Solo RP Actual Play – The Box and The Key

This game was made as part of Fix Your Hearts Or Die, a game jam tribute to the late, great David Lynch. I decided to continue honoring the artist by doing a solo playthrough of this game. The Box and The Key. I decided to play 10 scenes, regardless of where I ended. I also told myself to play intuitively, using the prompts and going with whatever emerged from my subconscious, the same way Lynch talked about his creative process of being open and letting it happen. I lightly tried connecting things when it felt natural, but otherwise, I let things happen.

Scene 1

Character: A mute journalist

Set: An oil rig

A man opens the rusty door into the shared bedroom of oil rig workers. The wind from the storm howls outside. He says nothing, and he doesn’t belong here. The man searches for something. Drawers slide open, and the mattress is upended. He spies the vent near the ceiling. He unscrews it. It comes off. He reaches in. He finds something. When he pulls his hand back, there is a palm-sized blue box in it.

Scene 2

Character: A lost teenager

Set: A hospital

A teenage girl sits in the common room of a hospital psych ward. Her dirty blonde hair hasn’t been washed in days. She wears scrubs and has an ID band on her wrist. Her wrists are bandaged. She sits in a worn, upholstered chair.

There is a television mounted in the upper corner of the room. On it, we can see the scene of the journalist examining the box. The girl is anxious.

Oracle: Guide Information

Another girl with a shaved head wanders into the common room. She wears an identical outfit and ID band. The shaved head girl asks where the exit is. The overhead fluorescent lights flicker and hum.

Scene 3

Character: A lost teenager

The mute man from the movie continues to explore the oil rig. The beam of his flashlight sweeps over the rooms which have collected dust. He hears a sound skittering across the floor. He pursues and catches a door swinging shut. 

He pushes the door open and finds a teenage girl huddled up in the corner, frightened out of her mind. She clearly hasn’t bathed in a while. Her eyes are wild and wide.

He makes a move towards her, extending his hand. Hesitates. 

Scene 4

Character: An alcoholic boxer

Set: A wheat field

In the background, a car has rolled over. Tongues of fire lick up into the night sky. 

In the foreground, a man sits in a wheat field, compressed by the car. The man is in bad shape. His eyes are heavy and dark. Blood is smeared across his face. 

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his wallet. He looks at a photo of himself and a little girl he’s holding up. The man wears boxing shorts and gloves on his hands. People are smiling and happy around him.

Where did she go? he wonders.

Scene 5

Character: A banker in a hurry

Set: A doll shop

A man who looks like a boxer hurries from his car parked on the street to a dollmaker’s shop. It is early evening, and the sun beginning to set.

The shop clerk is staring at a small television behind the counter. She is watching a movie set in an abandoned oil rig. She looks up with hazy eyes when the man rings the bell. 

He explains he’s on lunch break from his job across town at the Main Street Bank. He’s looking for a birthday present for his daughter. She’s turning…he tries to remember, 10 he thinks it is. The girl loves dolls, and he wants to give her a doll house.

The clerk directs him to the back. A sign above the door reads “House Showcase”. The man pushes through the red curtains and finds seven tables with doll-sized buildings. 

The camera leaves him and pushes behind a lovely mid-century farmhouse. In the synthetic wheat field behind it, there’s an overturned car and a doll of a man sitting.

Scene 6

Character: A betrayed lover

Set: Deep in the forest

A woman rushes uphill. The ground is muddy. She slips and steadies herself against the forest trees. Behind her, we can see water lapping against the shore. It must be cold; she wears a thick winter coat. Her eye makeup is tear-smeared down her cheeks.

There’s a patch on the jacket—“Black Peak Energy Co.” The words are over an image of a mountain with a black diamond at the top. 

The woman pulls out her phone. She angrily calls someone.

”He was a reporter! He lied to me!” Pause “He’s on the oil rig now. He took my boat.”

Scene 7

Character: An anxious actress

Set: Deep in the forest

Prompt: “Swallow this secret, quick.”

A woman in a beautiful red dress stumbles through the woods. She looks strangely like the woman we just saw. This woman has had her hair and makeup styled nicely—or it was. She now looks like a mix of classic glamour and frenzy. 

In the background, we see the orange-red glow of a fire. That light grows dimmer as she approaches the edge of the forest. There is a farmhouse, just like the dollhouse version, but full scale. The woman makes a mad dash despite the limp that makes her grimace. She bangs on the door.

The door opens. A filthy-looking old woman stands on the other side of the threshold.

The glamorous woman says, “I was just in an…”

The old woman shoves something into the glamorous woman’s mouth. 

“Swallow this secret, quick,” the old woman rasps.

Scene 8

Character: An insomniac dentist

Set: A cemetery

Prompt: “This song reminds me of a dream”

The middle-aged woman closes the door to her office in the town square. The sign reads “Henderson DDS.” She checks her wristwatch. It is late—11 p.m.

The dentist drives beyond the city limits of her small Midwestern town. She finally stops at the gates of a cemetery, steps out of the car to push the gates open, and continues walking in. 

Eventually, she comes to a stop at a particular headstone. The woman kneels down and then lays across the ground, her body directly over where the deceased is buried six feet beneath. Her ear is pressed to the ground.

“This song reminds me of a dream,” she remarks to no one. She is finally able to sleep.

There are flames in the distance near an old farmhouse across the plain. 

Scene 9

Character: A banker in a hurry

Set: A highway ramp

Prompt: “Red, somewhere red.”

A car’s hood is crumpled against the wall of a highway ramp. Steam boils out of the crushed engine. Black oil leaks onto the pavement. The banker stumbles out of his car. A stream of blood pours across his eye. 

He checks the backseat. The farmhouse doll house he bought has been crushed in the accident.

“I’m going to be so late.” He starts staggering down the highway, adjusting his tie. The blood keeps coming. It covers his eyes.

‘I’m going somewhere. Red, somewhere red.”

Scene 10

Character: An overwhelmed housewife

Set: A doll shop

Prompt: “I’m sorry. I’ve been dead since this morning.”

A nicely dressed woman enters a toy shop. She asks the shopkeeper, an elderly woman, if she could answer some questions about her daughter, who has gone missing. 

The old woman rubs her eyes. It is early in the morning. “I’m sorry. I’ve been dead all morning. I didn’t get my cup of coffee.”

The woman shows her a photograph. It’s the girl from the psych ward who was watching television. 

“My husband bought our daughter a doll house from your shop years ago. She’s fifteen now. It was the only thing she seemed to care about even now. She went missing, you see,” the mother explains. “I’ve spoken with all her friends. I thought perhaps she’d visit here…”

Her voice trails out in a sign of exhaustion.

The old woman’s eyes are heavy. “I’m sorry. I haven’t seen her, dear.”

The end