Narcissistic Cannibal

Sophia woke up from a sleep she didn't realize had taken her. It had been a very long time since she had cried herself to sleep last, but the feeling of waking up afterwords was unforgettable. For a second, she had forgotten the reason for her sorrow, hearing her mother quietly snoring beside her in her parent's bed. She drowsily realized a minute later that she had died the night prior, and felt herself begin to cry again, only no tears came this time for she had cried herself dry.

Sophia bit her lip, breathing in deeply for composure before siting up in the dark room. She saw the blue glow of her parent's clock reading just before three thirty in the morning. She had been passed out for quite a while. Suddenly, she began to wonder what happened to the guy that was with her. She looked around, unable to see his form in the room before realizing that he was gone.

Just as she was about to lay down again, she noticed the light across the hall, coming from her own room, was on. She quietly got out of bed, making sure not to wake her mother, before walking across the hall and into her room. There she found Tate sitting on her unkempt and disheveled bed, the pillows scattered about the mattress as the blankets, sheets and comforter were practically tied in knots from her never making her bed. She looked around her floor, noting all the things scattered about and remembering being yelled at constantly by her parents to clean up.

“Why wasn't I a better kid?” she asked, gaining Tate's attention from one of the magazines she had thrown about her room. Tate himself looked around the room before looking back to Sophia.
“I was never a messy kid, but I guaran-damn-tee that you were a better kid than I was,” he spoke, sitting up from lounging on Sophia's bed, closing the magazine he was reading, she saw that it was a much older magazine, one printed on the fifteen year anniversary of Kurt Cobain's death.

“You strike me as the kind of guy that likes Nirvana,” she spoke, a half smile, void of emotion showing on her lips.

Tate smiled back, genuinely happy, and said, “He's my idol,” while motioning to Kurt on the cover.

“You can keep the mag if you want,” she suggested. “I mean, if you want. If were allowed to take stuff,” she added quickly.

“Thank you,” he said,standing from her bed. “We can as long as nothing will be missed. I was gonna have you grab some clothes while we were here anyways. Looking at the state of your room, I doubt much will be noticed missing. I can't imagine living in one pair of clothes for the rest of eternity.”

He watched the look on Sophia's face contort into something of horror before he realized what he had said to upset her. “I mean...” he tried to correct himself before finding that he was already correct. He couldn't lie to her. “Thanks for the magazine,” he spoke again, awkwardly.

“Oh God,” Sophia moaned in near pain while clutching at her chest, suddenly realizing that this was happening, this was real. She was dead.

“Hey, don't,” Tate warned her, dropping his magazine onto her bed and walking over to her, gently taking her shoulders in both his hands. “Don't flip out here, don't wake up your parents,” he spoke sternly, trying to make Sophia look at him. “Breathe,” he instructed, noticing her gulping for air with silent, dry cries. “Breathe Sophia,” he said, before letting go of her and shutting her door.

She did as she was told, struggling to breathe in deeply through her nose, and out her mouth. She hadn't ever been one for panic attacks, but she used to have a pretty bad case of childhood asthma due to allergies. She had learned this technique early on in her life, and it was helping her now shortly after her death.

“You okay?” Tate asked, walking back to Sophia who was using her once white wall, now covered in acrylic paint, glitter, and posters, as support.

“I'm okay,” she told him, staring ahead of herself, not focusing on anything. “I'm okay,” she spoke again, feeling her lungs fill with air much easier now.

“Good. Lets grab your shit and get out of here, we don't have long before sunrise,” Tate said, noticing the time for the first time since they had arrived. He wanted to help her gather her things, but he had no idea what she wanted, what would be missed and what wouldn't. She had ended up using one of the fifty or so backpacks she had, this one a slightly large army green messenger bag. She had grabbed some shirts and pants, stuffing them in the bag, before shyly trying to hide her underwear and bras from Tate. She was thankful that she had a lot of clothes, since her and Caitlin (her best friend) would go thrift store shopping for clothes that they could “deconstruct” every weekend with their allowance. Half the stuff they bought, however, hardly ever got cut up.

