Come Out, Come Out (Haunted Hearts)

by Alexia Onyx

This one is for my chronically sad babes. Please remember three things: It’s not your fault. You don’t have to pretend it doesn’t hurt. You deserve someone who will hold your hand when the darkness takes over.

I always found the notion of death romantic; I never could have predicted how right I would be.

My grief has festered within me, in the space that the thrumming connection to my sibling used to occupy. That volatile twin bond that used to buzz between us has flatlined.

Instead of avoiding the very spot where my sister killed herself, I can’t seem to stay away. It’s like the last piece of her soul resides here and, still, five years down the line, I can’t bear to leave her alone. I already failed her.

I listen to the muted sound of the water as it sloshes against the tub, straining my ears in hopes that maybe I can hear her pleas for help that I somehow missed.

Where Becca was a try-hard, eager for everyone’s validation, I was perfectly fine with being an outcast.

For me, Nate had been a conquest. Outcast tops star football player and ex-bully. What a fucking high that was! And then I got bored. Nate had nothing else to offer besides his body and I didn’t like the idea of being someone’s dirty little secret either.

It’d been a badge of pride, fucking him, having him wrapped around my finger. Now it makes me sick.

Ready or not Nate, I’m coming for you. He thinks I made a fool of him before, he has no idea what I’m capable of. I’d let everything he’s ever done go. I found it within myself to write him off as being a wayward kid who hated himself so much he needed to take it out on someone else. But then he’d taken one of the most important people in the world to me. It was simply unforgivable.

Being wanted by the person who told you they were disgusted by you, tasting the sweetness of their desire and lies on your tongue had been a heady experience. It felt like power, but he was toxic through and through.

I could never have loved someone like him, could never have given him more than just my cock. And for that little bit of self-awareness, I’m grateful, especially now.

The only thing that gives me any semblance of peace is the idea of taking out those fuckers who bullied and harassed her endlessly. In-person. Online. Day in. Day out.

Nate. Rob. Richard. The three pieces of shit I came all the way out here for in the damn-near middle of the night.

Nate’s hazel eyes widen as they track the changes in my face after so much time apart. He’s trying to reconcile the Aiden who once stared at his chiseled body with desire with the one standing in front of him who only looks at him with absolute hatred.

Three long strides and I’m driving the kitchen knife I’d brought from home into Rob’s muscular stomach. “What the fu—” His words fail him as he falls to his knees. I pull out my knife with a grunt and catch Nate’s olive-green eyes. “I’ll give you a head start, for old time’s sake.”

Ooop

Adrenaline pounds through me and a maniacal smile spreads across my face. This feels so fucking good. This feels like a release of so much of the venomous agony that’s been poisoning me for half a decade.

“Ready or not, here I come,” I yell as I take off in a sprint, my boots giving me traction while Nate’s an unsteady, flustered mess. I nearly tackle him and fist the back of his thick platinum hair, pulling him against my chest. The familiarity of this position isn’t lost on me. I’ve fucked him like this more than once. How fitting.

With that clarity, I raise my knife. “Rot in hell.” Blade meets skin as I slash across Nate’s throat, cutting off his unmoving pleas.

“You killed my sister.” I stab into his side again and twist the knife. “You and your brothers,” I spit the word, “drove her to death. You’re a bunch of pathetic cowards who wasted their lives making other people miserable. Not anymore.”

I can’t help but laugh. Do they really think that would stop someone hellbent on murder? I have no interest in killing them, they aren’t part of this. But I’m also so far gone that I don’t really care one way or another. If this guy thinks he’s going to hit me over the head with a hammer and I’m just going to take it, he has another thing coming. What’s one more?

Numbness spreads from my limbs and into my torso before I slip into that cold darkness, which honestly feels like the best sleep anyone could dream of. Better than a night spent in a luxury hotel with the air blasting. It’s so peaceful here. The relieved sigh that slips through my lips releases the last bit of life left in me; I can feel it in the hollowness of this body I’ve called home for twenty-eight years.

The house I killed in. The magnitude of that reminder is like another plunging knife, but I don’t regret it. They got what they deserved. They may not have been the ones to run the blade down my sister’s wrists, but they did everything they could to drive her to that point. If this was my punishment, then so be it.

I’m able to see and touch things, but the sensations are all wrong, like I’m here but I’m not. I died, but I’m not gone. Does that mean that I’m a ghost?

Great. I’m a fucking ghost. I guess what they say is true, ‘ain’t no rest for the wicked’.

I walk over to the cracked window in Nate’s room and peer out. Heavy, gray clouds fill the sky, and wind rustles through the trees. It smells like late winter, but I can’t really be sure. I died on December 13th, so it’s maybe been a month or two.

The movie line-up was always solid, too. It was usually a mix of rom-coms and period pieces–Pride and Prejudice (2005 version, of course) or Moulin Rouge were always included and I was secretly thrilled. Becca knew that though.

