Tattoos and lipstick - Chester Bennington fan fiction

Chapter Eleven

Chester finally stopped the car.

They haven't been driving for too long, but Mel didn't say a word the whole time, so it seemed to him the trip lasted an eternity. Chester looked at her, closing his lips in a thin line as the blank and soulless expression still lingered her face.

"We're here," Chester ended up saying, showing her the map and the address.

When they both confirmed they stopped at the correct address, Chester didn't understand what was happening.

A graveyard.

"What the...?" Chester was about to curse Richard but Mel got out of the car immediately, rushing to get inside of the cemetery. "Mel!"

She ignored him and moved quickly through the graves, a terrified expression appearing on her face.

Chester ran behind her, but he was actually astonished how agile and quick she was. She moved smoothly between the graves, her eyes reading every name on the tombs, looking for anything familiar to her.

The graveyard was colossal, and Mel has been searching for something for over five minutes. Tombstones from all colors, shapes, and sizes were displayed for almost one acre - one acre of a sad green and, mostly, grey-colored painfully silent place, where you can almost touch the heavy tension hovering such a place.

Chester never truly understood graveyards. For some years, he intended to visit where his family was buried, but every time he went there, he felt the same way: empty and numb. He wasn't able to feel anything, mostly because he was starting to barely remember their faces and their voices. Sometimes, in his dreams, he heard his mother's voice, but as he grew up, that vanished for good. So, when he visited his parents at the graveyard, he felt nothing. He looked around and saw people crying, talking alone as if they were talking to the dead and he felt the sadness they carry, however in his heart there was nothing there to feel.

Therefore, he stopped visiting his family's grave. But he never forgot the feeling that comes with that sort of place. Other's pain.

And that was all he observed on Mel's stunning green gems as she looked teary at one particular tombstone.

Thoughtfully, Chester approached her but he had no intention of asking her what the hell was happening and why did she run - There was no need for that.

"When my mother died, I never got to go to her funeral. My father didn't allow me to go..." She gulped, as she tried to stop the tears, failing miserably. "He did the same when my sister died... And I have never visited them... He hid them away from me."

"You said they were buried in the yard of your house," Chester said, completely confused.

"They are not... That was just a... a memorial? It was my father's idea after I spent so many months bothering him about my mother's and my sister's grave... He said their soul was there, but I'd never know where they're bodies truly were."

Now, that's fucked up, Chester thought to himself. He didn't speak, though. He didn't know what to say to make it better either. So, he closed the gap between then and embraced her in his arms, her head resting against his chest.

They remained quiet, his arms around her, her arms falling on each of her body as if she had no strength to raise them and she simply hugged him back after a moment.

His thumb stroked her back as a quiet way to say I'm sorry, a feeling of sadness taking over him too as he saw the light in that fierce woman fade away.

"Why now?" She asked all of a sudden, raising her inquisitive eyes at him.

They were so close, he could feel her hot breath on his chin.