How I Found a Keyholder Ch. 04

And then, time started inching past. Once more, there was an astonishing feeling to be so completely exposed: sitting naked on a bench in a university hallway with a large sign above my head showing my name and phone number in block letters. If anyone walked by this time, they wouldn't just see me, they'd know who I was.

I had a lot of time to think about that, but by the time I'd been locked for about fifteen minutes nothing had happened. In fact, I felt like I was the only one in the building.

Of course, just then, I heard footsteps off in the distance. My heart skipped a beat - even though I'd been "caught" the past couple times, I was obviously not used to it.

The footsteps came towards me from a distance, but turned into one of the other hallways. Straining my hearing, I heard a door open and close. I was safe this time.

But still, I had a lot of time to kill, and now instead of playing out various scenarios in my head I started to give a closer examination to my surroundings. I was near the end of a hallway, so if someone came towards me, I'd have about thirty seconds to have a heart attack before they got down to where I was. I laughed to myself: it would be a lot quicker if someone just came out of the door right across from me!

I looked at the door which I assumed was for a classroom. Probably weren't any students in there at this time of night, even if they were processing their lab results.

Then my eye caught something I hadn't noticed before. Right above that door there was one of those familiar upside-down domes. There was a security camera right above the doorway I was facing. It had been filming me all along. I looked up above me, at the sign with my name and phone number that it had also been recording all along.

That almost gave me a panic attack. Oh shit! I'm going to get busted for sure!

But there wasn't anything to do but wait, and slowly, I began to relax a bit. Well, there's probably no one watching the security camera of a hallway in the basement. Probably. I thought back to Sir's comments when I saw that security camera in his building's exercise room. "Most places never look at their surveillance footage... it just goes into a laptop... they keep the footage for 21 days, then it's automatically recorded over... pretty much never gets checked, unless they were looking up a break-in or something... if you don't hear anything in a couple weeks you'll be fine..."

That gave me a vague sense of hope. Plus, I considered the fact that Sir had deliberately chosen this spot, and he probably wasn't trying to get me arrested. Probably? Maybe? A lot of places had fake security cameras to act as a deterrent, maybe that was one of them... I mean, what's it protecting? Sir came and installed these screw eyes... maybe he put up a fake camera at the same time.

That sort of gave me a sense of relief, but I couldn't get myself to believe it entirely.

Off in the distance, a door opened, and there were footsteps again. Probably that same person I'd heard before leaving. The echo of the footsteps sounded like they were coming closer to me before they faded into the distance.

The last fifteen minutes really dragged by as I kept looking up at that camera, turning over the various arguments in my head as to whether it was real or not. I figured once I was unlocked, I could at least go over to it and get a closer look.

Finally, the loud beep echoed through the hallway indicating that the timer was done. I was so relieved, I made a hurried twist with my right hand to hit the button to release the lock, and as it released, my arm made a jerking motion to slide the clasp of the time-lock out of the screw eye.

I was in too much of a rush. The padlock keys, which had been locked the time-lock's clasp, came loose and clattered to the floor, bouncing away from me.

I was still locked with my left wrist, so I couldn't just get up to grab the keys. They had both bounced on the floor, landing several feet over to my right. I stretched out my right foot, but it was well short of reaching. I hunched forward, sliding my butt to the edge of the bench and I was still short.

I did a sort of awkward shuffle-walk forward, my left arm now stretched out about as far as it would go from the wall, hunching my hips up as my butt moved off the edge of the bench. My right foot was still a few inches short.

This was starting to get frustrating. I stretched out my foot and swept it back along the floor, trying to sweep the keys back toward me. One swipe, missed. And again. Third try my foot just reached and whisked the keys back. My arm was getting uncomfortable so I moved back and settled myself back on the bench. I looked down. There was a key on the floor below me. I managed to reach down and grab it, and seconds later my left arm was released.

Finally! I can get out of here!

I stood up and walked over to the locker, moving to put the key in the lock. It didn't fit. Of course! There were two keys... one for my the lock on my wrist and one for the locker. I looked back over to the bench. Where did that other key go?

