearty laughter.

“I'm here, aint I?” Alan laughed.

“Adam, Arnie and Alan! You stooges must all be related! Coool as ice!”

Arnie looked at his glass, a half-smile on his face. If only they knew.

A little later that night, Arnie was delivered to his front door by police cruiser. He'd made up his mind to look more closely at the police academy idea. He knew very well it wouldn't be like an evening in the bar had been, but they had convinced him that he had what it took.

A man had grown up that day. He finally left behind all of the petty fears that most young men resolve during puberty. But they were, at last, resolved.

There was just one small thing still bothering him. He strolled out to the garage, opened the door, stepped inside and opened the door to his car-in-waiting. Then, he took the transponder key from the recovered keyring and put it into the car's ignition for safekeeping.

The Key Monster was dead.

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