Micro-Monday: Welcome Home

The Latchkey – Part III

A cracked porcelain child's mask with a painted smile and single glowing orange eye emerges from darkness. Long, skeletal fingers with too many joints grip a wooden doorframe beside an old brass key. Dark, textured horror illustration.

You’ve been sitting in the same position for three hours now. That’s fine. Comfortable chair, good book, nothing urgent to do. Except you can’t remember deciding to sit down, and your legs have gone numb.

The room feels different. Not wrong, exactly. Just… adjusted. The lamp is on your left now, isn’t it? You could have sworn it was on the right this morning. And there’s a cup of tea beside you—stone cold, skin forming on top—that you don’t recall making.

You should stand up. Stretch your legs. But you don’t.

Your phone buzzes. A text from your sister: Are you okay? You sounded weird earlier.

You didn’t speak to her today. Did you?

The front door is open. Just a crack. You can see the hallway from here, the wedge of darkness where the streetlight doesn’t quite reach. How long has it been open? You should close it. You should definitely close it.

But you’re smiling now. You can feel it stretching your face, pulling at muscles you’d forgotten you had. It doesn’t feel like your smile. It feels like someone else’s smile, borrowed and badly fitted.

There are black smudges on the wall beside the doorframe. Finger-shaped. Long and flat, as though something with too many joints pressed itself against the paint.

There’s a key on the coffee table. Tarnished brass, old-fashioned. You’ve never seen it before.

You pick it up.

It’s warm.

Behind you, something small and stiff settles into your favourite armchair. You hear the creak of porcelain shifting, a faint rattle that might be keys. You don’t turn round. You can’t turn round.

Your sister texts again: Please answer me.

You type back: Everything’s fine. Never been better.

Your fingers move across the screen, but you’re not telling them to. The smile widens. Something in your chest feels hollow, scraped clean.

In your peripheral vision, you catch a flicker of movement. Child-sized. That painted-on smile that never changes, even when the mask cracks.

The door swings open a little further.

You don’t look up.

You just sit there, smiling, as it twitches its way across the room to sit beside you.

Welcome home.

Read other stories in The Latchkey Anthology

On the Fringes of Reality