The Roads That We Explore - 10. All the Words pt 1

Notepad:

She had left her notepad laying out on the desk the night before. Her mostly done notes had been neatly rewritten and highlighted, the notes she had taken in class next to them, waiting to be transferred. But what was making her pause as she climbed down from her bed was the fact that there were new words on them that she knew she hadn’t written on the new pages.

Her roommates had gone out to stay with other friends in another dorm to study for the exams to come, so she had been alone in the room. Alendra swallowed and wondered if something had followed them from the estate.

Especially when she got up to read what had been written, paling at the “You haven’t written my story” in tight cursive. Cursive that she knew very well. She looked to her file cabinet, knowing that she was going to have to print out all her notes, but decided that she should be safe instead of sorry.

She left her room, using one of the dozen grills that the university provided the dorm room students to burn the pages before having a friend come bless the room.

She was not going to write about the psychopathic bitch that had possessed her line to kill whoever she felt didn’t deserve all that they had in life.

bone:

It was old. Discolored with age, turned an almost yellow color but not quite there. It was rounded in parts and straight in others. It had an interesting texture under his touch and made him smile while he remembered just how he had gotten it.

It was slim and lean, just like the woman who had used it to walk. A nun who had died in a fire; one of the few that hadn’t been casualties of said fire. She had tried to get her fellow nuns out of the fire after a fugue state, anger and hatred clouding her mind. When she was unable to and saved, she had felt so despondent that she had killed herself.

The church had covered it up since before her suicide she had thought herself possessed. The church had just thought she was having a mental break down and promised her that a therapist would see her soon. She had never gotten her confirmation or her therapist before she had taken her own life.

The sixties and seventies were a great time for mental diagnosis and mental health awareness, but still so bad in so many ways. The church had gone back and forth between a person being possessed and a person having a mental illness so much during that time, that the poor nun had gotten caught in the crossfire.

He smirked as he smoothed a hand over the bones, feeling the faint carvings of runes and symbolic circles that had been carved onto her very bones over three years. He knew that she had been a chosen sacrifice by the very demon that he now served. It had worked it so that it’s power had saturated her bones and muscles and skin.

He knew that if the church had exhumed her, they would have found her body in near perfect condition beyond a bit of leathering of her skin. He looked over at a patch of said skin, reaching out to trace the faint scarred mark that his master had left on her in those years.

“Yes, she was just the perfect choice,” he cooed, smoothing a bit of the rich auburn hair that he had found in her coffin down. “She will power the last of our rituals perfectly.”

Guitar:

She really did love her guitar.

It had been well loved and used during her many years of owning it. She had restrung it many times and the body had been carefully cared for. The neck had a few parts replaced over the years, but that hadn’t taken away the fact that it was still loved and was a gift from her father.

He had taught her how to play on it when she had been but a young girl-child. The years of blood, sweat and tears going into leaving her with a composing career left her with happy, fond memories. She had left that life behind when her fingers had started to hurt more and more, arthritis settling in without a care to her wishes or desires.

By then she had been well into her fifties, more than ready and able to retire. Her investments were doing lovely things after all, and her retirement fund was quite large by then. Her husband had been smart in the way that he had made money himself, and they still had royalties from the music that she had worked on or composed herself for various companies. Not to mention his own royalties.

But now, after so many years, she was alone, her husband gone for three years, leaving her alone in their small townhouse. Their children had long moved out, going out to build their own careers and show their brilliance to the world. And her guitar had been placed in a case, displayed proudly. Her will already said that it would go to her eldest, who had gotten chosen to play in an established band. He also taught the same lessons he had when he had picked up her guitar when he wasn’t touring or creating music.

Still though. She really did wish it would stop twinging out “I love you. Always” every night. She wished to sleep. And really, her husband may have been a smart man with money, but he had been a lazy slob of a man. She didn’t want him to stick around after she had put in so much work to kill off so that she could enjoy her golden years without picking up after him.

Space:

It was vast and cold. She had known that. It was filled with planets and suns and things that she could only hope to understand even slightly. She would often wonder how it would feel to die up there in the vastness. To stop being able to breath and freeze in seconds.

To float, unable to stop, just a body that would most likely never decay. Maybe one day get hit by a meteorite, or a comet, or just general space debris.

She wondered but she never thought for a second that she would learn first hand how it felt to die in space as she was shoved out into a space lock, the door closing behind her before the one to the outside opened, pulling her out without a suit.

She found that even as a ghost, space was quite big and scary. But so very filled with those had found their own death in the vastness around them.

Book:

It was heavy and thick, covered in leather that had been carefully treated and taken from a deer. It was well kept, its counterparts just as in good of a shape. Alexander ran his fingers over the cover and frowned at the raised lettering that created the title. He had no doubt that at one time they had been embossed in gold foil, creating a beautiful contrast to the rest of the dark leather.

Picking up a piece of paper, he carefully placed it over the cover and ran his charcoal stick back and forth to get a proper impression of the words. “Births and Deaths of the Marquis Family. Years Fifteen-ninety to nineteen-seventy,” he read aloud. “Well damn. You would think that they would have removed this when they moved.”

Maria looked over his shoulder before smiling. “Oh, information,” she chirped, pulling it over and opening it. They found all the names that they knew they needed, finding that someone had actually written down ‘murdered’ for several causes of death with ‘undetermined’ for others.

The book was creepy in that for many years it was mostly a death registry, but it was still informative. The ink and book though looked so very new which added to it.