A Three Inch Splinter

His thumb slid slowly over the embossed 'YALE' logo, and he allowed
his head to fall in measure until it bounced gently on the cushioning
hinge of the grey-planked door. Christ, she had really fucked him over.
He already knew she'd changed the locks on the house, but sorting the
shed too! This really was taking thoroughness to new levels of
perversity. Perhaps the locksmiths had some kind of three for two offer
on, and she was just too penny-wise to see the bargain pass?

He brought both hands up to lean flat against the door on either side
of his head. The cold released weight of the ball bearing clipped fob
fell loosely as he did so. Time sped up and stopped as the newborn
pendulum found its equilibrium. His left hand slipped down a little
across the uncertain texture of the damp-dry-wood-mould, leaving a
semi-permanent residue to mark his trailing palm. He could feel the
dirt. He did not look, but he knew that if he did so, he would see it.
He could cave in now, give up, collapse completely, and there he'd be
with dirt on his hands. It would be there. He knew that. It was
certain.

But he was not going to cave in, or give up. He was going to get into
the shed. That was why he was here, why he had come, or rather he had
come on the pretext of acquiring some jemmy item or other for the
purpose of completing some necessary task. He had forgotten the exact
nature of either. All pretexts had been consigned. A pretext is an item
used for the realisation of an obstacle that is actual. An obstacle is
that which prevents progress. When encountering an obstacle that is
actual, the immediate is of sole concern and pretext becomes redundant.
It was gloriously simple. He was going to get into the shed. This
barring from the most dilapidated outhouse of his former kingdom was
just too much to take, too much for any man, at least, that was what he
told himself. He liked it. It had the ring of an honest man affronted
(and was it not true?). It certainly worked for him.

The doing though, would require some significant thought. The
web-misted windows were all fastened tight. He had run his fingers
along the bottom of the frames tugging beneath the centre of each, but
the only thing that gave was the dry rotten wood of the frame itself as
a three-inch splinter came away in his hand with a small flurry of dirt
and the crumbled curls of fragmenting white paint. A sardonic smile
passed its course across his lips as he admired the handful of his
conquest. He could take this splinter home and she'd never even miss
it. He could take it and own it completely. It was his. It was in his
possession. His fingers closed about the coarse grain and he kicked at
the base of the shed with a gentle prodding motion. Christ, there
wasn't much more than paint, rust, and microbiology holding this old
shack together anyway.

In truth, he hadn't much fancied a contorted clamber through the
undersized window; it had been a silly idea, what with that protruding
knob from the catch that would inevitably leave its sentinel mark
though some injury or tear. Then there was the possibility of
discovery, of her coming home, and him legs akimbo, franticly jerking,
with the creaking frame bouncing a broken waltz on his arse. Worse
still, he might get stuck, and she (or worse, he) would find him hours
later in a desperate handstand with a problematic stain on the grey
wood beneath him, the source of which could be directly traced to
somewhere just below or above his belt line, depending on your
perspective. And what if they couldn't get him out? They might call the
fucking fire brigade! He returned his attentions to the door.

He leant beside it, looking at the incongruous sheen of the lock from
sideways on. There was something about the look of it that left him
with a most unpleasant feeling. What was it? He wasn't sure. He moved
one hand to cover the lock so that he could no longer see it. He had
thought about force. He had thought a lot about forcing it. He was sure
that it would give easily enough. Yet he had rejected the notion.

Perhaps he was worried that the whole door would come away at the
hinge, that the silvery lock would remain, a gleaming defiant amongst
the ruins of wood? Perhaps it was the thought of damaging the lock that
put him off? The lock that was hers and theirs alone: he having no
claim upon it at all. Or maybe it was the idea of force in itself that
was unattractive to him? As if in destroying the doorway, the entry too
would become a most brutally diminished and sickly pleasure: in short,
a corruption. He still held the three-inch splinter, but now he placed
it in the right-hand pocket of his dark woven Crombie. There was
definitely something of ubiety in the look of that lock.

As his fingers unwrapped themselves from the thing he felt something
small, flexing and wiry. He pulled out a paper clip and slowly started
to straighten it. It seemed both obvious and unnatural. Perhaps the
instant reaction of a returning drunk who can't find his key did not
feel so straight in sobriety? Still, he continued. When he had
fashioned a crude tool that feigned linearity he pulled himself to
stand face-on to the door and closed in upon the lock with a
purpose.

It slipped into the keyhole cleanly enough. He felt it contact the back
of the lock and he started to move it around. He began with slow subtle
movements, wooing the mechanism with his clumsy pin. Every so often he
would push on the door with his shoulder, but the movements never
exceeded the physical elastic of old wood and hinges. He became
impatient and increasingly firm, but still the lock remained
intransigent to his touch.

His head fell back against the door in abjection, resting so he was
looking at the lock once more, sideways on. He brought his right hand
to rest against the outer frame of the door. It was new wood, and the
grain was rough. He pushed himself back instinctively as the woody
fibres serrated his skin. As he did so he felt a slight movement, a
hint of give. It was hardly fuck all but definitely something.

Though his right hand was now a little sore, he returned to the frame
with both. Standing now to the far side of the door, he tentatively
pressed all eight tips to its inside edge, resting the padded tops of
his palms on the outside. He pulled back with all his presence and
weight, and then again, and again. Each time the upright twisted a
little further away from it's parent structure. The old grey wood gave
way to the nails, which clinging to the walls of their respective holes
found its material lacking. The dry wood of the shed wall creaked as
the desperate nails finding themselves a little too skinny for their
holes, grudgingly surrendered to the moment.

There was now a good quarter of an inch between the upright of the
frame and the rest of the shed, and peering into the space he could
clearly see the mortise' curving towards the security of it's inner
tenon. He reached into the inside pocket of his coat. He pulled out his
wallet and opened it, looking for something hard and thin, and
preferably of low value. He settled upon his RAC card, and returned the
wallet to its place. Crouching slightly, he peered with one eye into
the gap, guiding the card beneath the nearest nail, and angling it
upwards into the mortise. A little shove and it juddered. The card
flexed at the force. Harder and nearly, the transparency of plastic
whitened with stress. Again! It juddered, then shrank in its shell
allowing the card passage and blocking its return. The card was held
now, by the spring of the mechanism, and he released it. A nudge of the
shoulder and the door opened inwards, freeing the spring and causing
the plastic card to tumble a haphazard descent to rest face-up on the
dusted curled edge of the stale red lino within.

As he entered the shed he was relieved to see that virtually nothing
bar the lock had changed. The paint she chose still sat beneath the
worktable upon which nails rested secure in their continuing status of
unemployment. His plant pots and seeds, his spade and fork, his barrow
propped upright in the corner, it was all just as he had left it.
Pushing the door to, he turned and sat on the old ammo tin by the
watering can. He pulled the three-inch splinter from his pocket,
running his fingers down the grain, and then, well, well nothing. He
thought. That's it -all he did. He just thought -about the aboriginal
witch doctors and their stomachs full of stones; about Roman slaves
whose work on huge treadmills would power mighty pumps, and he wondered
how his persona might settle with the indigenous peoples of New
England.