The sparse, unrefined, yet comfortable, lodgings, appeared before him in pulsing increments.

Firstly, the floor in front of him appeared, where his left leg paused in its stationary position.

Next, the bed appeared, still disheveled, but reassuring in its disarray.

Finally, the surreal, shrouding bubble popped, and blew it’s shell outwardly, exposing the remainder of the room to Tristan’s vision.

It was tranquil, smelled of dusty wood, and future, moth-potential linens.  The room was cool, relaxing, in its simplicity, and soothing in its lack of anxiousness inducing stimuli.

Tristan reached up to touch his brow, and discovered that he was sweating profusely.

His physical reaction to the environment didn’t match the cool, calm environment that he was experiencing.    He took his hand from his face, feeling agitated,  and tensed the muscles in his arms.

He tried to draw his right leg forward, but found that it had, curiously, laid anchor in the floorboards.  He wrenched, and pulled, and twisted his hips forcefully, attempting to dislodge his leg from its phantom tether.  He contorted, shifted, and made intense efforts to power through the ghostly impediment.

Tristan was frustrated, so he lunged to the side, his legs still rooted, and drove down into the mattress with his left fist.  The mattress caved, as Tristan’s body curved towards the depression made by his punch.  At the same time, Tristan’s right leg surged from its unexpected confinement.  The awkward physical realignment caused considerable corporeal confusion, as Tristan’s left leg remained rooted in an extended lunge.

To counterbalance,  as his body swung around from the pivot around his still stationary left leg, Tristan drove his right fist, forcefully, into the mattress, with equal intent to stabilize his contorting imbalance, and with hopes to stabilize his equilibrium.

Curiously, upon striking the mattress with his right fist, his left leg came unstuck.

He heaved a sigh of relief into the mattress, mere inches from his face, then shook his left leg out, testing his mastery of its functionality; following that, he tested his right, finding it responsive to his sensory requests.  Tristan needed little incentive at this point to continue towards the bathroom, so he pushed his torso off of the mattress, and proceeded.  Upon returning to stable verticality, he pressed each weighty foot forward, ignoring the pull upon his musculature.  Every step towards the bathroom was considerable progression from his prior stagnation.  He willed his lower limbs towards the small hallway, then to the door to the bathroom, then to haul himself through the doorway, and to place himself, once again, facing a mirror.

Tristan breathed deeply, attempting to calm his shaking nerves. He reached towards his chest with his left hand, and placed his fingertips into the still bleeding gap.  He curled the tips of his fingers inwardly, then lifted the panel of flesh, once again, outwardly, to the left.

The leather band was still wrapped around his fingers and circled around his wrist.  In spite of all the recent tumultuousness, he had made sure that it had stayed close to him.

He drew the key towards his fingers by gently pulling the leather strap towards his palm with his fingers.  After a few deft draws, he was pinching the half-moon shaped head of the key between his thumb, fore, and middle fingers.  He raised his right arm, and twisted his right wrist, turning the hand that held the key, inwardly, and towards his face.

He beheld the strangely shaped key, for a considerable time.  He noted the four prongs extending to the left, and the two extending to the right.  He observed the small orb at the end of the key.  It was a unique, curiously shaped, and yet intensely, and uncomfortably familiar, object.  He twisted and turned the key, vivid memories mimicking Tristan moving the key in the same way, and holding his chest open in the same manner, flickering rapidly in his mind.  The motions and imagery were almost identical, but Tristan knew that the environments differed considerably.  They shifted so quickly, that Tristan, couldn’t pinpoint how many times he had potentially been in the same position, only that he sensed a poignant reality to each glimmer of cryptomnesia.

Though the rooms temperature was temperate, Tristan shivered.  He couldn’t be sure if his recent experiences were causing him to feel intensely uncomfortable, or if a phantom recollection was reaching into him with cold, ghostly tendrils, attempting to freeze his resolve.

He clenched his jaw, and drew a heavy breath in through his nose, then forced it out through his nostrils.  His focused his eyes on the mirror in front of him, eyes burning with passion, intensity, and determination.

Tristan moved the key to where it hovered, perpendicularly, over his left pectoral.  He turned and shifted the key, so the teeth of the unorthodoxically engineered unlocking implement, matched the appropriate gaps.  He had to press through unexplained resistance, by tensing the muscles in his right arm to slowly force the key into the hole. He heard a loud, metallic, scrapping as he inserted the key into the strangely shaped allowance in the panel of his chest.

Tristan breathed in deeply, held his breath for longer than most could bear, then turned the key.