Chekhov's Gun Challenge: Aunt Enid's Locket

Falcon

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Chekhov's Gun Challenge, Cyan
Chekhov's Gun is a writing trope used to mean that a seemingly insignificant object has turned out to be important to the plot. For example, the ring Frodo found in Gollum's cave in "The Hobbit" turned out to be the One Ring in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.

Any little thing can help you further your plot.

To Participate: I will give you an insignificant object and the setting in which it is first seen. Then you post a way in which that object could be used to further the plot.

Item and Setting Given: A stick brought back by the dog.

Way in which it can be used:
First mention of object - Peter's dog is always bringing back sticks. Peter has a habit of letting them collect by his front poach.

The object becomes important when - One day while running from a band of trolls, Peter and his friends try to take refuge behind his house. Looking for something to throw at the trolls to distract them, one of the characters picks up the stick Peter's dog brought back earlier and . . . ZAP! that stick was actually the missing magic wand belonging to the Good Fairy. Now the trolls are all made of stone and if they can get the fairy back her wand maybe she can help them find the lost prince and save the day!

The Item and Setting:
You've Inherited Aunt Enid's Locket
 
Aunt Enid had always been a strange woman. She had always told the most wonderful stories of adventure, and the most heartbreaking stories of lost love. However you had never expected that the best mystery of them all would come after her death. She had died normally enough, cancer of the blood, but in her will she listed only one thing to be given away, and that one thing now lay in the palm of your hand. You looked around your room, checking to see if one of your little brother had snuck in to spy on you, but seeing nothing you carefully open the rusted metal. Inside a song plays, sweet and gentle, one you remember from years of sitting on your aunts lap. A picture is there as well but you don't think you've ever seen the pair. Then the song ends and a bright flash fills the room followed by darkness. "Run child, they come for you!" It's you aunts voice and though you look around you see nothing "take the locket and run, you day as queen will come but for now you must run!" She frantic now and you do as she says. Suddenly your not alone, no hundreds of little things, their mouths open wide and teeth shinning in an invisible light, are after you. Just as there catch you your thrown back to reality with a sharp snap. Looking down at the locket you see it is again playing the same song, the song that will haunt your dreams for weeks to come.
 
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Aunt Enid...
Sounds like such a loving way to describe her. Her name was Martha Pamela Enid. And she was the most horrifying person I've ever had the displeasure of coming across. She'd make us kids in the orphanage slave for ten hours a day, before we were allowed to eat food. Well, if you can call molded bread and rain water food. She'd yell and slap us with her horse-whip if we didn't work fast enough for her, all the while she'd stand there, fondling her locket. No one was allowed to touch the locket, on kid tried to, and Enid pushed him down the stairs.

If we were too tired, or sick to work, she'd beat us and kick us out on the street for the night, a handful of kids died under her watch during the ten years I spent in the hellhole called "Enid's Loving Orphanage" What a disgusting joke.

I hated her. I really hated her. More than anything in the whole world, and I showed it, I put fire to her bed, once. She took two of my fingers in revenge, freaking bitch. But now, now I'm 21 years old, I live in Brooklyn, I work at the local Newspaper, I make a good living, almost forgetting about the horrors of my childhood.

Until this Monday. I got a package. It was marked with my name, "Eddie Jones", there was no sending address written on the package. Strange, but not unheard off. I took the package into my study, where I opened it. Revealing a small leather-clad box. A box I remembered from my childhood. It was the one Aunt Enid kept in her bedroom.. My hands were trembling, as I opened it, feeling as if I was opening the box of Pandora.

The lid opened softly, revealing a silver locket inside, her locket, and a letter. My hands were still trembling, as I reached into the box and got out the locket, the three fingers on my left hand gently sliding over it, caressing the locket softly, before I clicked it open, revealing inside a picture of Enid, but on the other half of the locket, was a small key.

Confused, I understood nothing. Was this some kind of a sick joke by Enid? Why would she send me the Locket? Was it to torture me even further? Nothing was below that woman, was it?..

Furious, I threw the locket away, forgetting all about it for a day. That day turned into a week, and that week turned into a month. It had been a month since I had thought about the locket now. But now I walked into my study, on the locket laid there, on the desk, on top of the letter that came with the box. Now, this was getting mysterious.

I opened the locket again, the key still inside, I looked at Enid's picture. In the picture, she couldn't have been much older than 25. She looked happy, she smiled. I had never seen her smile. A sigh left me, as I looked over at the letter, and opened it up. It was a very short message, but Eddie read it, regardless.


"If you get this letter, it means I'm dead. Eddie, you weren't put in the orphanage for the same reason as everyone else. Your parents put you in my care with a mission. They wanted to make sure I gave you this key, there's a door in your old home, one that only opens with this key. Open the door, and everything will make sense Eddie."

Love, your aunt Enid.
 
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