Object, Place, Trouble

The Last Boat Has Gone

Dear writer,

This week’s three prompts were a brass key, a pier in the fog and the last boat gone. I set a timer for twenty minutes, and this is what I wrote. It has a few rough edges, which is the point.

Ana reached the end of the pier as the ferry’s light slid into the fog. She stood there with the brass key in her fist, the one her brother had pressed into her hand an hour before, saying only that she would know what it opened. The water slapped the posts below her. Behind her the town had already put its lamps out.

A man was sitting on the bench at the end, wrapped in a long coat, with a flask between his knees. “You’ve missed it,” he said, as though she might not have noticed. “There’s no other until morning.” She asked him what the key opened. He laughed so quietly that she almost did not hear it, and told her it opened the boathouse he was sitting beside.

She had not seen the boathouse. It was only a darker piece of fog, a few steps off, with a small door at its foot. She put the key in the lock and it turned as if it had done so yesterday. Inside, on a table, a lantern was already lit, and a note in her brother’s writing said: Wait here. I am coming by water.

That is as far as the twenty minutes took me. If you want to finish it, you could start with who is coming by water, and why her brother could not simply meet her. Send me your ending if you write one.