I realize that this one might read badly without the prompt, but I really tried to have zero exposition because I have this severe allergy to exposition. So I hope that it still works without the original idea.

For context, this one is based on a prompt:

You live in a world where keys only open locks as long as their owners are still alive. After your grandmother’s funeral, you try to open a little chest you found on her attic with a rusty key. It opens. 

I should admit that at the moment I’m not entirely sure who to attribute it to, but I’ll go ahead and revise this post giving some credit to whoever came up with the prompt.

Nevertheless, about the story itself. I really like the idea of nearly magical twists to real life. That’s why I love magic realism so much. However, I really hate when writers try to build a world around these types of ideas instead of writing some sort of story with characters and feelings.

I know it’s kinda hard to do though. Hell, I had a hard time coming up with a solid story (if I can even call it that) myself. Instead, I wanted the story to be the key part, something that would only happen in this world.

Funny enough, I couldn’t come up with too many stories around the full idea of the prompt. But if I took just the part about the locks, there’s so much cool stuff that I thought about (I mean, wouldn’t it be amazing to have a bank robbery happening, but part of the problem is that they don’t want to kill any of the bank people because ownership of the vault is passed to different people on a daily basis?)

But I pride myself in trying hard to make something even with a lot of rules around it, so I didn’t ignore the prompt. I did, however, make an honest attempt in avoiding anything that would be too obvious like, “oh the grandmother faked her own death!” (To be honest, I think the prompt itself doesn’t hint that directly because it doesn’t say the chest necessarily belonged to her. The only implication was that the person who owned it was alive)

Anyway, hopefully this was a pretty decent story, even without the prompt. See ya next time.