The Ghost of Him

2. Wrong Path

*Melanie's POV*

"Go down 64th street, turn left down the wooded path, keep going straight until you reach the houses... Fourth one on the left," I murmured to myself.

My friend had sent me directions to her house, and I had gone over them about fifty times. I turned left on the wooded path, but I had been walking down it for ten minutes, and there was still nothing around me but woods, woods and more fucking woods. Maybe she got the directions wrong and I took the wrong path or something.

I opened up my phone and pushed my long, pastel pink hair out of my face as I searched for Zoe's number in my contacts. I found it, pressed call... And was informed that I had no signal.

I sighed, frustrated. "Are you fucking kidding me," I groaned. I heard a few twigs snapping and jumped a bit. The noise stopped, and I reminded myself that I was in the woods, where small animals lived. It was probably a deer or something.

I just sighed and continued trudging down the path, kicking a few rocks and twigs as I went along. This was great. Spring break had just started, and I was supposed to be spending it with Zoe but instead I had to go and get myself lost. Nice.

I looked down at my baggy grey cargo pants that tied nicely around my ankles, and my faded pink Marilyn Monroe tank top and smiled. I may be lost in the woods but at least my outfit is nice.

I wasn't allowed to wear this outfit as school because apparently boys don't have the capability to control themselves around my shoulders. Of course, the popular girls got away with wearing shorts that revealed way more that what my eyes ever wanted to see, but God forbid any of us average people show the world that we have shoulders. This society pissed me off.

"There's a killer running around this fucking state and no one knows where he is, but people want to worry about me showing my fucking shoulders," I said out loud, frustrated. I did that a lot, when I got frustrated. If I was alone, I would just talk to myself. I dunno if that's exactly healthy or not, but whatever.

I paused and looked around the area that I was walking in. I had totally forgotten about the person running around. And now that I mentioned him, and thought about how I was alone in the woods and it was getting darker by the second, and I pretty much had no idea where I was... I was kind of scared.

I remembered when I first learned about him. Gerard Way, I think his name is. There's always new updates about him on the news but I never really pay attention unless someone's dead. Supposedly, he was around this general area, because that's where the last few bodies had been found.

I was fourteen when the news reports about him started, and I remember my parents setting really strict curfews and shit because the boy he killed was the kid that lived about 5 houses down from me. No one really like the kid, but it was still a pretty big deal. Eventually, though, we moved a little bit away from there after hearing that the mom had tried to hang herself in the kid's closet; my parents decided it was too depressing for me to be around.

So we moved about five or six miles out, not too far, but I liked this area and this house better anyways. It was nicer.

It surprised me to think about how if I hadn't moved, I would have been attending the same high school that Gerard did. I was in eighth grade at the time all of this happened, and after freshman year they let me skip my sophomore year, which was really cool. Now I was a senior and about to graduate, which was sort of scary when I thought about it.

I continued walking along the path, and heard a few more branches snapping to my right. I froze and a lump formed in my throat. All of this thinking about Gerard Way got me extremely paranoid.