The Lanyards

A Short Story

Written by Jovanna Huguet Burke

The conference lanyards lie where I left them. Twenty-seven, if I count carefully. Though they knot together so tightly they might as well be one long cord. One long vein. One long noose.

I once saw them as proof I was inching closer. A badge for each door I pushed open. A promise stitched into a Japanese crepe suit.

Now they watch me. The plastic name tags, filmed with dust, click together whenever the window opens. Hollow, tinny…like the applause of ghosts.

Most I keep in the top drawer, though it never shuts all the way. A few remain scattered across the desk. They will not stay buried.

I refreshed my email sixteen times this morning. Each time: silence.

Until—ding.

An email. The lanyards stared at me, as though they knew before I did.

Lame news: The network doesn’t think it’s character-driven enough. The comedy’s too hard.

Classic. Rejection. Never good enough. Never good news.

I leaned back, exhaling hard, my gaze drifting over the heap. Some lanyards were frayed, edges curling; others stiff, still glossy from their first trips. A few tangled like veins, a nest of nylon that threatened to strangle if I reached in wrong.

I remembered the first one I saved: a film festival badge with my name, clipped to a black cord. I had pinned it to my corkboard like a talisman. How full of hope I had been.

Now they only remind me: I’m still here. Still waiting. Still watching the world pass me by.

My phone buzzed. A text from my business partner: Keep your head up. We’re closer than you think. Don’t give up.

I exhaled, long and slow, until my throat burned. I typed back something cheerful, every exclamation point a lie. The lanyards rustled when I shifted. Almost like laughter.

I grabbed a few from the desk and shoved them into the drawer with the rest. Pressed down with both palms, tried to force it shut. The cords resisted. Each push snapped back against the edge, mocking me.

“You’re making fun of me, aren’t you?” I whispered.

The words startled me. What if they were? What if these badges of hope and failure had grown a mind of their own? What if they were watching?

I leaned closer. The nylon twisted tighter the longer I stared. For a moment, I swore I saw them writhing—like snakes, coiling, tightening, waiting. My fingers hovered above the heap, trembling, afraid to touch.

A laugh bubbled up, dry and nervous. “Stop it,” I whispered.

Perhaps it reached them. Perhaps it didn’t.

I sank back into my chair, panic curling in my chest. They know. They know everything.

And then…another intrusion, a voice from deep inside, unwelcome, ricocheted in my mind: “You just need one yes. Don’t give up.”

It should have been comforting. It should have reminded me that persistence matters, that hard work pays off. Instead, it scraped like sandpaper across my nerves. One yes. Just one. No shit.

I wanted to shout the truth, what I feel in my bones: I already have the yes. It’s the one that refuses to arrive.

The drawer seemed to hum at me. The lanyards pulsed under my gaze, colours sharpening, mocking. Each badge whispered: We are your yes. And still, you are not enough. Never enough.

Never.

A bitter laugh rips out, jagged in my throat. Keep going, the world said. Keep your head up. Keep going…

Keep going, my ass. 

It’s all I’ve ever done.

Frustration floods my hands. I open a new email and begin typing in the body: Why not me? Why not me? Why not me? Over and over until the words smear, dissolve, blur.

Blurry-eyed, I stare at the stack of business cards on my desk: years of panels, networking, conferences…beckoning me. The same hands that type the emails reach for them. Restraint snaps.

I scatter them across the desk. Input each name into the CC line. Scratch them out in blue ink. Tear. Scribble. A ledger of every maybe. Every not now. Every door slammed in my face.

The leftover lanyards on the desk twitch. Approving? Mocking? I can’t tell.

I lift a bundle of lanyards from the drawer. Heavier than they should be. My palms tingle, remembering all the polite nods, all the smiles that never became doors.

Whispering beneath the rustle of nylon: We’ll let you know… Not the right fit… Maybe next year…

I drop them. The plastic tags clatter across the desk and wood floor. The whispers linger. They know. They always knew.

For a moment, nothing moves. The air feels too heavy, as though the cords themselves have sucked the room dry. Then, faintly, the heap shivers—no more than a twitch, but enough to make me freeze.

I tell myself it’s gravity, the weight of plastic tags settling. But the sound is wrong: not a fall, but a slither. A drag.

I take a step back, needing distance, but the lanyards follow. Or maybe I step into them. Either way, two cords are already knotted like snakes around my slipper.

I pull. They resist. I tug harder. Too hard. The knot cinches tight around my foot.

The cords start to move now. For real. They slither up my ankle. Then higher, winding, dragging against my skin. My breath stutters. I kick, stumble, but the nylon bites back, looping my ankle, my calf.

It feels impossible…its just fabric, just plastic…yet it coils with purpose. Tighter around my waist. My ribs. My lungs.

I gasp, claw at the cords, shaking, thrashing, but every movement seems to feed the knot.

I am tangled. Covered. Claimed.

I keep pulling. The lanyards snake higher—around my arms, knotting into my hair, draping across my shoulders. They resist, tightening with every jerk.

Panic spikes. Then shifts. Fury floods in.

I yank. I tear. I throw. Nylon and plastic whip through the air, snapping like gunfire against the walls. My fingers bleed, skin split by polyester bite, but I don’t care. I spin in the storm, laughing, sobbing, choking all at once.

The lanyards don’t fall away. They circle back, cling tighter, like they refuse to let me go. And in that binding, something shifts again. The fury burns out, leaving only fire.

“ENOUGH!” I scream, my voice torn raw. “I’M DONE!”

The words tear through the room, through me.

For the first time in months…maybe years…they land.

They feel real.

The cords twist, constrict, crawl higher, but I don’t fight. Not anymore. I bare my chest, my throat, my whole trembling body and let them take me.

The chaos swallows me whole.

And as it swallows, I am unmade.

And as I am unmade, I become something else.

I am the storm. I am the heap. I am the knots, the tangle, the fire in ink, nylon, and frustration.

The room is wrecked, shredded lanyards in heaps, torn business cards smeared across the desk like confessions. I crawl among them, dragging strands across my arms, weaving a crown, looping a rope, draping a shroud.

The cords don’t just cling. They fuse. They fuse with me.

They are me.

I am them.

“I’ve joined them,” I whisper. “Or they’ve joined me.”

“Never again,” I say. Calm. Deliberate. “I’m free.”

My chest rises and falls. My eyes close.

The cords tighten, loosen, pulse. The lanyards are alive. I am alive. I am the heap. I am the yes that never came. And now… I am free.