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Standing on the street scrambling through her bag she desperately tried to find her keys. This was an everyday occurrence for Emma. She had an awful habit of throwing things into the deep depths of her bag, never to be found again, only to be needed very soon after. The usual culprit to this was her keys. This meant her Nabours were very used to her searching through her bag when she returned home from work on a regular basis.

Scrambling her hand passed something that was sharp and hard. Immediately she knew she had got them. Took her long enough. She had a set of keys that were something like a ball of collectibles. She had various pins, pendants, lanyards, and keyrings attached to a set of 2 house keys and her car key. This of course meant she wasn’t able to fit her keys into her pocket. This is part of the reason for her daily scramble.

She put her key into the lock of the front door. The silver metal slipped into the lock seamlessly and found its place perfectly. This was her first home and she was very used to the sicky nature of the lock. Her landlord insisted that it wasn’t there but the three keys she has broken in it begged to differ. Strangely her key rotated with strange ease. Slipping the pins perfectly into place, the door practically opened itself. She was left bewildered in her open doorway. Something about the good things that were happening to her at this moment gave her a sense of strange unease. She almost felt uncomfortable taking a step into her own home that she had bought just months prior.

Alas, she did. She place one foot over the threshold and the other sharply followed. Somehow the entrance made her worries melt away from her.

As she slipped her hand into the pocket of her leggings she dropped her keys into the bowl she kept by the door. She found in the end this was infect the only way to keep track of them when in the house and decided that if it worked for her it was ok.

She grasped either side of her phone and slid it out of her pocket. The lock screen revealed itself when the phone came to her face. She glanced at the screen to see a notification from her boyfriend, Ben. They had been together for only six months and she honestly didn’t see it going on for much longer. However, that didn’t stop a grin creeping onto her face, making her blush and place her hand on the pendent he had got for her a few days prior. She knew he really cared about her which is something that she never had in her childhood. She liked being cared about. She found it hard without her parents. Hard to care about life and living. With him though. She had someone who needed her all the time which sent a kind of warmth through her body. She wanted to say that she loved him, a temporary sort of love. Not anything about him specifically but rather the feeling of having someone. She wouldn’t let herself though. She wanted ready she kept telling him. She will one day. No rush she insisted. I’m not going anywhere she would say.

As she waits for him to respond to her message she takes a moment to consider her surroundings. The warm house she stood in. still with the front door wide open behind her. Yet still, extremely warm. She glances up from her phone. Still holding the pendent dangling from a chain around her neck. The house was… perfect. Everything was exactly where it should be. Not proof of the mindless rush there was this morning to leave for the bus. Everything was absolutely perfect. It felt wrong. The sense of worry was absorbed into her from the house. She was sure something was wrong. But nothing was. It was. Perfect.

Turning around she slams the door behind her. Locking out the ere nature of the situation. As the door slammed she felt the need to take a second, to stop, to think. She closed her eyes. Her long eyelashes intertwine with one another to act as a protective barrier. To protect her from her own thoughts. Keeping her safe. Giving her time to clear her head. The time she desperately needed before clambering deeper into the house.

She opened her eyes once again, having to blink a few times. Before she hadn’t noticed quite how dark it was in the house, the lack of light almost made it hard to see her perfect home. Emma debated whether this was a good or bad thing. Whether she should let her worries slide into the shadows. Anything could hide in the shadows. Anything, anyone. She, in a way, liked that. That she wouldn’t know what was there. An unsettling comfortability in the unknown.

She allowed her hand to grasp the light switch on the side of the wall. She placed her hand above the switch, and ran her fingers down it, not applying any pressure. She in some ways enjoyed the darkness. So she allowed the shadows to watch her as she passed over to the base of the staircase.

Her stairs were one more problem with the home the landlord chose to not know about. The stairs would creak as you walked up them. So loud it was like an announcement to the entire home. It was another one of those reassuring warnings that she enjoyed. In the end, she wasn’t one to be overly confrontational with her landlord.

As she reached the top of the stairs she was faced with her door. In front of her. The door she always left open to allow her to run through it and drop everything. It was closed, tight. As if someone had taken great care in closing it. Hiding all that is enclosed. A shadow was cast over the hallway next to her. A particularly black shadow. One that made her more uncomfortable than the others. One that made her question whether she truly liked the darkness. One that made her question if all of this was just a coincidence.