Nostalgic Obsession

The Beginning

                                                Chapter One

Snow falling like feathers stick to Amelia’s sleek black hair as she wipes it out of her eyes. The clearing she’s walking through was blanketed with two inches of January snow. She shivers closing her black cloak together around her small pale frame. The farther she walks the more she realizes that converses are not good shoes to walk through snow in. As she came to the edge of the small clearing she stopped and looked around her, taking in the immense beauty of winter. With both hands, she carefully cradled her camera, her number one possession, ready to take some snap shots of the surrounding woods and sky.

          “Perfection”, she whispers, lifting the camera to her right eye.

She snaps a few and lets the camera hang on her neck. She looks up to the grey spackled sky with one last thought of how beautiful mother nature was covered in white. She then made her way into the woods walking briskly, as if she could outrun the cold.

          What am I going to do.. she thought as another piece of her black hair covered the left side of her face. She ignored it and continued walking until she came to a road.  The road was her parent’s driveway. It was narrow with hovering bare limbs on either side. To other people it would be a long creepy road to a cemetery. To Amelia It was the road to her normal everyday life.

          Amelia’s family owns and keeps up with a century old grave yard, along with an operational funeral home. Amelia didn’t think it was weird to live less than 50 yards from a grave yard filled with the locally deceased. Ever since she was little she was always interested in the scene of the grave yard and what it meant to her.

Once, in 4th grade, she had to write a paper on what she wanted to be when she grew up. She wrote that she wanted to have her parent’s funeral home. A girl named Holly Carpenter had been a menace to Amelia since 1st grade. She called her a vampire goth freak and spread rumors about her.

          Apart from her freckles she was in fact pale and skinny. She wore a lot of black, not necessarily because she was gothic, she just liked the style. Now as she recalled that time ago, her ‘style’ hadn’t changed much. She lives in a cold climate so black seemed conveniently warm. The majority of her wardrobe  is black. She mulled the thought over in her head and considered the stereotype of “gothic” being her social name tag. She didn’t think of herself as gothic, though her peers would think different.

          She made her way to the grey mansion she called home. A black lab bounded down the steps to greet her with cold paws on her stomach.

          “Hi Mom” she said to the tall woman wearing a grey sweater, standing on the front porch.

 “Did you get any good pictures out there?” Her mother knew she had gotten good pictures, she always does. She asked simply to be nice.

“Yeah, I got a few. I’m gonna go develop them in my room” she said as she opened the door to a beautiful foyer, decorated in black, white, and grey shades.       The double staircase lead up to a maze of hallways and rooms, only Amelia knew how to navigate well. She took off her wet converses and hung her black cloak by the door.

 “I’ll be down before supper”, she yelled back at her mother as she ran up the left stair case, cradling her camera again. Her room was a delightful purple mixture. Different shades of purple and a silk cover on her bed. The light purple silk curtains at the sliding door to her balcony were tall and laced. Tall white flame-less candles are scattered about the room. She only lights them at night before she goes to bed. They seem to help her sleep better.

Her father always comes in and blows them all out before retiring to sleep. Her closet was set up to be a dark room for developing pictures. A table with trays full of liquid sit against the wall in the closet. A line for drying pictures criss-crosses from wall to wall, half filled with developed pictures from a previous funeral held there.

Amelia placed her camera on the table and retrieved the dried pictures from the line. She looked them over and brought them to her desk.

“Oh no” she says with a satisfied sigh. She noticed a flaw in one of the cemetery pictures. A figure rather than a flaw. The outline of a pale porcelain face peeked from behind a low tomb stone. The pointed black metal fence surrounding the tomb stones gave the picture an ery look. Amelia had seen her share of long forgotten ghosts in her pictures. She had a special folder for the potential ghostly figures she had found over the years.      She opened a drawer in her oak roll top desk and pulled out a heavy nila folder brimmed with paper clips and sticky notes. She grabbed a paperclip with one hand and a sticky note with the other. She glanced at the picture again and scribbled down her thoughts on the picture.

The black lab pranced into her room and sat at her feet waiting for a pat on the head or acknowlegment that he was there. Amelia finished writing and put the sticky note on the picture’s base, then paper clipped it to a free edge of the folder. She reached down to pet her best friend.

          “You wanna treat Morty? Huh?” she reached into her pocket and pulled out a dog treat. Morty’s eyes grew large with excitement and his tail waved furiously as Amelia waved it in front of his nose. She threw it into the hall and closed the door. She then paced the room and lit a few candles with her Zipo lighter. The candle light dances back and fourth like a belly dancer in the wind.

          I don’t want to face them again for three more months, she thought. Amelia has to go back to school in three days. the previous two weeks had been her spring break. She loathes going back to that horrible place, and seeing all the faces she hated for teasing her. The ‘goth girl’ didn’t like having human contact with idiots.       

Holly hadn’t grown up much since fourth grade. She still called Amelia a vampire goth freak and still spreads immature rumors about her.     

Amelia sat on her bed lost in an ocean of thoughts. High school had been less than horrible freshman year and she wished it would scese existence altogether.       

“Amelia! Dinner is ready.” Shawn, their house maid, startled her.  “Alright. I’ll be right down” she said through the thick door.

She had gotten side tracked by the dread of going back to school.  

As the smell of homemade lasangia filled her nose, she smiled and ran downstairs to have a lovely dinner with her perfectly normal family.