The Mortician's Daughter Read online



  The Mortician’s Daughter

  By

  Molly Shanahan

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  PUBLISHED BY:

  The Mortician’s Daughter

  Copyright © 2013 by Molly Shanahan

  Thank you for downloading this free ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form, with the exception of quotes used in reviews.

  Your support and respect for the property of this author is appreciated.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

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  This is an original plot created and written by me. I own the plot idea and all characters.

  Lyric credit goes to Black Veil Brides.

  I do not own any of the lyrics used in the story and I am not attempting to pass them as my own.

  I’d like to dedicate this story to my best friend Vero for encouraging me to publish this.

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  THE MORTICIAN’S DAUGHTER

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  Ch. 1

  She had been too young to remember her mother’s murder but that doesn’t mean she didn’t hear stories about it or read about it in the newspaper clippings that her father had stashed away in the attic.

  When Carolyn was three years old, her mother had been brutally murdered by a man who got away. The man had never been identified. To this day, almost fourteen years later, Carolyn has secretly been in search of the man who murdered her mother.

  She never told anyone about it. She didn’t really have any friends. And if they knew, they would start to make up rumors about it. They would say she had murdered her mother or her father had done it or they did it together. All the kids at school would start making Lizzie Borden jokes and start calling her that in the hallways. That was one thing she didn’t need in her life. When she was in elementary school, she had told all her friends about how her father worked with dead people. At the age of 6 years old, she didn’t understand what her dad really did but it sounded cool. All the kids at school thought so, too. She had a lot of friends growing up because all the kids were interested in what her dad did as a job.

  “Do the people come back as zombies?!” Some of the boys would ask.

  When they got to high school, everything changed. All her so-called “friends” had found out what a mortician really did and they thought it was weird. They all made fun of her for being different. She was different, but she didn’t think she was that different because of what her dad did as a job. The kids at school obviously thought otherwise.

  It didn’t help her situation when they all found out where she lived. Carolyn lived with her father on the outskirts of town. Only the outcasts lived on the outskirts of town. They lived together in an old, small, black cottage with a cemetery behind the house dating back to the early 1700s. Carolyn thought it was cool but obviously the other kids at school didn’t.

  They ridiculed her every day. They called her names: freak, loser, queer, outcast, emo, anything you could think up. But she was shy, and didn’t say anything to anyone. She just let them call her names and laugh at her every day. And then every day after school, she would walk across the brown, dying grass to her front door. Her father was usually never home when she got home from school. She would tread quietly up the creaky old staircase to her small room at the end of the hall.

  Her home was the only place she felt safe. She even felt safe in the cemetery behind the house. She never wanted to leave. Every time she left her house, she was ridiculed. It didn’t matter where she went. Someone was always making fun of her. She was beautiful, but beauty didn’t matter if you weren’t popular. If you were a nobody, no one cared.

  Carolyn always thought that this is how things would be for the rest of her life. She couldn’t go anywhere without someone making a stupid comment about her father’s job or how she was a freak. Nothing could have prepared her for what was about to come next.

  Ch. 2

  Hell is what she liked to call it. Of course, it wasn’t hell, but it was pretty close to it in her eyes. It was just another place for her to be made fun of: her dance studio.

  Carolyn loved to dance. It made her feel like she was in another world far away from the one she lived in. She could be in a room with a hundred people but if she was dancing, she felt like she was the only one in the room. She could zone everyone out and be free for once in her life. She didn’t have to have any worries, or a care in the world. Nobody could touch her. She was flying.

  Dance class always had to end at some point, though. And she would come crashing down to earth like a fallen angel. Dance class always had to start, too. Those two moments in time, before and after, were the two times she hated most about going to class every week.

  She opened the door and threw it closed behind her, making it slam shut. She couldn’t hear anything because of the loud music pulsating through her headphones, but she knew that at least one of those prissy little bitches had screamed.

