I hadn't meant to kill my sister. It had been a joke. In life, she never used to listen to me anyway.

Though, as her older brother, I felt I had the authority.

But after she died and in my childish misery and guilt,

I'd invited her to come back home.

Well, she did.

There were only two of us.

Our parents thought that we were everything they'd wanted in a family, a boy and a girl.

She came out a bit shire than they wanted, quiet and a bit odd, at least to me at that age,

but we were perfect side by side in family portrait.

Now, there is only one of us.

We don't take family portraits anymore.

It started when I'd found the key to a room.

Our bedrooms were across the hall from each other on the second floor of the house.

The doors had old-fashioned door knobs that locked with the key,

which we didn't have and which I hadn't seen before.

Then one day I found a ring of unmarked keys and a junk draw in the foyer's side table.

I went around trying them in everything until I'd match every

key to a door in the house, including our bedrooms. Nearly every key in the ring had a spare, but not all did.

The key to my sister's room was one of them that had only one master key.

That was when I'd gotten the idea.

I pocketed the key to a room and left the rest in the drawer where I'd found them.

I waited for the perfect opportunity that evening when she was in the living room with my parents staring at the TV

...