The Fan's Playlist

--Ghost-- by Confetti

Pushing Daisies
Follows Ned's Dad

Ned can bring the dead back to life with a touch. If he touches you again, you go back to being dead. If you're alive again for any longer than 1 minute, something else has to die to take your place.

Ned brought his childhood sweetheart back to life and kept her alive. He accidentally did the same to her father when she tricked him. Her father's friend died to take his place.

Ned's father and the other two men were friends. They all have matching pocket watches. When Dwight Dickson came to collect Charles Charles' pocket watch, he died, and Ned's dad covered Ned's tracks.

I rub my thumb over the pocket watch that serves as a reminder of my time in the military. My friends and I may have been sent there by the military, but we never told anyone what we did. We never shared the secrets we discovered. I never told them what I did.

One code, meant to unlock a secret passage in Egypt, was split up between the three of us: Dwight Dickson, Charles Charles, and me. It was Charles' idea to do that. He was a kind person who cared for his daughter more than his friends. Dwight wasn't a good person. He went looking to collect the watches as soon as he got out of prison. Neither of them know that the secret isn't there anymore. I took it, and I left Dwight in jail in my wake.

The secret to immortality was a waste anyway. It said that only the offspring of someone with the curse could harness the secrets, and all opening that damned vault did was curse me.

I slip the pocket watch back into my pocket and watch the young waitstaff of the little pie shop bustle about. The rumors that the pie here is to die for are true. I used to think my first wife made the best pies in the world. She baked pies to pass the time while I was gone, and I was gone a lot, so she got very good in my absence. 

I never thought I'd eat anything so good again after eating the pie that was left sitting on the counter when I returned to that house one final time to pick up my oldest son and send him away.

Truth be told, I had lots of sons. I hoped one of them would one day hold the secret of immortality. As I got older, I went searching for them all, but I never thought I would find the one in the pie shop I stopped in, hoping to get a taste of home.

I don't know what happened to my son. I don't remember him being particularly out going like the twins that came right after, but he's so quiet. He's tall and handsome, and he would probably be intimidating if he spoke any louder than he does. The only words he's spoken to me in twenty years have been "More coffee?"

I watched my son's peculiar mannerisms for years. Obviously, the loss of his mother took a toll on him, and he mourned her by perfecting her craft of pie making, but he had a dog he never petted, and a girlfriend he did not touch. Of course, I recognized her as the girl who lived across the street, and the girl who was murdered on the cruise ship.

I figured out that he was the one. He could touch dead things and bring them to life, and the dog and the girl were two he had brought back.

Behind the counter, they talk about Ned's side business as a Private Investigator, and today, they speak about the close call they had with someone finding out about Charles Charles and the man who died to take his place. They think it was Charlette's father, watching from afar, but he was the man who caught them when they went over the side of that cliff. While Charles was there, I was staging the crime scene.

I never truly loved any of my sons. They were all tools to bring me closer to the secret of immortality.

I don't know what it was about Ned that melted my heart. Maybe it was his quiet nature, or maybe it was the pie that was truly to die for, but he had extraordinary power that he never used, and I just couldn't bring myself to exploit him for it.