Narcissistic Cannibal

“Hey,” Tate spoke, poking Sophia's side as he found her sleeping in her tangle of throws and pillows, as well as an actual blanket and bed pillows thanks to the Harmons.

“What?” Sophia asked, her eyes still closed, though she squirmed under the ticklish pressure.

“I've got a surprise for you,” Tate spoke, poking Sophia again.

“Stop,” she fought laughter before opening her eyes, looking up to where he sat beside her.

“You have a love letter,” he teased her, and her eyebrows knitted together, for a fleeting second she thought Tate had written her a love letter, before recognizing Mayer's handwriting on the outside of the white envelope. She sat up, squinting from the early morning light, before ripping it open, finding three separate notes inside, one from each of her best friends and one from Mayer himself.

“Where did you get this?” She asked looking up to Tate, a red rose attached to his nose.
He took it away, handing it to Sophia for her to smell before clarifying, “Jackass left it and the flower near the front gate a few minutes ago. I waited for him to drive off before snooping.”

“Don't call him that,” Sophia said, reading Mayer's letter first. She read about how much he missed her and how he sometimes thought about joining her. It was romantic but scared the shit out of her.

“What's he want?” Tate asked, watching her drop the letter before picking it up himself as she read the second one, from Caitlin.

“Don't read that, it's mine,” she snatched it back from out of Tate's hands. He pouted, acting overly dramatic and Sophia rolled her eyes. “Whatever,” she spoke, handing it back to him, deciding that there was no harm in letting him read the letter from her boyfriend.

She quickly read through Caitlin's, which seemed more like notes she would receive in class from her best friend, rather than a sad letter stating that she missed Sophia (though that fact was stated a few times). It was a lot of gossip and current events. Halfway through, she was interrupted by Tate's laughter.

“Somebody needs to teach this boy how to write a proper love note,” he laughed, handing the letter back to Sophia.

“Shut up Tate,” Sophia smiled, though she hastily snatched the letter back. “Like you're a master love note writer.”

“It's not hard, at least not for me. For Jackass however...”

“Tate,” Sophia warned, trying to sound serious.

“For reals,” Tate smiled innocently. “Guy should read some Keats.”

“Stop boasting before I make you tell me what you'd write,” Sophia threatened, before continuing to read Caitlin's letter.

“You were the only light in my world. I find myself wandering in this god forsaken darkness without you by my side. It hurts so much more knowing that you're so close, but I can't see you. I can't love you anymore, because you won't let me. You're close enough to touch, but it's too dark to see you.

“I don't know what to do with myself anymore. I'm wallowing in the shit and piss of my own world, lost and hated. I always know where you are but I can't find you because I'm hiding from you. You asked me to be this way and I'll endure. Not because I can, but because I have no other choice.

“The hardest thing I've ever had to do was to let you go. Let you fly away from this madness, like a bird. You left me like this and I hate you for it, but I can't stop loving you. All I have left in this festering pit is loving you. And you won't let me.”

Sophia had kept her eyes down at Caitlin's letter in her hand while Tate spoke. It was short, what he said, but his word's felt like they meant everything. Coming out of his mouth in such a sorrowful tone, Sophia wanted to cry. She held back though, looking up to Tate after he had stopped. He forced a smile for her, though he looked slightly sad.

“That was sappy and unrealistic,” she falsely criticized, smiling back at him with the same forced smile.

“That was not sappy,” Tate defended himself, and Sophia noticed the brim of his eyes filling with water, though she knew that she was not the cause.

“Who'd you write that for?” she pondered aloud.

“Nobody,” he spoke quickly, loosing his smile in an instant. “I just made it up.”

“Tate, that was too specific to just have been made up,” Sophia said, her own forced smile fading from her pink lips.

“It was, I'm just proving I'm good at love notes,” he spoke, rubbing at his eyes, trying to pass it off as if he were getting a headache and not clearing the tears out of his eyes. There was something sorrowful about him suddenly, and Sophia could see that. She knew he had lost his brother and sister, but she didn't know who else Tate had lost, but however much she wanted to push him, she didn't. Eventually, she would find out.



