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Nine Tenants, Eight Keys
mystery◐ Mature5 contributors · 3 paragraphs deep
Edda steps over the warm threshold and into the burned house. The fire crew waves her back, but she pushes upstairs to room 9. The door is locked. She tries each of the eight keys the landlord saved. None of them fit. The ninth key is gone.
Edda gets the fire chief to break the lock. Inside room 9 the air is cold and stale, like the fire skipped it on purpose. On the wall hangs a calendar from eleven years ago. Every day is crossed out up to one date in October. After that, nothing.
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A possible continuation
Edda pulls open the closet under the dead calendar. Inside, neatly folded, are eleven years of birthday cards, all addressed to Dahlia, all unopened. One card a year, eight signatures each. They kept writing to a woman who never came to read them.
AO
Amara Okafor
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