Out of the six or seven separate shirts and bottoms she grabbed, she still had a good closet and dresser full of disorganized clothes. Surely her parents wouldn't notice. After her messenger bag was packed full of clothes, she picked up another backpack, this one was conventional with only two zipper compartments, and used that one for anything else she could think of. One compartment ended up being devoted entirely to her makeup, though she never wore a lot, she had a habit of buying a ton she never used, and knew she would eventually run out if she took her usual stuff. The other larger compartment she filled with mostly reading material, and one every old teddy bear she got when she was a baby. She was afraid that her parents would miss it but she couldn't leave it behind.

The only other things she cared about were her jewelry, most of it being passed down from her mother or her deceased grandmother. She knew, however, that her mother would definitely notice the pieces she wanted missing. It hurt to do so, but she had to leave them all behind.

“Ready?” she heard Tate ask, who was again lounging on her black and purple bed.

“No,” Sophia spoke shakily, looking around her room. Everything left was either pointless to take, would be noticed missing, or have them carrying too many things back to the mansion.

Tate only nodded, understanding her feeling, and he was slightly glad that he had died while living in the Montgomery Mansion. He couldn't imagine having to do what Sophia was. “Let's go, it's getting late,” he spoke, offering to carry one of Sophia's bags, preferably the backpack, though it was checkered and most of the white squares were colored in with odd Sharpie colors.

“Thank you,” she said as he threw the straps over his shoulders, feeling odd since it had been almost two decades since he had worn a backpack. He grabbed his magazine, before the two quickly headed out of Sophia's house. They only stopped briefly for Sophia to take a few handfuls of untouched Halloween candy still sitting in a large bowl outside the door. She had debated taking the whole bowl but decided against it.

“We don't need to eat,” Tate spoke, watching as she forced the candy into her messenger bag.

“I don't care, I want candy,” she spoke, dropping to her knees and taking a good three or four more handfuls of candy before she allowed them to leave.

They were silent for a good hour after leaving Sophia's house, before Tate finally broke the silence. “Is it good?” he asked, noticing that she had recently been digging into her candy stash, right now she had a blue Jolly Rancher in her mouth.

“Mhm,” she nodded, a small smile forming on her lips. She reached into her overstuffed messenger bag, afraid that every time she did that it would rip open, and pulled out a random candy, this one being an orange pixie stick that miraculously didn't break on her. She quickly wondered how many crushed pixie sticks she would later find before handing this one to Tate. “Pixie stick?” she offered.
Tate silently accepted the candy, tearing the top off of the paper wrapper before opening his mouth wide. He stuck out his tongue and poured the powder out into a small mound over his tongue, all the while still walking at a normal pace. If Sophia had to do the same thing she would have fallen over or tripped.

“Thank you,” he spoke through an occupied tongue, his eyes watering at the shear sweetness of the candy as he crumpled up the wrapper and tossed it carelessly aside.

“You okay?” Sophia asked, almost finding the scene amusing.

“Been a while since I've had candy. I swear they've gotten sweeter,” he spoke, finally swallowing the odd consistency of the powder as it mixed with his saliva.

“Sweeter since when?” she asked, finding a sneaky way to ask the one question that had been burning away at her mind since leaving her parent's house.

“Since I've last had them,” Tate spoke, and she couldn't quite tell if he was being vague because he knew what she was trying to ask, or if he just found it an odd question. Sophia decided not to push the subject further, since she apparently had forever to find out. That thought began to bring back her anxiety over being dead and Tate noticed.

“Seventeen,” he spoke quickly.

“What?” Sophia asked, a bit confused in the beginnings of one of her new found panic attacks.

“I died when I was seventeen,” Tate clarified. “Same year Cobain died. Seven months after actually...” Tate trailed off, checking mentally to see if that was right or not. It kind of scared Sophia, knowing he had been dead so long he had forgotten exactly when he had. She couldn't imagine not knowing that she died on October 30th, 2013.

