Demons ▪︎ Charlie Stoker ▪︎

▪︎ Chapter One ▪︎

Grief is personal. There is no handbook on how to deal with the loss of those closest to you. No instructions for how to show your emotions to those also grieving. You have to figure it out on your own. Process it in your own time and at your own pace.

Some people take years to grieve while others take mere hours and days to accept the recent passing of a loved one.

Cora, however, felt numb. There was no anger, no sadness, or heartbreak as she sat between her sister and mother emotionless. Even while she listened to her mother sniffle quietly beside her as though she were fighting to hide her falling tears; she felt nothing.

Was something wrong with her?

She dipped her head shamefully and tightened her grip around the satchel resting in her lap with knuckles paling. She didn't want to feel nothing, but she did. She wanted to be sad and miss her stepfather, but she couldn't. It felt near impossible.

And so, with an unshakeable feeling that she was being watched, Cora looked up and turned her head to the right. She peered around her grieving mother to look at the strange man stood atop a hill off in the near distance. She frowned at the familiar sunglasses on his face and his overall appearance that offered a sense of familiarity she couldn't identify.

Her eyes narrowed sharply, studying the man's face and attire before she visibly gulped when the unknown man turned his head a fraction, catching her eye unexpectedly. His lips lifted at their corners, into a smirk or smile, Cora couldn't tell, but there was no denying that he was looking right at her as she was him.

Though the moment hardly lasted as long as the young woman would have liked because the stranger turned slowly and without a glance back to her curious form, he walked back up the hill the way Cora assumed he'd came. Disappearing from her sight completely.

She shook her head lightly, convincing herself that she had not seen the man and that she was, in fact, just seeing things in her normal grieving state. It didn't exactly make sense given her true feelings or lack thereof, but it beat the reality that she had just sat and silently shared a moment of intense eye contact with a man she did not know.

A man she inexplicably yearned to know.

•◇•◇•◇•◇•◇•

The house bustled with people Cora and India were certain they had never seen nor heard of previously. Men and women scattered around their home, paying respect for their deceased father and comforting their mother, who played the heartbroken widow role rather well. In fact, she seemed to thrive within it.

Meanwhile, Cora frowned to herself while still unable to feel anything between the funeral and their car ride home to host the wake. She just continued to feel detached and numb even as she observed those around her that appeared upset by the recent accident her stepfather had lost his life in.

She dipped her head and sighed softly before, inevitably turning and walking into the kitchen area. She took a seat at the table in the chair beside her sister, who was rolling a boiled egg along the table, cracking the outer shell.

Cora watched her sister for a moment, then she ran her own hand along the table top, brushing the shell pieces into a small pile in the centre of it while their caretaker, Mrs McGarrick, entered the room and perched herself on the spare chair beside Cora. She offered the two young girls an empathetic smile whilst reaching across them to grab an egg from the bowl and peeling it.

"Have you outgrown those shoes yet?" The elder woman asked Cora after a few short minutes as she crouched below the table to clear up the shell pieces India had managed to drop on the tiled floor. Then, once it was cleared up, she stood and smiled at the silent nod the girl offered her, flicking her gaze to the shoes briefly. "Did you find your birthday present yet?"