‘The Key Bearer’s Parents’
— Andrew Sargus Klein
I read this short story by Siân Griffiths in American Short Fiction soon after it was first published in January of this year, and I wasn’t ready for it. Trump’s inauguration was a few weeks away and everyone and everything around me was in a varying state of numbness, shock, and teeth-cracking rage. The narrative is heartbreaking and simple, with clear themes of war, class, parenting, and existential dread. But I wasn’t really ready for it so I filed it away in the “Wilds posts” folder. But the clowns and their son had wormed their way under my skin. When I reread it recently, this stopped my heart:
On the news, the talk was all nuclear war and how to avoid it. The broadcasts filled with the whole ‘key bearer’ plan. Ethicists argued that war would be less likely if some kind of key were implanted in a person’s heart. What president wouldn’t pause if he had to stab the bearer to drop that bomb? The president, they said, must be the first to bloody his hands.
I don’t really know what to say now, other than these words seem to only glow hotter, more magical in their terror. Every week’s worth of news pumps a little more blood into this story, and I can only hope its fictiveness doesn’t turn inside out into a headline, an unending list of casualties.