The Wishmaker’s Key

A trio of disturbing tales that hold a mirror up to your innermost fears, and that shine light on the bleakness of the human condition. Join us today for the first of these horrific stories, starring Richard Bankins, a milquetoast layabout who wishes to change his ways. A chance encounter with a mysterious stranger might just give him the supernatural impetus to do so.

Everyone has a story hidden behind the locked door of their soul. A door that can only be unlocked by… The Wishmaker’s key!

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The Internet Falls

The internet was down.

The fucking internet was down!

Richard wiped sweat off his forehead as his eyes flicked between the red light on the router and the Netflix error message. He shovelled in a few more Doritos for a dusting of courage. The new episode of Picard would be out by now — and yes, true, he despised the show and believed it ruined the legacy of a something he was too young to have ever watched, but still! He loved to hate it, and that meant something.

And now… Now no Picard. What a cruel twist of fate. What had he done to deserve this?

The key! Of course, it had to be the key the old hobo had given him yesterday. Richard had flicked the scraggly bearded man a dime as he’d left Walmart. The man caught the coin in a dirty palm and rose from his nest of threadbare blankets as if Richard had charmed some kind of human looking snake.

“Many thanks, friend, for the cents. Now let me do you a favor in return.”

Richard thought the flash of silver to be a gun and had raised his hands, squirmed, begged for his life. But it was a key! A key as large as a good-sized child’s hand.

“Make a wish on this key and there’s a decent chance it’ll come true.”

”You’re kidding?”

”I kid you not.”

Richard had taken the key, partly out of fear, mostly out of curiosity. And later that evening, after binging The Last of Us for a third time and declaring on IMDB that it was overrated and overhyped, he made his wish.

“I wish I wasn’t so lazy and so addicted to the net. I want to go out and meet people. I want a real relationship, be it friendship or love. But I’m a compass pointing towards the magnetic north of the internet and I just can’t look away.”

Now, as Richard stared at the red light of the router, he thought of the key and knew his wish had been granted.

He was free. Totally free of it! Like a genie who had wished itself out of bottle it’d fallen inside of and then corked up. Free!

The world was his oyster.

Where would he go first though? The gym? The park? A walk in the woods? A nice soak at a hot spa perhaps?

A hot spa…

A hotspot?

He pulled out his phone and quickly, dextrously, set up a network.

Soon Picard was dottering through space and Richard was typing up his comments for Reddit.