Fiction: The world of keys

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He had a number tattooed on his wrist, which by its opacity, it was presumed the amount of time he had it tattooed on his arm. Some, with sharper tattoos than him and with longer numbers, walked hurriedly by his side, smiling, shouting, with their bodies erect and with a particular smell of cleanliness. On the other hand, those who, like him, had blurred numbers, could be recognized from afar by their hunched bodies and a sulfurous odor that denoted the age of the bodies.
He was man number 2201. His face was yellowish, grayish; his extreme thinness was such that he looked like a shadow, vague and non-existent, blurred; he walked with a hesitant, slow, sorrowful step that recalled all the lives he had had. That's why you could recognize his past and by the multiple keys he wore around his neck.

In that world, only if you managed to accumulate the number of keys tattooed on your arm, you could obtain the last key: the one that opened the last door of the last life you had to live. The man 2201 carried 2200 keys, which indicated the 2200 doors he had opened and, therefore, the 2200 lives he had lived.

He took a trip back in time, when he got his first keys. At that time his body had a different posture and a fresh smell, he also had many friends. The keys were easy to get:

First lives are good, but not so much fun, he heard some classmates say, with a mischievous voice and a jocular face.

They tell me there are lives where you don't have to work and just eat and sleep. Is that true? -The man nodded, but added immediately:

_That may be good, but there comes a time when it's super boring and you get tired.

But the 2201 man saw nothing negative in that and wanted to open the door to that life. So he lived for months without working, only eating and sleeping. He remembered his childhood life, when he didn't have to do anything at all. "Living without responsibilities, attached to others, can be rewarding," thought the 2201 man with satisfaction. But unlike in that life, here the 2201st man was grown up and watched the hours pass him by sleeping. Then he closed the door and opened another on the recommendation of others:
_There's a great life, where you don't work either and it's full of partying and splurging. You don't sleep because at night people are still awake and you lose track of time.

Man 2201 was tired of sleeping, so this life seemed pertinent to him.

I've slept enough, so I won't mind staying awake. I'll open that door. And so he did. He opened the life of nocturnal creatures that squandered sleep, money and his youth. It was at that time, the 2201 man recalls, that he began to smell that acid smell, that smell of open pipes: without a doubt, his body was getting old.

Then, the 2201 man began to live all the necessary lives, without wasting much time on them, only the indispensable. So he lived the life of a millionaire, the life of a compulsive worker, but as in the previous lives: there were good things and bad things. He also opened the door to the life of a lover and although he would have liked to live permanently in that life, his companion, who was woman 3052, decided to end it one day:

_You don't realize the mistake and the trap. The younger we get, the greater the number of keys we must obtain. Our life should be more accelerated, without stopping too long in each experience, because otherwise, we will never reach our goal," exclaimed woman 3052, who still smelled of flowers and new, and had very few keys to her credit.

The detail of that is that after leaving a life, you could not return to it: the doors after closed could not be opened by you. So that was the only life in love that the 2201 man had. There were also other lives in which he wanted to stay longer, but he found it difficult: like the life of a father, of a friend, of a pupil and teacher. With each life, his body became more and more bent and his skin transpired that smell of withered leaves and rotten wood, unmistakable proof of the passage of time.
So, then, returning to the present, the 2021 man walked towards his last key. When he stood in front of the door, his bony, calloused hands grasped the key hastily. The corners of Man 2021's mouth were turned down, his eyes were dull and his hair was thinning: in short, he was greatly diminished. However, when the last key opened the door, man 2021 sighed with a sigh of pleasure as one who has walked a long way and at last arrives home.