The room smells, faintly, of gingerbread and gym socks. It is smaller than an average sized bedroom, but large enough to be a sizable walk-in closet. A dim light creeps forth from a lamp in one corner, and a spider hangs down from a shining line of thread near the far wall.
Walking into the forest, eye-level branches slap lightly at my face, not hard enough to hurt, but just enough to be annoying. The birch trees are not full grown and only a few are starting to lose their leaves. The only sound is the constant ticking of a clock.
The trail is not the product of human travel, and it follows a meandering path, over brush and vines, sometimes disappearing altogether, only to reappear after ten or twenty steps.
The water flows through the culvert at a rate just short of raging. The canal which runs through this culvert is a diversion of the runoff from the floodwaters which came from the heavy rains this past week. The water is muddy, but fresh.
An empty Pepsi can catches my eye in the moonlight, strangely trapped against the side of the canal in a small whirlpool, uncrushed.
The key is unshiny and used to be silver, although now it looks more black. It looks like a mail key or key to a chest or small padlock.