you are here
Nine Tenants, Eight Keys
mystery◐ Mature5 contributors · 4 paragraphs deep
Edda holds the smudged page up to the morning light. Under the smear, she can still feel the dents the pen left in the paper. She rubs a pencil over it, like a kid doing a leaf rubbing. Slowly, letters rise out of the gray: D-A-H-L-I-A.
Edda says the name out loud to the survivors: 'Dahlia.' Every head snaps up. The crying woman gasps. An old man mutters, 'You shouldn't have found that.' For the first time, the eight of them look less like victims and more like a group with a shared secret.
↔ version 1 of 2 of this paragraph — hover its sides to flip. The card below is what happens next.
What happens next?
2 ways forwardVote share across the top 2 branches
A possible continuation
The old man finally breaks. 'Dahlia died in this house eleven years ago. Fell down the stairs in the dark. We were scared they'd blame us, throw us all out. So we buried her in the cellar and just... kept paying her rent.' Edda has her answer.
ED
Elif Demir
9 votes · future 1 of 2