  She found great joy in scaring them. They all thought she was a freak anyway. Why not play along a little? Why not get some satisfaction out of it herself?

  She walked past the short hallway that led to the small room at the end where all the girls stored their bags and gathered before class. Carolyn wasn’t invited to join them. That room was for the girls on the competition team only and Carolyn couldn’t afford that. Even if she was in the company with the rest of the girls, she knew she wouldn’t be invited to hang out with them. They all thought, as said before, that she was a freak. But really, she was just a little misunderstood.

  She sat down in a wooden chair in the corner by herself and placed her bag down on the floor by her feet. She hit pause on her iPod and turned the power off before wrapping the black cord tightly around the width of the device and placing it in the inside pocket of her bag.

  She could hear all the girls laughing from down the hall and talking about who knows what; probably her, no doubt.

  She rummaged through her bag and pulled out her worn out pointe shoes. She couldn’t afford new ones. Hers were different than the other girls. They all had nice brand new ones. Hers had holes on the toes. The other girls had pink. Hers were dyed black.

  Her teacher had never said anything to her; only once. All her teacher had said was to make sure she had pink shoes for their annual recital. Other than that, she didn’t care what color her shoes were for rehearsals.

  As she laced up her shoes, she watched the other girls parade out of the room and up the stairs to the big room with the tall mirrors. She tied her second shoe lace into a little bow before hurrying behind the other girls up to the room.

  Again, she stood alone in the corner and waited for class to start. All the girls gathered into small groups and talked with one another but just left Carolyn over in the corner by herself. No one cared. None of them wanted to talk to her or even have anything to do with her. Not even her best friend Amber.

  Amber was another one of those “friends” that had ditched her when she found out what her dad really did as a job. Carolyn and Amber used to have such good times together. They used to have sleepovers every weekend—always at Ambers house because Carolyn was too embarrassed to have friends over at her house—and they shared inside jokes, laughed together, and were the best of friends. Now, they were complete strangers.

  After class had ended, it was time for another ride to hell. Carolyn sulked down the stairs to her bag and unlaced her shoes. She slid her worn out conv
erse on and pulled on her jacket before swinging her bag over her shoulder and going outside to wait for her father to pick her up in the hearse. It was the only car they owned, and Carolyn was so embarrassed to be seen getting picked up in it. She wanted a car of her own, but she had no money and neither did her father. He had just enough to pay for dance classes and get by on bills and taxes.

  A few girls waltzed out to their cars or the rides that were waiting for them. A couple others stayed behind inside to avoid being near Carolyn. But today, two brave souls decided to wait outside with her.

  She barely heard them whispering things to each other and snuck a glance over at them.

  “You do it.” One girl nudged the other.

  “No, you say it.” The other girl insisted.

  “Oh, fine. I’ll do it. But it’s your turn next week.” The first girl said.

  The girl skipped over to Carolyn, her blonde ponytail swinging behind her.

  Another thing Carolyn hated about them. They always had too much pep. They were always so bubbly as if nothing bad could ever happen to them.

  “Hi Carolyn.” The girl said.

  Carolyn looked over at her briefly but said nothing and turned her head to look straight ahead at the wilting trees in front of her.

  The girl glanced back at her friend who shrugged and gave her a ‘keep going’ gesture. The girl looked back over at Carolyn and tapped her on the shoulder.

  Carolyn didn’t look at her but simply stated “What.”

  “Well. I was going to say you did a great job in class today.” The girl said. “But with that attitude, I won’t.”

  “Well, you just did say it, so thanks anyway.” Carolyn said.

  “Why are you such a freak, Carolyn? Honestly. Why can’t you just be normal like the rest of us? You know, if you didn’t act like you hated the world, we might actually try and be friends with you.” The girl said.

  “And why are you such a bitch, Kali?” Carolyn shot back. “I’m never going to be normal. This is who I am. It’s not an act, either. I do hate the world. The world is an ugly place filled with ugly people like you.”

