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It was moments like this when the room was quiet and the five of us gathered around some dark book holding hands, that I thought we might need supervision. The five of us drunk clearly couldn’t be trusted.
Vi chanted something that made Imani squeeze her eyes closed.
“Sure. Mumbo jumbo, blah, blah, blah…” Imani whispered under her breath.
Alicia snorted. “For real though… what the hell is she saying? Doesn’t anyone else find her reading those blocks and triangles and shit weird?”
“Ahhh…” Sarika nodded slowly. “Tis the forgotten language of the drunks.”
“Shh!” Vi snapped.
I smirked. It sure sounded like some drunk rambling to me, but we’d gone too far to punch the brakes and sneak reason in now.
Imani grumbled again.
If there was anyone in the group that would be real mad if this went south, it was Imani. She didn’t mess with scary movies, books, or anything that even remotely hinted at dark and malevolence. This was way out of her comfort zone.
Pressure surrounded my hand as Vi held it in a grip too tight and pressed my bleeding finger to the symbol in the centre of the page. With my blood smeared there, I couldn’t take my eyes off it. It was a circle enclosing some goat — a ram, maybe — with a star and some other symbols. Seemed pretty standard for most movies where they did some white people nonsense, as Imani so eloquently put it. There was a key there that caught my eye, one of those old skeleton keys that was pretty and ornate in a way that made me wish we still used them.
My drunk mind stumbled over thoughts of swapping out all my doorknobs for ones with skeleton keys.
Just what would that cost? I could use another home project.
Vi’s chanting droned on, but I barely heard it anymore.
My cheeks were flushed and my head did that thing where the world wasn’t quite swaying but was a little blurred at the edges. One more sip was all it would take to push me over that edge from pleasantly tipsy to the drunk you only enjoyed if you kept drinking.
It was such a pretty key.
I wondered if maybe I could get a key like that. Fine, I knew I wouldn’t actually stick with the project to swap out all the hardware on my doors but it was pretty. The tarnished look of it would be stunning on a chain. The perfect accessory to go with everything.
Was I an accessory person?
No.
But I could be.
The lights went out.
2
EDEN
Imani’s hand ripping from mine followed by a high-pitched squeal pulled my eyes from the pages.
From the key.
“See!” Imani screeched. “See, I done told you this was a bad idea. You can’t just be messing around with things like this.” She was on her feet. My eyes adjusted quickly to see her in the dark. She was dancing on her toes, shaking her hands at her sides as the nerves set in.
Alicia snorted, falling over on her side against the couch as she laughed.
Sarika was ever the vision of calm and removed. I couldn’t tell for sure in the dark, but I would bet money she was sitting there with her eyes closed, likely with no idea the lights went out.
Vi winced when Imani whacked her. “What did you do?”
“It’s probably just the fuse. Let me go check. Chill!” On my feet, I walked past the kitchen into the closet in the hall.
“See Olivia, this is why I can’t be hanging out with you when you drink too much. With your stupid ass. Mark this on your calendar, Rika.”
