The piano that ate the key.

She panicked.

In a fluid moment of poetry and slapstick comedy, the one and only key to the grand piano that stood for ages, aloof and lonely in that dark auditorium, slipped out of the key hole, slided down the shiny ebony lid and disappeared through the yawning slit widening as the slippery inkblack keyboard cover shut. It disappeared into its dark abdomen, shocked into silence by the unfortunate turn of events that it could not foresee coming. Nothing save a muted "clink" was heard as it landed somewhere on the floor of its obsidian cavity, along with the muffled thud as the cover closed and the slit slided shut.

"No...!"

Don't panic, she tells herself. The silent audience of the empty auditorium drew in a sharp, soundless breath in frightened anticipation - the deed was done.

Denial reverberated across the walls... she realises that she is alone. Nobody will know as long as I can somehow slide my hand deep enough - ungh, oof - through this slit.... as long as I can keep the lid half-opened ... ouch - the hand in a selfless act of heroism strained tight against the lips that with any slight miscalculation threatened to disembody it.

The fingertips felt nothing but dust. She gave up.

The half-lit stage oozed a brooding sense of danger - the kind that shrouded Sir Gawain the Green Knight every time he entered brooding forests on the errands of his King.

Now she is in for it. She had specific instructions, from the Principal, no less, who had kept the key to the grand piano in his personal key box for safe-keeping that afternoon, and now the nefarious thing has swallowed it!

At 9pm, brainjuice calls Mr Chong, the jaga who laughingly promised her before she fled the scene of the crime that he will dismantle the grand piano and find the key. Sure enough, as he unscrewed the lips of this monster from the dark, what he found was intriguing: along with a hammer, a $50 note and a washing machine, was a shiny, innocuous, baroque styled little piano key.