  Kali gasped and ran back to her friend. “Freak!” She called back to her. “What the hell goes through your mind, Carolyn? You need help.”

  Carolyn turned her head slowly to face Kali. “You don’t want to know what goes through my mind, Kali. My mind is a dark place and you wouldn’t last one second there.”

  Her father pulled up in the hearse and she jumped in. She was so glad to just get away from Kali, Amber and all the other girls. Finally, she could go home to the one place she really belonged: the cemetery.

  Ch. 3

  “How was it?” Her dad asked, trying to sound positive.

  He knew what Carolyn’s answer would be, though. It was always the same answer every week but her dad would always ask in the hopes of a different answer.

  “Class itself was fine. I had a lot of fun. After class was not so fun.” She replied, pressing her forehead against the cool glass window.

  “Now what happened?” He pulled up to a red light and looked over at his daughter.

  “Kali called me a freak again…” She mumbled.

  The light turned green, and her father accelerated slowly through the intersection. “Do I need to have a talk with Kali’s mother?”

  “God, no. Dad, that’s the last thing I want. Just… leave it be. I’m used to it by now…” Carolyn slumped down in her seat.

  “Is there anything I can do to help you? I know I don’t know much about teenage girls but I can learn if I need to. They have books on that type of stuff, right?” Carolyn’s dad was always trying to play both parenting roles. He was constantly trying to be Carolyn’s mother and father at the same time and frankly, it was not working. She could see he was trying his best to do everything he could to help her, but she didn’t want any help. She knew that none of the teasing or name calling would go away, so why bother putting all that effort into something that was never going to change?

  As soon as her father pulled up into the driveway, Carolyn jumped out. She didn’t even wait for him to stop the car. She just opened her door and stepped out of the car. She couldn’t wait to be in her room.

  Carolyn ran up the cobblestone path way to the front door and pushed her way inside. She ran up the stairs and down the dark, skinny hallway to the lonely room at the end; her room.

  If Carolyn’s room could be described in one word, it would be black. All four walls were painted an onyx black color with white writing scribbled on the walls; song lyrics. She had painted them on herself and looked to them for guidance. When she was lonely, she would read them over and quietly sing each song to herself. The words on the wall kept her going. They were her motivation to live each day.

  Sitting on the desk in the corner were her two only friends.

  Friend One: the red notebook. Carolyn loved to write. Writing in her life was the equivalent of dancing. It was something that allowed her to explore her own mind and create a world where she could go to and control everything. She wrote mostly song lyrics because she was so heavily influenced by her music.

  Friend Two: the razor. Carolyn was a cutter. She thought it was a nasty habit of hers, but she couldn’t stop. It had started when she was only ten years old. She was down in the morgue and her father had told her to stay put and not touch anything. He had to go grab something from the house. The morgue was a two minute walking distance from their house. But Carolyn was curious—as any ten year old would be. She walked around the dead body lying on the table and looked at all her father’s tools. They appeared to be very sharp and she knew not to touch them. There had been some formaldehyde on the floor and she slipped and fell onto the tray of sharp instruments. The scalpel dug into her skin and tore a long cut all the way down her arm. She didn’t scream. She didn’t cry. The pain actually felt relieving. From that point on, she cut almost every day and couldn’t stop herself.

  Now that she was older, she would draw a dotted line across her wrists and label each one. One line for every name she was called that day, one line for the loss of her mother, one line for the stress of school and one line just because.

  Right now wasn’t the time to cut, though. That would be for later that night when her father was asleep and there was no one around to walk in on her. Right now, it was time for her to practice. Although she had just gotten home from dance, the cemetery called to her.

  She dropped her dance bag on her bed and pulled out her black slippers. She laced up the ballet shoes and tread lightly down the creaky stairs to sneak out to the cemetery.

  She liked the cemetery. It was an open space big enough for her to practice in. The head stones actually helped her. They were like guide lines for how high her leg should be in her arabesque.

