I stared with great interest as the pigeons attacked the old man. They didn't really have much in the way of weapons but they were trying their hardest. Round beaks and relatively harmless... can they even be called talons? Even if they'd managed to tear off a part of the leathery codger they'd have required ingesting a large amount of grit to break him down. I pondered this as I finally walked away. How had I reached this age knowing how the digestive system of a pigeon works and yet still could never find the right key on the keyring in under three tries. Hell, I only had five keys.

 I often wondered where the fifth key came from as it certainly wasn't related to any lock in any house past or present. I think it may have been on the keyring when it was given to me but I paid so little attention to everything the landlord said that I have to pick a random number each month and pay that as rent. Somehow this system works for both of us. Either that or he died... which might explain why nobody ever came to fix the cooker. I have found a workaround by leaving the kitchen window open and only eating pot noodles.
 
 I stare at the key as I ride the bus in the completely ridiculous circle that drops off old people in places they have no purpose or right to be. It's always the same though... a small crowd of them drift off towards the gasworks, some to the rendering plant and the rest... I don't think they ever get off the bus. I try to stop worrying about what they're up to by scratching my initials in the glass of the window. The bus driver notices but does not care because at least twenty schoolchildren are clustered around his little bullet-proof cell patiently awaiting the chance to swarm upon him and apparently harvest his organs for the black market.

 I get home and, on the fourth try, get through the door. I trip over a heap of free papers and skid several feet on a heap of impossibly shiny takeaway menus. For a moment I contemplate whether they use the same material to construct them that ski-jumpers use to gain those crucial extra feet. Either way I hit the wall. My forehead soundly taps the nail upon which a former resident must have hung a picture... probably a bad watercolour of the seaside purchased in the most landlocked square-metre of land on earth.

 As I try to staunch the majority of the bleeding I notice something under the peeling a paintwork. I pick at it absent-mindedly. Much to my confusion I find a keyhole.

 After rapidly losing interest I go and make a cup of coffee and a pot noodle while holding my breath right up until the kettle's about to click off. Then I have to blow as hard as possible to get the gas clear of the little internal spark that would destroy my flat, the flat above, the gasworks and probably all life within a four-mile radius. I eat my pot-noodle and an hour later realise I've left my coffee in the kitchen and it has gone cold. I also mistakenly added the little sauce packet to the coffee.

 I stand in the hallway drinking mango chutney-flavoured coffee and stare at the keyhole again. Out of a sense of incredible boredom I stick in the mysterious key, turn it and groan in utter misery as the wall opens up to reveal a magical kingdom.
 
 "Finally you have come to save us" said some kind of half-goth, half-donkey.
 "Look, I don't need this... I've got to go to hospital tomorrow to get a pretty serious ingrown toenail treated... Just tell me how to shut the door and we can all pretend this never happened" I sigh.
 "But... the Witchqueen..." the thing begins. 
 "Look, do you want my foot to get infected? Is that what you really want? You want me to lose a toe?" I ask.
 Little bastard doesn't have an answer to that. I try to close the door. He gets his hoof in there but after a couple of slams he thinks better of it.

 The doctor isn't nice to me at the hospital and I think they all took the piss out of me while I was unconscious and wearing the backless gown. Someone stole my clothes so I have to ride home on the bus wearing the clothes of an old man who had recently died. I suspect he may have died wearing them. I get home to find a four-mile wide crater where my house used to be and a very angry mob.

 In court it is later claimed that someone had tried to light a cigarette off the oven in my kitchen. I have this vague feeling I may have forgotten to lock the magical land. The only solace I took was that apparently their magical land was just as flammable.