“So 1994?” Sophia tried to distract herself from her thoughts.

“Yeah. Senior year of high school,” he stated, while Sophia dug through her bag for more candy, pulling out two tootsie roll suckers. “Chocolate or Cherry?” she asked him, watching a small but devious smile form over Tate's lips.

“Cherry,” he said and Sophie handed the flavored sucker to him.

“You still think like a senior,” Sophia spoke, her eyes narrowing slightly, though she wasn't bothered in the slightest, everyone she knew was slightly perverted.

“What do you expect, I've been seventeen for a while,” Tate smiled, popping the cherry sucker into his mouth, discarding the wrapper the same as the pixie stick. “What year did you get to?” Tate asked after a moment, removing the sucker from his mouth to talk.

“Senior also,” Sophia spoke, doing the same with her sucker so she could answer him. “I'd be eighteen in less than two months,” she added, sadly realizing she didn't even make it to adulthood.

“So technically you're older than me,” Tate replied, without knowing of Sophia's thoughts. He had a good way of letting her avoid thinking about her death for long.

“When's your birthday?”

“It was in March. The 10th,” Tate spoke, before sticking the sucker back into his mouth.

“Technically, yes. But you were seventeen in 1994. That like... Uh...” Sophia stopped walking to think. Apparently she couldn't even do simple math and walk at the same time. “You'd be born in 1977, and today you'd be... shit. You're thirty-six,” Sophia said, staring at the teenager in front of her. “I think you're older. Technically,” she added as a tease.

“Then I'm looking pretty good for an old man, I think,” Tate smiled, before turning back around and continuing on walking. Sophia quickly took her place beside him once again, readjusting the heavy messenger bag over her shoulder.

“For a drinker, yeah,” Sophia spoke, sticking her chocolate sucker back in her mouth and couldn't resist cracking it apart with her molars.

“Never said I was,” Tate spoke, listening to the loud crunching Sophia was making through her candy.

“You got pretty friendly with that Jack,” she pointed out, when she could easily speak through the crushed candy in her mouth.

“I drink when I can, just like any other teenager,” Tate clarified, looking forward again, down the sidewalk they were on. The sky was getting lighter now, almost threateningly so, but Tate knew that they were only a few streets away from the mansion. “I figure that's why you didn't pace yourself last night. You were pounding drinks pretty fast.”

Sophia's mood dropped again, as she struggled to remember the blur from last night. It only helped prove that she had drank way to much. “Why were you stalking me last night?” she asked, only the stick remaining from her candy, and she twirled it around her mouth with her tongue.

“I wasn't,” Tate defended himself, his cherry sucker nearly gone, leaving him with a tootsie roll on the end of a stick. “I was just watching the party, I swear you just kept showing up.”

“Then why'd you show up in the gazebo after I woke up?” Sophia questioned, watching her feet kick the ground as she walked.

“I didn't just show up, I was already there. You didn't notice me,” Tate spoke truthfully. “I didn't mean to scare the shit out of you like that. I hadn't heard someone scream like that in a while.”

“Scream like what?” Sophia asked, feeling slightly afraid of the question.

“Like someone was losing their mind,” Tate spoke blandly and Sophia stopped walking in her tracks, shocked to know that he knew that kind of scream so well. Tate kept walking before realizing that he had left Sophia behind. He stopped, turning around quickly, both his hands hanging onto the straps of the backpack on his back. “I don't want to scare you away by talking about it,” he spoke, debating whether or not to walk back to her.

“Where else would I go?” Sophia asked, knowing that she had to go back to the house. Tate's words, however, made her think there was another option.

“You can't go anywhere else...” Tate said, a glimmer of hopelessness shining through his dark eyes, contrasting with the pastel sky as the sun began its rise over the Californian horizon. “I mean, you can try,” he shrugged. “You won't get far with the sun coming up though.”

“What happens?” Sophia asked, slowly deciding to keep walking with Tate, the mansion being only minutes away now.