  When she got tired, she would walk around and sit with the deceased. Death didn’t scare her. She always dreamed of what the afterlife was like. She would kneel at each of the graves and talk with every dead person lying six feet under the cold, dead earth. It made her feel like she had friends—although these friends couldn’t talk back.

  The dead understood her. They were there to listen to her. She told them her problems and about what had happened at school that day.

  Today, a fog had begun to settle over the decrepit cemetery. She stood and began to walk around, taking in the eerie scene in front of her.

  Her foot hit something and she tripped, regaining her balance quickly. She couldn’t see the ground in front of her. Too much fog had settled. She assumed it was a rock sticking up from the ground or a baby headstone that she never knew was there before.

  She knelt down to see if she could find out what it was she had tripped on. She swatted the fog away with her hand and saw a tangled mass of black hair. Maybe it was an animal of some sort? She didn’t want to touch it if that was the case but she swiped away more fog and saw that the mass of black hair had a human body attached to it.

  She rolled the body over
onto its back so the person was facing upwards. She brushed the black hair out of the way and revealed a boy’s pale face—eyes closed. Blood traveled down the side of his head to his lips and down his chin. The blood had already begun to dry which meant this poor boy had been just laying here for a while. For all she knew, he could be dead. As she studied the boy’s face a little more, she realized that this wasn’t just an ordinary boy.

  This was Tyler Sparr—her idol.

  Ch. 4

  What was she supposed to do now? Here was Tyler Sparr just lying in a bloody mess on her property. She didn’t even know if he was alive or not. She could safely say that she was genuinely scared for the first time in her life.

  She held her long, blonde hair back as she leaned her head down to his chest. She could hear the faint sound of his heart beat but it was slow. He was dying. If she didn’t get help soon, he would die for sure.

  She needed time, but time wasn’t on her side. The longer she sat there and tried to figure out what to do, the sooner he would be dead. She looked to the black house behind her. If she ran fast enough, she could probably make it to her father in time.

  She looked back at Tyler who appeared to be slowly waking up. Well, at least he wasn’t dead… yet. He opened his gorgeous blue eyes and looked up at her, his face contorted into a look of confusion. He reached up and held his head with both hands.

  “My head…” He groaned.

  “Don’t move.” Carolyn warned. “You’ve had excessive hemorrhage to the skull.”

  When your father is a mortician, you tend to pick up on phrases like hemorrhage and other medical terms.

  Tyler looked at her. “Hemorrhage?” He asked.

  “Bleeding.” She clarified. “Just lie down and close your eyes. I’m going to get help. Whatever you do, do not move your head. And don’t die. I’ll be right back.”

  He nodded and she frowned at him. “What did I just say about moving your head?” She scolded.

  “Oh, right. Sorry…” He apologized and closed his eyes again.

  The pain was overwhelming. He wanted the pounding to stop. It was like a massive migraine. He felt like he had two brains stuffed into his one small skull. The amount of pressure was intense.

  When she thought he was okay, she stood up and ran back to her house to find her father. She burst through the back door and began calling out to her father. “Dad!” She cried. “Dad! Where are you?!”

  No response.

  She smacked her palm against her forehead. He was down in the morgue… Even though the morgue was just by her house, she was afraid to leave Tyler in the cemetery by himself. But he was too heavy for her to carry in the house and she wouldn’t know what to do if she touched his head and it started bleeding again.

  She had to make a decision and quick. It was literally a matter of life and death right now. She decided that the best way to save Tyler’s life would be to get her dad. He could easily stitch up the gash in Tyler’s head and give him extra blood if he needed it.

  She ran as fast as she possibly could all the way to the morgue. She thought her legs where going to fall off by the time she finally reached her dad. She could see the morgue in sight but she was quickly running out of breath. She pushed herself to keep going for the last few yards and stumbled down the concrete stairs to the morgue.

