God, I love Aimee Bender.

"The Leading Man":

The boy was born with fingers shaped like keys. All except one, the pinkie on the right hand, had sharp ridges running along the inner length and a flat circle at the knuckle. They were made of flesh, with nerves and pores, but of a tougher texture, more hardened and specific. As a child the boy had difficult time learning to hold a pen and use scissors, but was resilient and figured out his own method fast enough. His true task was to find the nine doors.

Door one he found as a kid; it was his front-door key. He did not expect this because it seemed so obvious but one day he came home from school and was locked out; his mother, usually home, had just begun taking some kind of sculpture class and was off molding clay and forgot to leave a key under the welcome mat. So he was unwelcome, in his own home. He cried for a bit and tromped on some pansies as revenge and got so frustrated staring at the lock, such a simple piece metal separating him from his palace of food and bed and TV and telephone, that he stuck the index finger of his right hand inside. It shoved deep into the lock, bumping around, ridges trying to find a perfect spatial match. Nothing clicked. But he'd enjoyed the sensation so he tried the middle finger next. Too big. The pinkie on the left hand: too small; it wiggled inside like a wire. It was the ring finger on his right hand that slipped inside smooth as can be, easy as a glove, ridges filling the humps, and the boy settled it deep, rotated his entire hand, heard a click and the door opened cleanly. He was inside. He ripped his finger from the door and let out some kind of vicious, delighted laugh.

-Aimee Bender

The rest.

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