Whoever implied that death was peaceful clearly hadn’t fucking experienced it. In reality, it was absolutely maddening. It’s Hell.

I attempted to leave this house behind, I’d hoped to go home and see if my sister might be there, but I wasn’t able to. I made it off the porch and down the patch of dirt that served as a driveway, but when I walked into the tree line, I ended up right back inside the house.

As the reality of my situation sinks in, I even start to hope my sister isn’t still here, lingering in this fucked up space between life and death. I would never wish this miserable existence, or lack thereof, on her. I hope she’s somewhere better. She has to be.

Skye who utterly captivates me. I’m immediately sucked in by her sad, disinterested brown eyes framed by thick cat eyeliner and short, jet-black bangs. Mid-length hair falls across her chest where the Nirvana logo is prominently displayed. Would you look at that… We already have something in common.

I feel her inside of me down to the very pit of my soul. It shivers, aching with the need for more of her. What I’ve been allowed is far too small of a taste. I want to drink her sorrow until I’m wasted off it; I want to consume her every worry and delight in the sourness of it; I want to dig my way into her head and put down roots she can’t ever pull out.

For the first time in forever, I feel like I have purpose—even if she hasn’t acknowledged my presence. I know with all surety that she’s the reason I’ve been stuck here waiting.

The torture is just beginning. My true obsession with her and the reality that she doesn’t know I exist, and most important, the fact that there’s nothing I can do about it. Or is there?

I know Skye has; they’re her favorite. I’ve spent countless hours at the end of her bed watching them with her.

She’s always fine around them. There’s nothing to worry about, she tells them as she cuts herself behind closed doors to ease her suffering. Work is good. Classes are going well.

They buy the act. Just like most shallow friendships of convenience, they never pry, because if they do, they’ll see that she’s rotting from within. Regardless, I’m falling for her. My heart belongs to a living ghost who has one foot on the other side of the veil at all times and is slowly creeping closer. My little wraith.

I see right through the facade. I’m eager to destroy the mask, get under her skin, and taste her brand of intoxication. I’ll make myself sick with it, I don’t care. I just want to be with her, to be seen by her.

Without the pressure of judging her, she allows herself to stay up and sleep in as late as she wants to. She blares her music and dances around the house half-naked, and she spends more of her time creating, even when she’s not working for clients. I love it when she takes her laptop out on the porch with her morning coffee and just sits there designing for a few hours.

love it, but it also makes me miss my own art. It’d turned into something far darker than ever before after Becca died – all heavy black ink and eerie imagery – but I still loved the pieces I made, even got one tattooed on me. I stroke the lips and long tongue that drip down into the word “ART’ on my arm.

But no matter how much I wish it were possible, I’m forced to sit there, helpless to care for her other than simply being there, which she’s still utterly oblivious to. Those days are almost, almost, as bad as when I was trapped here on my own.

I spend the next thirty minutes watching the boiling shower water lick across her skin and redden her ass like I want to. Standing stark against the steam, she’s a soon-to-be fallen angel basking amongst the clouds. Each day, I’m more determined to save her from the fall.

“Yes, yes, yes. Oh god, right there. Yes.” The words are rushed and slurred as she pushes herself closer to an orgasm. Her intent brown eyes hold me captive and I can’t help but indulge myself by participating. I pull out my cock and stroke it slowly — grateful I can still feel my own touch, if nothing else.

Fuck. Women, everything about us is so hot.

I let my moans echo off the walls of this old, empty house suddenly wishing there was someone here to hear me, to put their hand over my mouth, to suffocate me ‘til I’m on the verge of passing out.

I’ve watched all the classics; I always thought I’d be a final girl. Guess I was wrong.

I let out a laugh at my own expense. I should really stop watching scary movies, but I won’t – no way I could give up my regular rewatches of the Ring and Midsommar. My heart is pounding like it might actually claw its way through my chest. Cold sweat coats my skin uncomfortably. I need a damn drink.

The hottest guy I’ve ever seen is sitting at my kitchen table drinking straight from the bottle of dark rum I’d left out. My eyes travel over his tattooed arms on display, thanks to his sleeveless black tee, that has a bleeding hand covered in thorns holding a rose on fire in the center. On one arm, fluid ink creates a marbled effect that reminds me of an oil spill.

The dark ink is a striking contrast to his pale skin. On the bicep of his other arm sits a pair of open lips with protruding fangs over a long tongue winding out, bleeding into long drips down his forearm, forming the word ‘ART’ on his wrist.

finally I find his gorgeous blue-grey eyes framed by messy brown hair drinking me in with equal parts desire and something that looks like shock. As if he isn’t the one who broke into my house? I’m both startled and intrigued by his audacity. There go those stellar self-preservation instincts.

He looks up at me through the unruly hair hanging in his face. “It sounded like a party, thought I’d crash it.” He shrugs like he didn’t break and enter into a single woman’s home in the middle of basically nowhere.