  “Dad…” She said, breathlessly. “You need… to come… quick…”

  “Carolyn? What’s going on?” Carolyn never interrupted him while he was working. He figured something must’ve happened. “Is it an emergency? I’m with a patient.”

  “Dad… The person isn’t even alive.” Her breathing had finally caught up with the rest of her. “Please, I need you. This is really important. My… my friend, he’s… he’s dying. Please…”

  “Your friend?” He was surprised at the word ‘friend’. He didn’t think Carolyn had any friends, let alone a friend that was a boy. He looked into the girls pleading eyes and sighed, putting his scalpel down on the stainless steel tray. “Okay, where is he?”

  Carolyn smiled with relief. “Grab your thread and needles. He’s going to need some stitches.”

  Carolyn’s father grabbed the few items he needed before following his daughter up the stairs. As soon as Carolyn reached the top of the stairs, she began running again.

  “Carolyn! Wait up!” Her father called after her.

  “Dad, this can’t wait! Hurry up!” She called back to him without stopping.

  The mortician sighed, shaking his head, and began to jog after his daughter. He followed her to the cemetery in the back of the house where Tyler was laying.

  “Over here!” She called out to him, waving him over.

  The mortician knelt by the boy and examined the deep slice across his temple. “It seems he was hit over the head by something.” The mortician observed and plucked something from the deep wound. “Glass.” He determined, pulling the bloody shard of glass from Tyler’s head. “We need to get him inside. I need your help. Put one of his arms over your shoulder and grab under his knees. On three, we’ll pick him up and carry him to the house, okay?”

  Carolyn nodded, hooking Tyler’s right arm around her neck and placing her hand beneath his right knee. Her father did the same on the other side and counted “One, two, three.”

  Together, they lifted him up and carried him inside. The whole way into the house, Carolyn prayed that Tyler would wake up soon. If her dad couldn’t save him, she was going to need a miracle. This couldn’t be happening; not to the one person she looked up to the most in her entire life.

  Ch. 5

  Tyler was out cold. He tried to look for something or someone. He searched for the girl with the beautiful blue eyes and blonde hair. He looked for a light of any sort. If he was dead, he wanted his soul to at least be at peace. He didn’t want to spend the rest of his after life on earth.

  I know what you’re thinking. Is he dead? The answer: no. Is he close to it? Absolutely.

  Just as he was about to give up his search for some type of a sign, there was a flash of white light and he began to see the events of the night before play in his mind as if he were watching the memory on a movie screen.

  It was late and the boys had just played an awesome show. To celebrate, they all decided to go out somewhere. Tyler really just wanted to go back to the bus, but all the guys insisted he come with them.

  “It won’t be the same if you don’t come.” Ryan, their drummer, whined.

  “Yeah,” Their bass player, Spencer, agreed. “Please, Tyler?” He pouted.

  Tyler sighed. “Okay, okay, fine. Peer pressure wins again…”

  The boys cheered and dragged Tyler into the nearest bar.

  Tyler wasn’t a big drinker. He liked it, but preferred his cigarettes more, that’s for sure. After about an hour of drinking, Tyler was legally drunk. He couldn’t see straight ahead of him, his vision was blurred and he saw two of everything.

  He decided to go outside for a smoke. None of the other guys really smoked so he went alone. He leaned back against the brick wall and lit up the cancer stick lingering between his lips. He took a long drag and blew the smoke out in front of his face.

  He heard the door to the bar open and saw his band mates walk—well, more like stumble—out of the bar. Tyler pushed off the wall and went to go follow them. He figured they must be going back to the bus to sleep off their drunken state.

  He wasn’t too far behind them when they passed by an alleyway and someone grabbed Tyler from behind, pulling him into the alley and away from his friends. The rest of the guys were too drunk to notice he was gone.

  Tyler tried to scream but a man’s fat hand was shoved over his mouth, muffling his cries for help. To get the stupid kid in his arms to shut up, the man picked up a discarded beer bottle on the grimy alleyway ground and bashed the bottle over the kid’s head, sending shards of glass flying everywhere and digging one into the side of the guy’s head.