After three months, three months of almost daily letters from her friend's, they stopped. The first to get sparse were Di's letters, though Sophia knew that her friend was having a very hard time coping with what she had seen at the mansion the last time she had been there. Usually Caitlin would mention Di in her letters but those stopped as well, but not before Mayer's. Every week his love notes got less and less meaningful, until the tone of them was nearly plain and ordinary. That was just before he quit, two weeks ago. And a week after, there was nothing.

When Sophia spoke to Tate about it, he said he wasn't surprised, that some people move on over the death of loved ones pretty fast. When she'd confess this to Violet, on the other hand, she was more concerned for Sophia's feelings. Still, she got about the same point across that Tate had.
After three months, Sophia had fallen back into a depression, feeling like nobody cared anymore but the ghosts in this house with her. Sophia hadn't received a single note or flower or anything form her friends in almost three weeks.

One morning, while she was laying in her makeshift bed, staring sightlessly across the dusty floor of her room, she heard her door quietly creak open before closing again. She didn't have to look up to know that it was Tate creeping into her room.

“Sophie?” he questioned, watching her lay near motionless on the floor, wrapped up in the sheets and blankets she had slowly accumulated from around the house. She didn't respond to him, and he stood there for a good five minutes at her feet, waiting.

Once Tate knew he wasn't going to get a response, he got down on his knees near Sophia's makeshift bed before laying down behind her, moving himself under the covers. The two of them fully clothed, only Sophia was missing shoes. He moved his arm around her, snuggling against her with his head propped up by his other arm.

Sophia saw a small flash of pink in her vision and looked down to see a small wild rose flower in his hand, recognizing it from a wild rose bush out in the back of the mansion with the same pink flowers before she could get excited, thinking one of her friends, or Mayer had left it for her.

“Sorry I don't have a better selection of flowers to give you...” Tate spoke shyly as she rolled onto her back, taking the small but pretty pink flower from him, noticing all the tiny thorns had been cut off.

“Thanks...” she said, twirling the stem of it slowly as she observed the small petals. “But why?” she looked from the flower to Tate next to her.

“It's Valentines day,” he smiled with a slight blush. He wanted to add that since her jackass of a boyfriend wasn't going to bring her flowers that he felt like he should. Tate held his tongue however, not wanting to upset her.

“Really?” Sophia asked, with a small smile.

“Yep,” Tate nodded before attempting to continue on with his sentence. “You don't have to be my valentine or some shit but...” Sophia had stopped him dead with a small kiss to his cheek, catching him off guard.

“Thank you,” she spoke, smiling up at him while he looked away from her, chewing the inside of his cheek as he began to lightly blush again.

“It's nothing,” he spoke modestly, before meeting her gaze with his black eyes.

“It's sweet of you. That's something,” Sophia defended the small act of kindness that Tate seemingly dismissed. Her smile was contagious and spread quickly over Tate's lips.

“I didn't want you to keep feeling so sad,” Tate admitted, instead of saying what he had thought previously.

“Thank you again,” she spoke, looking back at the flower, before looking up to her ceiling, that was currently covered in dried flowers, hanging upside down so she could keep them without the flowers wilting. She had managed to save every singe one left by her friends, tying string and random fabrics to the base of their stems before hanging them on her roof to dry. “I'm running out of things to dry them with though,” she admitted, knowing that she had resorted in using some of the tassel strings from one of her throws to hang a few flowers.

“No shit,” Tate said, looking up at her ceiling as well, it was getting hard for him to walk in the room without hitting his blonde head on some dried plants. “I'll see if I can find some stuff for you to hang the flowers with. Can't you take some down though?” he asked, pointing out a few of the older flowers that looked as crisp as rice paper.

“But I like them up there, it's pretty,” Sophia gave him a fake pout, moving over so Tate could lay on his back. Immediately she moved to lay on his chest, his arm wrapping around her waist as she did, the other one behind his head.

