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Nine Tenants, Eight Keys
mystery◐ Mature5 contributors · 3 paragraphs deep
Edda goes straight to the ledger. The landlord, old Mr. Halloran, hands it over with shaking hands. Nine names, nine signatures. But the ninth name, in room 9, is smudged, like someone wiped a wet thumb across it on purpose. She can't read it.
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.
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A possible continuation
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.
SV
Sasha Volkov
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