  Tyler’s whole body went limp at the blow
and the man was relieved he had stopped trying to scream. Now all he had to do was to get rid of the body. But where? He didn’t want to just leave the kid stranded in the alley. Someone would definitely find him here. The murderer didn’t want the boy’s body to be found. He didn’t want to get caught. He had been on the run from the police for the past fourteen years and he didn’t want this punk kid to be the reason he gets caught.

  The man carried the singer’s body for what seemed like miles before he finally arrived at the outskirts of town at a little black cottage that he knew all too well. He dropped Tyler’s lifeless body on the ground and smiled at the sight of him bleeding out all over the brown grass.

  He heard a door slam shut and looked up to see a tall, slender, teenage girl with black ballet shoes in hand and long blonde hair tied up in a messy ponytail waltz out the back door and across the back deck to enter the cemetery.

  He had to get out of here. Dead or not, the kid had to stay and hopefully he hadn’t seen anything that he could get the man into even more trouble for. He couldn’t let the girl see him. She would recognize his face and he couldn’t risk her seeing him. He debated on staying to kill her as well, but he had nothing to use but his hands and he wasn’t the type to choke people to death. He liked to watch them bleed all the way out. He knew this house, and he would return as soon as he had a plan. The girl would be next.

  Ch. 6

  Tyler took in a deep breath through his nose and opened his eyes, stretching his arms up over his head. That was the craziest dream he had ever had. But then he looked around and noticed he wasn’t in his bunk on the bus. He was lying on a navy blue couch in a very dark room. The entire room looked like it had been set on fire and scorched a deep charcoal color.

  He heard footsteps coming from the other room and closed his eyes again. Maybe if whoever it was thought he was dead, they would leave him out on the street somewhere and he could go find help.

  He felt a very cold hand brush against his forehead and draw back some of the hair that had fallen into his face.

  “Tyler…” A girl’s gentle voice cooed to him.

  This was all so strange. Maybe he really was dead. The girl’s hand was cold and she had the voice of an angel. But the room he was in was dark. He couldn’t be dead, he couldn’t. Maybe the girl talking to him was dead, but he wasn’t? All these thoughts raced through his mind.

  “Tyler…” The girl called to him again.

  He turned his pounding head in the direction of the soft voice and slowly opened his eyes. He saw a girl kneeling in front of him; her face looked so familiar. He wracked his brain, trying to figure out where he had seen her before.

  She smiled at him. “You’re awake. You’re not dead.” There was a hint of relief in her voice.

  “What happened?” He asked groggily.

  The girl’s smile turned into a frown. “I don’t know…” She trailed off. “I found you in the cemetery and—”

  “Cemetery? Am I dead?!” Tyler exclaimed.

  “No, no!” The girl patted his shoulder to calm him down. “No, I—Well… This is hard to explain. But, I found you lying in the cemetery behind the house and you were bleeding. If I hadn’t found you, you would have died…” She trailed off again.

  “You saved me?” He asked.

  “Well, yeah.” The girl admitted. “I couldn’t leave you there to die.”

  Tyler nodded, but quickly regretted it. His whole head began to pound again. He reached up with both hands and cradled his aching head.

  “Come with me.” The girl said, helping him stand up and leading him up the stairs.

  She led him down a long, dark hallway. The entire interior of the house appeared to be the same burnt charcoal color as the first room he had woken up in.

  She brought him into her room and let him lay down on her bed. She covered his shivering body with her black comforter and sat down beside him.

  “You’re going to have to stay here for a while.” The girl informed him.

  Tyler slumped his shoulders and sighed. “Really? But I— I have something really important to do.” He said.

  The girl giggled at his attempt to hide his identity from her. “I know who you are, Tyler. I know you have shows to do, but I can’t let you go yet. You’re still in too bad of a condition to perform and the person who tried to kill you is still out there. I just…I can’t let you… I need to protect you. I’m not going to lose another person I care about.”

