The Murdered Ghost (short story)

Her fingers trace along the edge of the dresser that was once hers. Its surface is covered in dust that keeps collecting. The wooden bed frame in the center of the room is distorted and broken on the floor where it once stood proudly. Dust also claims it. The mirror she used to gaze upon her beautiful appearance in is cracked and spotted with age.

Everything in this room once belonged to her. She takes in every detail. The music box that no longer plays, jewelry that once adorned her neck, the dresser full of feminine clothes, and pictures of Amelia scattered across the floor. Amelia. What they used to call her. She longs to pick up a picture but she can’t no matter how much she wants to.

Everything is untouched. No one has been here for years. They had left in a hurry. She could still remember the fear in their eyes. The eyes that once adored and loved her. Love that had turned to fear and then to panic. All she wanted was to feel loved again.

Her desire for love had driven them away. She moved through the rest of the house. Fond memories that it once brought turn to painful ones. She now knows that they'll never come back. No one would.

Tomorrow they will tear down the house and everything she has left of them will be gone.

Once the house is gone she'll be doomed to wander, lost and alone. She'll wander until someone notices her. Until someone cares.

This house was once one of glory, beauty, and love, and one act of hate had destroyed it. Tomorrow it will be gone forever because of that one act.

She remembers that beautiful blue eyed boy that approached one day as she sat on the front porch sipping lemonade. She wished now that she had not looked into his eyes. He was captivating, and she fell in love instantly with his beauty and grace.

He had been so sweet to her. They spent days and days together and it felt like the word was only theirs. Nothing else mattered but them being together.

She moves to the front porch and looks down upon the broken swing they had spent hours on together. That cursed swing. Maybe if she hadn't sat there the day he approached her the house would be safe. She would be safe. She would be loved...and alive.

She recalls the chills that had rippled through her body when the blue eyed boy's eyes had gone ice cold. It was the moment that she realized the heart she thought she held was actually one of stone.

He never loved her. She was only the prey in his series of victims. He killed her when her family was away and buried her in the backyard.

After that moment her consciousness never left. She watched him bury her body, she watched her family grieve, always present and incapable of doing anything. She desperately tried to show them she was there but it only caused fear in them and pain in her. She could feel emotions but couldn't express them. Her soul was in agony, her spirit restless.

She was unable to cry, or laugh, or smile. No one could share in her pain. After many attempts of trying to get her family's attention they decided to move out. They couldn't handle the "weird happenings" of the house or the memories inside it, so they left. They left her alone. She has been here ever since. Hundreds of years later she is still here.

No one thinks about her anymore. No one prays for her. All she wants is one person to remember. One person to pray. Her life was incomplete and never can be until someone does so.

Amelia will be a ghost of the past forever from one act of hate, until it is replaced by an act of love. Just one prayer.