Seeds

There's an allure to death, and that was a pulling feeling Annabelle Umbarge knew well.

It was all so interesting to her. How the body decomposes and finds a way to make new life. And how the death came to be.

She'd watch the television shows with her grandfather, delicious murder mysteries with a plot twist that usually sent her Granpop reeling in laughter. She knew that he found death amusing too.

Although, probably not in the same way as she.

Annabelle always saw her Granpop laughing, the only time he stopped was when he was struck dead by lightning when he was on one of his evening walks. And he was laughing until then too.

Annabelle'd know, she was there with him in Samhethan Park when he kicked the bucket. Oh, well, she didn't really like to think about Granpop's passing.

It was the only time she didn't enjoy death.

The kids at school always did make fun of her passion, and after Granpop's death, the children's gruesome questions did get worse. At one point they asked if she liked seeing him go.

She kicked Richie Driften in both shins for that one and Donna a swift kick to the stomach.

Richie and Donna Jonson loved to make fun of Annabelle's dream to be a mortician. As if they had more interesting dreams.

Richie wanted to be a police officer and Donna wanted to be a ballerina.

Annabelle was shocked by their career choice. Who the heck wants to be a police officer, or a ballerina? She thought these jobs were so incredibly dull that she was sure that they would be very dull people when they grew up.

They'd probably have two kids, one boy, one girl, and Donna'd make roast every night for supper and whenever Richie'd come back from his job at the office, he'd hang his coat and hat and kiss her on the cheek and then she'd ask how his day was and he'd say awful and then she'd hit him over the head with the skillet that she was cooking vegetables in because she was so sick of the twenty years of this shod of a marriage and all of her pent up frustration would come out at that moment because her life up until then had been so incredibly dull.

Well, Annabelle supposed that that'd be if her two nemesises did get married to each other.

Daydreams of her enemies' future aside, her daily walk home, which (in this timeline) is the present, has just, and only just, been interrupted by something.

Someone, actually. Interesting.

Annabelle, young and sweet, detours her daily walks (only a minute does this detour take) through one of the oldest cemeteries in town, Brownwood Lovers' Cemetery, filled only with couples of the 1800s. It is no longer visited and it is no longer tidied daily. There is usually no one here. At least, not alive.

And, Annabelle did suppose, this young man did fit the bill. He was dead, obviously.

So, Annabelle, still young and still sweet, decided that she, cuddly and cute that she is, was going to watch this body decay.

For future research purposes, obviously. She does want to be a mortician, after all.