five: i'm so expecting these keys to lead to some cells in his basement

The group faces a rediscovering of a mystery of the keys.

     Matt made his way into the entrance room of blue base, car keys in hand, ready to head out for lunch. The room was setup to resemble a waiting room, with reception just across the way. But the vibrant walls that reflected the diversity of the company made it a cozy setting for the staff to migrate to the equally colorful collection of seating arrangements.

     Gathered were Tanner, Woods and Patrick all chatting around a coffee table. Matt looked over and registered that everyone was sipping from plastic cups that had colorful straws poking out from them.

     “Hey, Matt,” Hannah greeted while walking over to lean against reception. In her hands was a drink just the same as the others.

     “Did y’all go get slushies without me?” Matt wholeheartedly joked while continuing to the door. Even though he was the CEO of the company, whose logo hung high on the wall next to the window, didn’t mean he was left out from any form of gathering. He took good care to make sure he maintained a healthy and vocal relationship with all of his peers.

     “No, CJ brought in like, a bucket of it,” Woods pipped up between slurps.

     “Oh, where’s he at?” Matt looked down the hall that lead to the half kitchen setup.

     “Right here.” Matt turned and saw him sitting behind the reception counter.

     “Oh geez, I didn’t even see you there,” Matt let out a chuckle and placed his hand over his chest.

     “Yeah, I tend to blend into the background,” CJ let out in a monotone voice, yet it still felt lively to hear.

     “That’s kind of true,” Samantha entered into the area with a red box in hand, “even in pictures I swear you are a photobombing champion. An imperfect unison laughter came from everyone.

     “I’m just sneaky as all. There’s a bunch of containers of slush in the freezer, was BYOB at the gas station today. Wasn’t worth going out to eat something hot in this heat. Help yourselves.” He sunk back into his chair before becoming a part of the background again.

     Matt nodded an approval and dropped his keys into his pocket. Moments later him and Samantha joined the group with sweating cups in hand. Samantha set the box of keys on the table and an uncanny silence fell over the room, muting the laughter, conversation and slurping of everyone unanimously.

     “I thought we were done with these,” Tanner gave a condescending look at Matt. He always acted as if he was the hotshot of the studio, often times challenging Matt to stoop to his level of immaturity. Everyone loved it though, and knew for sure that at some point he must have been the class clown to a lucky teacher.

     “We were,” matt started as he stirred his bright red slushie, “but Samantha here decided that we didn’t do a good enough job.” He outed her with ease.

     “I didn’t actually get a good look at these, but I love keys,” Patrick broke the harmonious silence and slid the box in front of him to inspect.

     “That sounds really, suspicious?” Tanner questioned his own word choice and let out a laugh.

     “It’s not weird or anything, I just like collecting them. I have a box back home of keys.” Patrick turned the knob and opened up the metal box to reveal the heap of keys. Everyone responded to his strange comment with stares. He looked up to see may furrowed brows. “It’s not weird! I swear!” “Anyways,” Samantha reached over and grabbed a key out of the box with a blue plastic tag attached to it. “I put up a blog and asked what everyone thought about us finding these keys, and someone had a suggestion, so I thought we’d take a closer look at them.”

     “What kind of suggestion are we talking about?” Woods was pressed back into the sofa with his chin lifted up and eyes reddened. It was hard to tell if he was exhausted, or they were irritated from doing woodwork without wearing eye protection. Or possibly even… ‘allergies’.

     “So, someone said we should look closer at the papers in the tags.”

     “Those things suck to take out, like for real, once they’re in, they’re in.” Patrick put in his two cents. Again everyone stared at his lumberjack type build. There always seemed to be something off about him in the way he said things.

     “Dude, you’re looking more sus by the second,” Tanner poked at him.

     The group started to break out into separate conversations of empty accusations, slushie slurps and sifting through keys.

     “Okay, so since there’s so many of us, and we have an expert here,” Matt nodded at Patrick, “we should be able to look through them rather quickly. So Pat, what’s the easiest way to look at these?” Patrick rolled his eyes and shook his head. But eventually he reached into his pocket to pull out a thin knife.

     “This guy brought a knife to work, I’m so expecting these keys to lead to some cells in his basement,” Tanner stood up and theatrically distanced himself from Patrick. He let out a laugh and the rest of the group joined in, all but Matt.

     Matt was as big a fan as any when it came to picking on Patrick, especially when it came to accusing him of being the reason that so many sectors of the company had failed after he was placed into them. A warm body is a body, right? he always thought to himself.

     Together they pulled all of the keys that had tags on them out and left the rest in the box. After watching Patrick demonstrate how to slightly bend the tags to slide the tip of a knife under the paper and use your own nail with it like tweezers to pull the paper out, Hannah went to the kitchen to grab additional knives.

     “And another blank one,” Woods plopped a fourth tag with a blank back onto the checked pile. Everyone that was pitching in was careful not to damage the papers and to return them back to their respective cavities.

     “Are we getting paid for this?” Tanner asked.

     “No, you’re on lunch,” Matt said without looking up, remaining focused on prying another piece of paper up from a blue tag.

     “Then why am I even doing this?”

     “I’m helping feed your curiosity, how’s that for pay?”

     “Doesn’t sound like the contract I signed, but okay.” Tanner threw down another tag and picked up a red one. “This one is blank, should I even check it?”

     “Leave no stone left unturned,” Matt became monotone, the mindless task numbing him.

     Tanner scoffed before digging his knife into the tag. “Whoa, wait a minute this one, I think it actually has something on it,” he became more careful with his extraction method.

     “Wait really? What is it?”

     “Hold on, let me get it out.” Tanner got a strong grip on the small white paper and pulled it out slowly. Once halfway out and at the perfect angle you could see from the backside that something was indeed written on the opposite side.

     The stiff paper plopped out of the slot and revealed a handwritten word on the back that was vaguely legible.

     “This handwriting is atrocious,” Tanner held it close to his face to read. “Mountain something. Mountain three, no, O, O, N?”

     “No that’s an R, and those are E’s,” Patrick said it as if confirming it.

     “So, mountaineer?” Samantha asked.

     Matt took the paper and looked at it closely. “Yeah, that’s something.” He looked over at Samantha and gave a nod. “But what or where exactly is mountaineer?”

 

Author's Note

**Brief disclaimer** This is a re-imagining of a preexisting story that contains real persons. For the sake of receiving entertainment from a new source, the story being presented is NOT 100% cannon with what is seen in the collection of videos provided by the Matthias YouTube channel. This written story is rather an alternate universe and should be treated as fiction. Please view the complete disclaimer in the chapter selection of the book here:
https://www.writerscafe.org/writing/dominicrosales/2767991/