#frankencomplex

           she can feel all the ghosts, everywhere, dormant + active, listening + ignoring. of course, her hands shake anyway, no matter the environment, but she can’t help noticing it more. of course, she’d never talked to any of the other spirits here before. not that she wasn’t cordial, she was, of course, but she just didn’t know them. didn’t know how they may react to her. (prior experiences with deceased strangers leaves her anxious around them.) she carries an old fabric messenger bag, clearly heavy.

dying was a shockingly calming experience, from what victor could understand of it. nothing felt terribly concrete, really, but it wasn’t entirely dreamlike either - it was just vaguely ethereal, slightly otherworldly. a quick cursory glance around the room showed him that his corpse was still in poor dr. montgomery’s arms, and that his blood had started to stain the floorboards of the lab, casually soaking into the old wooden planks. he dipped his hand into the soft puddle, just to see if he COULD displace any of the liquid, and was shocked to see his fingers come away bloody.

“oh, my darling,“ he breathed, threading his bloodied hand into charles’s hair. “thus, with a kiss, I die.“

   Ellie never thought that the day would actually come that she got to meet the man. Yet here she was, sitting in his old home, sleeve pushed back so he could see the bite better. She had told him everything that happened -- how she got it, how it never got as bad as others, and how scientists wanted to see in her brain. To figure out what made her so special. 

What made her a freak of nature.

His sharp gaze on her arm made her want to pull the sleeve down again. She hated the stares -- the hate that others got when they realized that she had survived something so deadly when their loved ones hadn’t.

       -͓̽—-✧ . *  The w i t c h  was not  stranger to ghostly APPARITIONS,  some were benign and simply looked for a mere conversation or were confused about their current TRAGIC status,     some other, she knew she had to be wary of.  A gut feeling suggested to stay wary about this one

“i want to look younger. “ she glances into the compact mirror that she’s holding, turning her face from side to side as she observes her own features. “twenty years younger. i want to be able to turn  the heads of a thousand men again.”

   Years hadn’t done Nora Montgomery any good. She had gone too long without contact -- and even the littlest thing set her off. A bullet going through her brain had ruined her in more ways than one. She finds herself wandering the halls or crying in an empty room, mourning the loss of her baby.

Her b a b y.

The new owners ... had brought her out for the first time in a while. After the desperate attempt to take Vivien’s baby , and after the realization that she just wasn’t meant to be a mother, she had found herself back to the usual wandering. 

More closure had helped her.  She was better. 

The heartache was still there and she wished to find more closure for her life.  She had to speak with Charles. After everything that happened to them, they hadn’t spoken in 90 years. The hole that left was too big ... and she missed him dearly.

She missed what they had, before her mother had passed. When money wasn’t a worry and he wasn’t an addict. They were fine. 

They were in love. 

All the problems got to them. He was high most of the time and she took out her emotions on him. After all this time, she realized how terrible she had been. He never deserved that ...  And if she had helped him earlier, helped him with his addiction, they wouldn’t be so apart.

There was still ... the killing him bit but the longer they didn’t talk the more it hurt. She wondered if he felt the same. When he handed her one of Vivien’s babies, she had found herself wishing to say something.  She didn’t.  She regrets that.

All the long thinking brought her to here, in front of the basement door, hand hovering over the knob to the door that separated her from Charles.

Her Charles. 

This needed to be done.

Gripping the knob and opening the door, she took her first step down the all-too familiar basement steps. After all this time, owners still hadn’t touched the basement as much as the other rooms. In a way, she was thankful for that -- everything else in their beautiful home was taken.