“I dunno, I've never stayed out. Other's have though,” Tate spoke, before placing one of his hands on her back, as both a comforting gesture and also to make sure she didn't stop again. “I never really bothered to ask, but they disappeared for a while before coming back to the house.”
Sophia was silently thinking on Tate's words, as he walked her to the street of the mansion, their prison. She was still staring at her shoes as she walked, twirling around the soggy stick of her lollipop in her mouth as she thought.

Tate slowed his pace as he neared the house, nearly coming to a dead stop, causing Sophia to look back up, shocked at what she saw. All around the house, the street was deserted, but in front of it there were people, some she recognized from her brief though frantic running through the house, some from the party the night before, and others were complete strangers.

“What?” Sophia asked, watching the people slowly walk back onto the property like zombies.

“Just waiting,” Tate spoke, watching everybody walk into the yard with a near glare betraying his face. Sophia looked back to the ghosts, watching a select few even bother to pay the two teenagers any attention. The ones that did only gave the same spiteful look back to Tate. Sophia didn't understand the silent hate between Tate and the others, and didn't bother to ask.

“Come on,” he said, his hand pressing lightly into her back again as he began to walk forward, making sure that they two were the last to enter the yard.

As they approached the gate, Sophia stopped one last time, Tate walking through the gate alone before he spun around. “What?” he asked as she stared at the other side, at the yard she would be kept in for one more year.

“I don't want to go back,” she spoke quietly, causing Tate's insides to twist violently. He had no idea why, it just scared him that he spent so much time helping this girl to have it wasted.

“Nobody wants to come back,” Tate spoke, looking behind himself quickly and to his horror saw Mrs. Harmon and the maid staring at him through the second floor windows. They had been trying to help her before they stupidly let her out of the house, and now he knew they'd blame him if she didn't come back. “If you don't,” Tate spoke quickly as he took a step towards her, feeling the women's eyes burning into his back, “You'll end up in the house anyways, sooner or later.”

“What if I don't?” Sophia asked, standing her ground as the sun threatened to breach the horizon any second. “What if I–? ”

“You won't. You won't be free, you wont cross over. This house won't let you. Please Sophia,” Tate held out his hand, his fingers barely within the property.

“Sophie. My friends call me Sophie, you can too,” she said, though she wasn't entirely sure she would see him again.

“Sophie, please,” he spoke again, braving one more step, forcing his arm outside of the property line and closer to her. “There's nothing you're doing that somebody else hasn't already tried. It's useless. Please.”

She watched his face soften into concern and she sighed. Her legs felt like lead, her feet welded to the sidewalk. She didn't want to move, she wanted to take her chances. She also understood that Tate had been stuck in this house for nearly two decades. He would know better than her what this house could do, if it truly was as evil as it was made out to be.

She slowly lifted her heavy hand, realizing that Tate was risking himself to make her stay, and placed it in his. She forced her body forward through the gate as he pulled her inside, the sun coming over the horizon and casting golden November light over the mansion seconds after.

Tate let out a huge sigh of relief, knowing that he had risked a few weeks in an unknowable limbo for this girl who had just died a night ago. Where he felt relief, Sophia's face began to crack turning slightly pink a she began to sob, somehow able to produce tears after only a short break from crying at her parent's house.

He squeezed her hand within his, lacing his fingers though hers to comfort her as her demeanor broke into helpless sorrow. He heard her utter a pitiful cry, and though he felt awkward knowing that his ex girlfriend's mom and the creepy maid Moira were watching him, he grabbed her shoulder with his free hand and pulled the shorter girl into his chest to comfort her.

“Let's not stay out here all morning,” Tate spoke quietly between hushing Sophia. He chanced another look up at the windows, only to find them deserted. “Okay?” he looked back at the black haired teen sobbing into his sweater.

“Okay,” Sophia replied, trying to regain composure, slightly embarrassed at how much she had cried in front of Tate already. She stepped back from him, slowly breathing in through her nose and out her mouth as she calmed herself down again, before letting Tate lead her into the mansion, their hands still entwined.