Red Ribbons on Her Wrists

Learning to let go

Young: once she remembered and told me I should have called the cops but I didn't, maybe I should have called my dad at least but I didn't. It was too much, I'm sure you understand now autumn, I couldn't really wrap my head around it. It was a mistake but then again maybe, just maybe it was fate. He looks at Thalia and she smiles. Running her small hand through his shaggy hair she kisses him lightly, he sighs and turns back to me. Her dad knocked on my door about ten minutes after she told me her story.

Smith: What did you do? He laughs and shakes his beautiful head, his brown hair catches the light a causes a halo effect around him.

Young: I freaked out. I started shouting unintelligible things and beating this behemoth of a man with my fists. At first I don't think he understood because he just pushed me back into the apartment and yelled that I was insane to get off him. Then he saw her, for the first time in a decade he saw Thalia.
Mr.J Thalia? Is that you baby? His eyes misted but I think it was more out of fear then grief. She looked absolutely frightening, her eyes were illuminated almost demonic in the afternoon light. She crossed the room and stood in front of me.
T.J. Oh it's me daddy, don't you recognize me? I look the same don't I? I look exactly same as the last time you saw me, even the outfit. We'll not that exact same I guess. I'm not packaged up in brown paper as you pass me off to a customer to cook and eat. But still don't you recognize me old man? He looked panicked and started to back out of the apartment but something caught his eye. I followed his gaze to the teeth in the jar on my piano and simultaneously we both ran for it. I got to them first and clung them to my chest as he tried to wrestle them free.
Mr.J You boy, have meddled in the wrong mess. You couldn't leave well enough alone could you? I practically gave this place to you and you had to dig up all my old demons you ungrateful prick! His sledgehammer of a fist pounded into the side of my head and I fell limp to the floor I looked up and saw Thalia as I had when I first encountered her. Blurred around the edges with a look in her eye that could kill and those red ribbons on her dainty wrists, it was the last comforting thing I saw as he dragged me flaccidly from the apartment.

Smith: Why didn't you try to stop him Thalia?

James: I tried believe me I tried. As he started to pull Landon out of the door, I grabbed for his hand but mine passed right through his, I don't know why I couldn't touch him anymore but I tried in vain all the way down the steps into the shop below. I beat my fists against my dad but again he felt nothing. He said I was like a fly buzzing around annoying but of no real inconvenience. I watched him tie Landon's wrists and host him up on the same hook he had me on ten years before. He cut off his clothes and threw them into the furnace. She trails off looking out the window and Landon lays a soft hand on hers but she shakes her head. Landon nods and then looks back to me.

Young: I was unconscious but I can assume at this point the butcher cut my wrists as he did to her and let me bleed out. When I came to, I was standing next to her fully dressed staring at my naked dangling body. He shakes, a ripple rises through his whole body and almost as if contagious I feel one quake through my own. After he killed me he couldn't see either of us anymore, but he still talked to us as if we were in the room.
Mr.J why did you both make me do this, I liked you Landon. You seemed like such a good kid, but I guess my daughter is still corrupting good boys from the grave. He shook his head, as I yelled protests that he didn't hear. I'll never be rid of that evil I created. Can't even credit her with saving the shop, I thought maybe that would redeem her soul but I guess I did that too. If it weren't for me laying waste to her evil soul, I would have never got the insurance money to save the shop. So there's one redeemable quality and she didn't even earn it. He spoke nonsense and I could see Thalia starting to loose it, so I pulled her away and brought her home. Over the next few days my parents were in and out of the apartment. The teeth with fresh ones added were buried again beneath the floor board. Mr.James actually notified my parents that I was missing, said he was worried and hadn't seen or heard me for three days and he thought I might be with them. He even joined the search party, though he really just drank in his Lexus, shouting my name down back roads. He tried to sell my parents me, maybe it was his way of sending me home. I thank god my mom is crazy and only eats things that don't have faces, vegetarian, my dad's one by proxy. I couldn't understand at first what happened to me, I saw it. I knew it was true but my brain did not want to accept it. So for days I walked around aimlessly trying to do simple things the living take for granted. Like turning on a lamp, I was so sick of the dark or opening the fridge, I was so unexplainably and unbelievably hungry. It took Thalia quite some time to break through to me and convince me that we'd be ok. That I was ok. Then I mourned, the dead mourn the living sometimes more then living mourn the dead. My parents held hope that I had gotten to caught up in the mystery and that I fled following a lead, they still haven't given up hope. This is where you come in autumn. This why we need you.

Smith: What can I do?

Young: Get us justice do what I should have done, call the police and show them what you have found.

Smith: they'll think I'm crazy if I say I interviewed a ghost.

Young: Don't tell them that, let them listen to my tapes from interviews I did. I hid them in the vent by the floor board and then show them the teeth, don't think about it just do it autumn. You're a journalist, you're job is to bring out the truth. It's why I choose you, so do your job. For us.