They'll Never Take My Heart

As soon as Candy’s water broke, I hightailed it out of the diner. Babies are terrifying things. Killer ran into Silver’s room a little while later. Deciding it was probably safe to go back in, I inched carefully along the wall, hoping not to be seen.

“Adrenaline! Do you want to hold the baby?” Candy looked so proud. Angel looked a bit ill.

“Um, I’m good. Why did Killer run into Silver’s room?”

“Because we thought it would be nice to have her memory live on by giving the baby that killjoy name.” I grimaced. That would definitely explain why Killer would go back into her room. Walking over to the curtain of beads, I paused for a second before knocking them together to alert him to my appearance.

“Can Adrenaline come in?” I asked. He was lying on her bed.

“She looks just like my sister did when she was born.” He said.

“Do you believe in reincarnation?” He just looked at me. “What I’m saying is maybe the baby will be who Silver was. You know?” He didn’t answer, so I left and went back to my room, which had been split in half by quilts because we were running out of rooms. I now shared with Bandit, or Poison Raygun.

My half had been repainted black, while Bandit’s was a cheery blue. We were… different. Stars from her side spilled into mine. I kicked them back under the quilts before grabbing a notebook and setting off to work. Ghosts. Candles. Asylums. Nothing out of the ordinary. A creative block was crushing my brain. Sighing, I went to return my book to the pile, my eyes scanning over it briefly before they snapped open. It was missing. My orange notebook was missing. That’s where I wrote about the attacks when I was alone, and that spurred me to write out everything that scared me. Detailed descriptions of nightmares… vivid recollections of things I saw in the dark… my own personal horror story, even if it wasn’t as scary to other people.

‘It has to be someone in the diner, right?’ I asked myself, ripping apart my half of the room to make sure I didn’t just misplace it. ‘Yeah, like I would misplace something like that.’
I knew Killer couldn’t have done it, and the guys knew to stay out of my roo- Bandit? I mean, she was curious as hell about everything, but she wouldn’t go through my things, right? She spent most of her time in Cherry and Lily’s room.

‘Well, only one way to find out.’ I decided, going to confront Poison and Fun first.

“Hey, Poison, Fun, have either of you seen one of your kids with an orange notebook? It’s missing from my pile, and they always seem to be in Cherry and Lily’s room,”

“Are you sure it isn’t somewhere like the fridge?” Poison asked.

“I practically hid it underneath everything else. Trust me, I’d know where it was.”

“What was in it? I mean, if it was empty this wouldn’t be a big deal, right?” Fun asked.

“It’s just… personal stuff. Things that I wrote. Just stuff like that.”

“Daddy! Adrenaline knows the best scary stories!” Cherry yelled, laughing, before latching onto Fun’s leg. Oh. My. God.

“Hey, Cherry, can I have that book back? It’s orange, right?” I asked, forcing a smile. The whole reason it was in the damn book in the first place is because I didn’t want people to know how terrified I was of nearly EVERYTHING.

“But we’re not done with it yet, we just got up to the story you wrote about the man with the white mask!” She complained. That was towards the beginning, so that wasn’t too horrible…

“I just really need it back, alright? That’s my special notebook.”

“Cherry, you shouldn’t take people’s things without asking, alright?” Fun said, removing her from his leg and setting her standing on the ground.

“Bandit said she asked Adrenaline to borrow it. Me and Lily just liked looking at the pictures.”

“Cherry, why don’t you go and see Dr. D? I bet he has some candy.”

“Poison Raygun!” Poison yelled, and Bandit came running out. “Did you take Adrenaline’s notebook?”

“Oh, it was HER notebook? I had no clue.”

“Nice try kid, but seriously.”

“Well, she’s always writing or drawing in them, and I wanted to know what she was doing. I took one from all the way in the back, I figured we could read it and then put it back without her noticing.”

“Can I just have it back now? Please?”

“Why? Those stories are really good, and the pictures are so scary! How’d you think of all that stuff? I tried writing stories like you, but they came out bad.”

“It’s probably because they’re not stories, right Adrenaline? Those things are probably all real.” Kobra mused. I nodded slightly, not meeting their eyes.