Beneath the Loafers

"The moment you start hiding evidence of the things you've done is the moment you admit you already know what they are."

Leaving the suitcases I'd packed at Karen and Chris's cottage sitting in the boot of the car, I pushed through the front door with the particular heaviness of someone carrying weight that had nothing to do with luggage. The familiar surroundings of my home offered no comfort—just walls that had witnessed too many lies, rooms that knew too many secrets.

My feet carried me toward the bedroom without conscious direction, autopilot engaged whilst my mind churned through the wreckage of the morning. Karen's face as the Portal swallowed her. Chris's desperate lunge through the threshold after his wife. The cottage standing empty now, tea going cold on the kitchen table, their carefully constructed life interrupted mid-sentence.

The wooden door of the built-in wardrobe protested as I slid it open—a rattling complaint that seemed to echo the disquiet in my chest. The sound was familiar now, a herald to the ritual I'd developed without entirely meaning to.

I dropped to my knees on the bedroom carpet, the fibres rough against skin that seemed oversensitive today. My fingers found their way past shoes I rarely wore, pushing aside loafers and boots and a pair of sandals Jamie had bought me years ago that I'd never liked but couldn't bring myself to throw away. Beneath the accumulated footwear lay what I was looking for.

The small square of carpet lifted easily, revealing the metallic surface of the floor safe. The metal was cool against my fingertips, grounding me in the physical whilst my thoughts scattered in uncomfortable directions.

I inserted the key, and the mechanism yielded with a loud, resounding clank that seemed too dramatic for such a small space.

The lid swung open to reveal the dark interior, and despite everything—despite the disaster of the morning, despite the lives I'd upended, despite the growing weight of what I was becoming—a smile spread across my face. Involuntary. Unwelcome. But undeniably present.

What the fuck is wrong with you?

The question surfaced and I shoved it down, focusing instead on the task at hand.

Karen's keys went in first—the distinctive jingle of her house key, the fob for whatever car she drove, the smaller keys that probably opened sheds or gates or the countless practical necessities of rural life. Then Chris's set, heavier, more worn, the keys of a man who worked with his hands and kept things running. Their wallets followed—Karen's slim and practical, Chris's thick with receipts and the accumulated debris of transactions.

I placed them carefully alongside the collection that had been growing over the past days.

Jamie's wallet. The leather one I'd bought him two Christmases ago, still in decent condition despite daily use.

Paul's keys. The familiar keyring shaped like a piano, a gift from one of his kids.

Glenda's small purse, containing her ID and credit cards and the photograph of her late father she kept tucked behind her driver's licence.

Kain's wallet—young man's wallet, thin, mostly empty of cash but heavy with cards for stores he'd probably never visit again.

The sight of them assembled together triggered something complicated in my chest. Pride and revulsion, tangling together like snakes I couldn't separate. My collection was growing. Each item represented a person I'd brought to Clivilius—some willingly, some less so. Each was a tangible marker of control, of influence, of the power I was accumulating over lives that had been ordinary until I'd intersected them.

The cash I'd been stockpiling was diminishing faster than I'd anticipated. I could see the dwindling stack, a constant reminder that this path I was walking had practical limits I hadn't fully calculated. Money was finite. People's patience was finite. The lies I was telling would eventually collapse under their own weight.

But for now, the collection grew.

"Mementos," the word slipped from my lips, a whisper that filled the quiet bedroom with something that felt uncomfortably like satisfaction.

The term usually conjured images of holiday souvenirs, pressed flowers, ticket stubs from meaningful events. Cherished tokens of experiences worth remembering. But here, in the dim light of my wardrobe, surrounded by the stolen belongings of people whose lives I'd rearranged without permission, the word took on a different character entirely.

The initial rush of power—that brief, intoxicating flood of feeling like I was doing something, like I was building something that mattered—crested and began to recede. In its wake came something darker. Something that turned my stomach even as the smile lingered on my face.

"Mementos," I repeated, and this time the word tasted different. Sour. Incriminating.

I stared at the collection. Keys and wallets. The personal effects of people who'd trusted me, or at least hadn't expected me to steal their lives along with their identification.

Serial killers kept trophies.

The thought arrived without warning, and with it came a wave of revulsion so strong my stomach actually lurched.

"I'm not a fucking serial killer!" I spat the words at the safe, at the keys and wallets and credit cards that stared back at me with the particular silence of objects that had witnessed too much. My voice bounced off the wardrobe's wooden interior, returning to me hollow and unconvinced.

But what was I, then? What category did this behaviour fit into? I was collecting the personal effects of people I'd transported to another dimension, keeping them locked in a safe beneath my shoes like evidence hidden from investigators. The parallel was uncomfortable enough to make my skin crawl.

They're not dead, I reminded myself. They're alive. They're in Clivilius, building something, surviving. This isn't the same.

But the justification felt thin, stretched too far to cover the truth beneath. I hadn't asked Karen before the Portal took her. I hadn't asked Kain before I pushed him through. The line between recruitment and abduction had blurred into something I couldn't examine too closely without feeling sick.

The lid of the safe closed with a definitive thump—a sound that marked the end of the immediate task but the beginning of something I couldn't so easily seal away. I turned the key, its click locking away more than just physical items. Some part of my conscience joined them in that metal box, buried beneath the carpet, hidden from view.

I covered the safe, smoothing the carpet square back into place, scattering shoes across the surface in a pattern that looked natural. A superficial burial for actions that deserved deeper interment.

Rising to my feet, I was left to confront the person I was becoming. The wardrobe door slid shut on its track, enclosing the space in its familiar darkness—a darkness that felt uncomfortably like a mirror.

"I'm not," I reaffirmed to the silent room, the words a defiant whisper against the weight of evidence suggesting otherwise.

But the rattling of the wardrobe door as it closed seemed to answer me, an echo that carried doubt I couldn't quite dismiss. The isolation of my secrets. The growing burden of my decisions. The collection hidden beneath my shoes that nobody knew about, that nobody would believe if I tried to explain.

I stood there for a long moment, staring at the closed wardrobe, feeling the carpet beneath my feet and the keys to the safe still warm in my palm.

Mementos.

The word wouldn't leave me alone.

Neither would the question of what, exactly, I was collecting them for.