This is the response to this weeks girlontheedge six-sentence story prompt KEY. This one features Jane, and it is inspired by Jumanji, The Magicians, and the way that childhood gives you a strange contrast of the sharpest and fuzziest memories of your entire life.

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Jane hadn’t been to her grandfather’s home since she was twelve years old, the summer passed away, and for the most part her memories were a confusing blur that bled together with those of lemonade and warm summer days.

There was one thing that she could remember though, in picture perfect clarity, the case that sat in the room at the end of the hall on the third floor.

She had been allowed to roam the house at will, do what she wished, but that one room she had been forbidden to enter, and being a good girl she had managed a whole three weeks, before she tried the door only to find it unlocked.

It was empty, save for a single case sitting in the middle of the floor, the keyhole taunting her, and though she looked each summer from her first at a mere six years old, to the last when she was twelve she never found a key, or forgot about the case.

She tried to put it out of her mind, for which was mostly successful until the day of her 27th birthday when she received the letter from her grandfathers estate, full of warnings, woe, and an ornate silver key that she knew in an instant opened the case in the room at the end of the hall on the third floor.

As she looked around at the carnage that surrounded her, blood dripping down her face, she felt the key digging into the flesh of her hand as she desperately clenched it in her fist, and wished more than anything that she had taken the time to read the letter more carefully before she opened the box that had destroyed everything she held dear.

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I just want to take a second here to apologize for not responding to comments the last two weeks. I have read and appreciated them all. I just got a new job, and I have been pretty dead at the end of the day, barely getting these out. I will however make sure I take the time to go through them all this week, and to take a look at some of the other lovely six-sentence reponses!