Where did that other key go? I was so relieved to have gotten the one key when I managed to sweep them back from my feet that my brain forgot about the other one. I must have swept it under the bench.

So, quickly I was down on hands and knees, looking at the grungy floor under the bench. The light was dim down here and I had to sweep my hand through dust and litter looking for it. I had assumed it would be right there, but after looking for a minute I couldn't find it.

That triggered a bit of a panic, as I realized that without that key I couldn't get my clothes. And my phone. And my wallet... and my apartment keys.

Oh, fuck!

In a panic, I flicked through all the debris under the bench again. No key. I started again, but I realized that I was freaking out and not really noticing anything. I leaned back on my haunches, closed my eyes, and took a deep breath.

I paused, and tried to think. Okay, if it's not under the bench, where would it have gone? I tried to reconstruct the scene from a few minutes ago in my head. The keys had landed about here... my feet had reached out to here... I think? I sat on the edge of the bench, propped myself up with my right hand and stretched out my left hand behind me. then I crept forward as I did before, finding the spot where I was stretched out about as much as I could have been. My foot was sweeping for the key here, then, and it would have pulled it back and about this angle...

I looked down and over to the left of the bench. It could have gone over there. I got down on hands and knees, looking at the floor. For the first time, I felt chilly, now that the rush of being locked up was gone. I lowered my head, looking at where the lockers met the floor. At least it couldn't have gotten underneath the lockers.

I started analytically ranging out from that spot beside the bench, slowly moving further outwards from it and looking in all directions. No point in rushing it, better to be thorough. About ten minutes later there was still no sign of it.

A black cloud of defeat started pushing down on me. I went and sat back down on the bench, trying to ward it off. I had been down here for well over an hour by now and no one had come past. How much longer could my luck hold? And what if I can't find the key, what do I do then? Try and get home? Naked and with no money, no keys, no phone? That wouldn't work. Fuck, I might as well go right to the campus police and get arrested. Was there any sort of plausible lie I could come up with? They'd figure out I wasn't a student... how could I even explain why I was down there? And anyway, it's all on camera, I thought, looking once again at the camera dome on the ceiling. Fuck, I'm done. Just done.

My head slumped. The corner of my eye caught a glint. I squinted and looked over at the locker on the opposite wall, a few feet over from the door. I stood up and strode over, bent down and picked up the key. I looked back at the bench in confusion. How the hell did it bounce all the way over here? My brain started to set up the situation like a physics problem, trying to think how it could have bounced in this direction and...

...and off in the distance there were footsteps.

No time to analyze these lab results! I thought to myself without a trace of irony. I flung myself back over to the locker with my stuff in it, quickly getting it open. Once more, the footsteps trailed off in some direction away from me, but I still got dressed as quickly as possible, packing the bondage supplies back in the duffel bag. I closed the locker and grabbed my camera, still sitting in front of the door. I was so caught up in the surveillance camera I forgot that I was also recording myself for Sir. I wonder what he will think of this little misadventure?

And then I was trying to remember how I got to this far corner through the maze of basement hallways. A couple minutes later, I found the staircase I had emerged from and started up.

Near the top, I stopped dead in my tracks. My shoulders slumped. I turned and went all the way back to where I had been, grabbing the posterboard off the wall with a tearing motion. A couple older posters underneath were pulled off and tumbled to the floor. I should have paused to tidy them up, but I just wanted to be out of there, so I made my way to the stairs again.

By the entrance, the same nerd that had spoke to me when I came in looked up at me again. "I assumed you were going to the leisure lab," he said. "I went down there, but I didn't see you."

I was hoping that the awkwardly-folded posterboard tucked under my arm didn't look conspicuous. "Nah, I had my own hidey hole... trying to get these numbers crunched," I said, trying not to wince as I realized how dumb that sounded.

But once again, he seemed to accept that reply and quickly I was through the doors and outside. trying not to look over my shoulder to see if campus security was waiting for me, I made my way back to my bike and got on.

I didn't relax at all until I was well off the campus. Ah shit, I thought to myself. I didn't remember to look and see if that security camera was real after all. Oh well.