  Tyler looked down at his lap. “What do you mean you don’t want to lose another person you care about?”

  The girl stayed silent and just sat there, staring at the floor. “That’s a story for another time.” She told him.

  Tyler nodded, respecting her decision to keep this particular memory to herself. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try and find out sooner or later. He could see it in her eyes. This girl had gone through a lot of pain in her life and she was still so young. She had saved his life. Now it was time for him to save hers.

  Ch. 7

  Carolyn smiled at him. “You should get some sleep. It might make you feel better.”

  “No!” Tyler shouted involuntarily. “I mean… No, it’s okay. I’m fine.” He didn’t want to close his eyes and sleep. He didn’t want to remove his gaze from the angelic girl sitting next to him. He had to know more about her. She was so unlike every other girl he had met.

  She giggled again. How he loved her giggle. “Okay, okay. Sorry I suggested it.”

  Tyler looked down, embarrassed with his sudden outburst. “What’s your name?” He asked, starting his attempt to get to know her. He wanted her to feel comfortable with him. He wanted her to trust him. And most of all, he wanted to know what she had meant earlier about losing someone close to her.

  “Carolyn.” She replied, matter-of-factly.

  Tyler nodded. “Pretty.” He commented.

  Carolyn gave him a huge smile. “Really? Th-Thank you.”

  Carolyn wasn’t used to getting compliments. In fact, she had never received any kind of compliment from anyone else besides her father. She never accepted the compliments from her father. She knew he was pretty much entitled to say things like that. He was her father after all and he cared about her.

  Tyler was already beginning to live up to his reputation. He was sweet, caring, kind, and most of all, gorgeous. His crystal clear blue eyes lit up her life with just a glance. She didn’t want to let him leave. He was the only good thing in her life and she couldn’t let him escape her grasp. She was going to plan to keep him with her as long as she could. You could say it was just Carolyn being selfish. She did think about all of Tyler’s other fans out there and how disappointed they would be when they found out he had disappeared. But Carolyn felt so broken inside. Whether he realized it or not, Tyler was helping her slowly put back together the shattered pieces of her life.

  “What were you doing in the cemetery?” Tyler asked out of curiosity.

  “Dancing.” Carolyn quickly shot back.

  Tyler furrowed his eyebrows. “Wait. What?”

  Carolyn reached down and picked up black bulky things attached to silken black strands. Tyler stared at them but still couldn’t figure out what they were.

  “Ballet shoes.” Carolyn clarified. “I like to dance in the cemetery. Death… is comforting for me.”

  It was official. Tyler thought this girl was psychotic.

  Carolyn caught the slight look of terror on Tyler’s face and dropped her shoes on the floor with a thud before hurrying over to his side.

  “Shit. I’m sorry.” She apologized. “I didn’t mean to scare you….”

  Tyler shook his head. “No, no… It’s okay. You’re different. I like different.” He smiled.

  Carolyn let out a deep breath, relieved that he didn’t think she was a freak, too. She always had to watch what she said around people. None of them understood what it was like to be around death all the time. And she wasn’t good with socializing either. She never kne
w what to say to people and when she did say something, it sounded creepy like what she had just said to Tyler.

  “Hey, what’s this?” Tyler looked next to him at the black bedside table. He picked up the only item in Carolyn’s entire room that wasn’t black or white. It was a red notebook with her name scribbled on the front.

  “Put it down!” She shouted and lunged for the notebook in his hands. She swiftly retrieved it and clutched it to her chest. “Maybe… You should get some rest now.” She reached for the door handle and left Tyler in the room alone, taking the notebook with her.

  That notebook was filled with Carolyn’s stories, song lyrics, poems, and little journal entries that she wrote when the voices in her head took over. That notebook was Carolyn’s entire life and she never let anyone read what was inside.