“It's pretty because you don't hit your head on them,” Tate pointed out, making her laugh. He laughed with her before their laughter quickly died out in the room.

“Tate?” she asked, once he had began to think Sophia was asleep again.

“What?” he asked, looking down to her on his chest.

“Do you think they'll leave anything today?” She asked quietly, the heat from her words sinking in through the fabric of Tate's sweater, making every part of him that wasn't touching her feel ice cold.

No. “Possibly,” he spoke instead of speaking his mind.

“Why did they stop?” she asked him quietly, the happiness gone from her, leaving her voice empty and sad.

“I dunno... maybe they didn't.” Immediately Tate felt like hitting himself. Hard.

“What do you mean?” Sophia asked, looking up at Tate.

“I don't now,” he sat up quickly, unable to think of another way to explain his words. “Maybe someone stole them?”

“Why?” Sophia asked, sitting up as well, still holding the small pink rose in her hand.

“Because people are assholes. I dunno,” Tate shook his head, a small scowl forming on his lips as he looked down to his lap.

“Hayden?” Sophia asked, immediately accusing her because she was he only ghost that Sophia had actually met that didn't seem to like her. And Hayden had yet to get back at her for the awkward exchange between Sophia and her fuck buddy Travis after recently dying.

“She is a bitch, but I don't know,” Tate spoke, not wanting to specifically call anyone out.

Sophia, unaware of the small turmoil in Tate's head, leaned against him, twirling the rose around again as she looked at it. “We'll just have to see.”



One week later, after Tate had given her the idea that some ghost might be stealing her letters and flowers, Sophia would sit out by the front gate form sun up 'til sundown, braving the cold winter weather. Sadly, she had not seen anyone snoop around to steal anything from her, nor did she see her friends stop by to drop anything off at the gate. The small hope she had found from speaking with Tate had vanished and she felt truly alone. Most of the time, she spent her time sitting by the gate unseen by everybody, and in the past week she had seen Tate only once. He new where she was, but felt awkward and out of place sitting with her outside, waiting for her friends when he knew they wouldn't come.

One day, sitting with her arms pulled in to her sweater, and her knees as well, she sat alone and unseen next to the path, just waiting. All the ambient sounds of the neighborhood kept her occupied, and thinking of things other than her loneliness when she heard a vehicle roll up and stop in front of the house. She felt her chest tighten, though she new it sounded nothing like Mayer's Camaro, until she heard a man's voice begin to speak over an intercom.

“And our next stop on our tour of departed souls, the gem of mid-town. Murder House. Our tour concludes with one of the most famous houses of horrors in the city of Angles... better known as 'The Murder House.' ” Sophia, still hidden, raised herself up onto her knees, trying to peek over the overgrown bushes in the front yard. She still wasn't very confident that she could stay hidden when living people were around, mainly because she wanted to be seen.

“Built in 1922 by Dr. Charles Montgomery – acclaimed surgeon to the stars – for his wife Nora, a prominent East Coast socialite. When Montgomery fell on hard times he became addicted to drugs and developed a terrifying Frankenstein complex. An estimated two dozen girls went under Dr. Montgomery's knife, thanks to his wife Nora. But the souls of the little ones must had weighed heavily upon them as their reign of terror climaxed in a shocking finale in 1926. They lived there with their son Thaddeus. That is until the baby was kidnapped and found dismembered. Legend has it that the ghost of Nora Montgomery still haunts these very halls, as does her beloved – if mutilated – toddler.

“The Montgomery murder/suicide was only the first of many to occur behind these bloody walls. And the recent and bloody tragedy of the Harmon family... only adds to the infamy of the murder house.

“And the legend continues on, even when the house lays unoccupied. The most recent victim of the house was a young Sophia Hendrix.”

“Oh god please no...” Sophia's eyes began to water.

“The poor girl's soul was trapped in this very house with numerous others last October, the night before Halloween. She fell victim to a mysterious fire that seemed to cause little damage to the house itself.”

It was just another way to bring Sophia to the realization that she was dead. She would never age, get married, have children, or even have a job. She had nothing but the damned house.