Young and in Love - Wenclair

Ommision and Admission

It was a mishap, clearly. The wrong letter got delivered to the wrong place at the wrong time, and exactly the wrong thing happened to cause the outcome. 

Enid had just gotten home from a late night study session, her hands filled to the brim with hefty textbooks and her book bag filled with what she could not carry, nearly contorting her spine into something unnatural. She sighed, exasperated, as she remembered her key was in her left pocket of her jacket, and tried to juggle the textbooks so she could grab it.

Of course, the fates had other plans as all her belongings came crashing to the ground.

She screwed her eyes shut, digging her teeth into her bottom lip to try and quell the frustration bubbling up and could only hope no one down the hall woke up and were about to ream her- or worse- as she leant down to collect her things.

Among them, was a small post it note with nice handwriting and a tiny key.

All it said was:
For a rainy day.

There was no return address, sender or other information on the blank envelope and she briefly wondered if it belonged to Wednesday as a spare. She slipped it back into the envelope, and left it at the door.

it was a skeleton key- worn and weathered and antique looking, and she furrowed her brows as she picked her things up and unlocked the door with her own key, sighing in relief at the warmth of the room beckoning her to pass out and sleep away the days worth of mental and physical stress.

She thought about the key, subconsciously twisting air between her thumb and index. It could be belonging to a student who accidentally dropped it, or even one of the janitors. Plus, it was common sense to not go touching random things in a school filled with supernatural creatures. Or, to touch any random envelope that could have trace amounts of poison or anthrax lingering beneath the folds of paper.

She learned the supernatural part the hard way, when she touched something of Yoko's and had a nasty burn on her palm for two months.

Fucking silver.

Thankfully, this key hadn't seemed to be. It looked made of brass, almost.

Wednesday had been away and would continue to be for the following week- something about a distant relative visiting. She hadn't said much else in her haste to pack her bags, surprisingly leaving her side of the room a disheveled mess.

Thing was no help in answering any of Enid's thousand questions, using his pinky and thumb to shrug before scampering off wheretever it was he went in his free time.

Sometimes, he came home with snacks. Tonight didn't seem to be the same, as he'd taken a tiny rucksack she'd fashioned for him when he dropped a corn dog on the dorm carpet.

Unfortunately, the silence and dark was all that greeted her, as she flicked on the light and headed for her bed, collapsing onto it with an exhausted sigh and pulling her laptop up onto her thighs, shuffling her Spotify playlist and scrolling aimlessly on one of her favourite blogs.

She tried to ignore the strange calling to the key, all night and even in her dreams where all she could see was an old lock and that damned skeleton key.

The next morning, the key was where she had left it. And the next, and the one after that. Whoever the key belonged to never came to collect it, and when she asked about it to the front desk worker, they simply shrugged and mentioned how they didn't use any skeleton key in the academy.

It just left her, once more, with questions she had no answers to.

So that night after dinner, she returned to her dorm with plans to finally grab it, just to find it gone.