Cassie

I grew up in this beautiful old house in beautiful Maine next to a beautiful cliff to the beautiful Atlantic Ocean, with a beautiful graveyard behind the house, and in the middle of a beautiful small town full of beautiful people….

I used to want to be one of the beautiful people. I remember my parents showing me pictures if David and me. Me in mom's clothes, and him in one of Dad's suits. We were both about three at the time so it was one of those really really cute photos… I miss him. When we were eleven, he went over the side of that cliff. He'd always been the troublemaker of the two of us, so when he died, I tried to compensate for a bit…. Mom and Dad were too upset to notice, so I took to reading in the graveyard. I thought that'd make them snap out of their grieving and notice me… but they didn't.

There was this old willow tree in the middle of the graveyard that was great for spending hours at a time in. It was during one of those days in that tree that I first saw David… again….

David wasn't the same. He said it was a horrible place he was in. He said he was there cause someone pushed him over the cliff. He said he didn't know who it was, and that he needed me to find out. Can you imagine being told that just before entering junior high? I started acting so suspicious of everyone. Any friends I'd had vanished with my strange behavior. I took to hiding out in the graveyard more often.

I started noticing more and more people in the graveyard; Dead people like David. They kept asking me for little favours. They were always really happy when I did those favours for them. I'd go get a necklace, give someone a message… People in town avoided me more, but I became very popular in the graveyard… I went through junior and senior high like that. Towards the end of senior high I decided to be a doctor - so I could help the living the way I helped the dead… David didn't like that. He didn't want me to go away to college. He wanted me to get a nice job and settle down near the graveyard… I almost did…

I was getting all my stuff together - getting ready to move to an apartment nearby. I found his diary. It happened to be open to the last entry… in it he was writing about killing himself… he was thinking of jumping off the cliff….

I grabbed the diary and ran out to the graveyard screaming for him to show himself. He did, and he eventually admitted to lying… for seven years. He said he needed me near him… called me a fetter… It was a pretty nasty argument and I really don't need to get into details. We both said nasty things…I ended up leaving. I went to Montreal. Uncle Peter lived there so I stayed with him, and I'd already been admitted to McGill. I thought my problems would be over….

McGill was a nice place. The campus is nice, the people were nice and though I wasn't one of the beautiful people, at least I was one of the nice ones.

One of the other nice people there was a guy named Michael. He and I got along well. Nothing seemed to bother him, I eventually told him about my Ghost Sight. I remember he smiled and replied that here were some people he thought I should meet…

…And that's how I was introduced to the Goth scene. I got along well with this new type of people. Most of them were freaks too. Most of them were less likely to think me crazy, and more likely to think my little talent was romantic. Not like I told anyone else though.

The workload at McGill started getting really heavy soon into that first semester. I actually tried to study in the Montreal graveyard… but there were just too many distractions. With the workload I couldn't afford any distractions at all, so I actually started trying to ignore the ghosts…

I remember a time when I was in the middle of a particularly difficult exam, and I suddenly head laboured breathing very close to me. I looked up briefly and saw what was once a man, now covered in weeds and quite soggy looking. At first I thought I was looking at a drowning victim, till I saw the chains around his legs and the very large stone they were attached to. He was moaning loudly and reaching out to grab at me… I forced my eyes away from him and back down at my exam paper, even though I could feel his cold and (thankfully) insubstantial hands around my throat trying to squeeze the life out of me…

One of my favorite courses was Gross Anatomy. I think I'd become a little morbid over the years, but I actually enjoyed opening up a body and poking around inside to see how everything was arranged… and how it worked…. I didn't take that course till my second semester, and it was towards the end of that semester that my uncle died…

I had been staying with him for that first six months or so, and I'd gotten to know his habits. I remember mom saying how he'd wanted to be a scientist when he was younger, but how his fiancÈe had died just before he took his SATs. He'd been so distracted he scored abysmally low. He never did get up the confidence to take them again. He'd gotten a good job in Montreal, but his heart never was in his work. He went out drinking every night, and often wouldn't come home at all at night - he'd pass out in an alley somewhere and stumble in long after I'd gone to classes for the day.

Towards the end of my second semester he pulled one of those all-nighters. I got home after classes that evening to find he still wasn't home. That had me a bit worried. I figured he would take care of himself though and as it was a Friday night, I figured he could've come home and gone back out drinking. I was supposed to go out dancing with Michael though, so I dumped my stuff and proceeded to get dressed.

Michael arrived to get me at the same time as the cops. They wanted me to come in and identify a body. Michael was nice enough to come with me…

My Uncle's favorite bar is located on a fairly busy street. Vehicles often speed by at all hours. My uncle had been drunker than usual that night and had wandered into the path of one of those speeding vehicles. In his case it was a large Mac truck. The body itself wasn't too mangled since he'd just gone flying. The pole that he landed face first in however, made sure that he had no teeth left for them to compare any dental records to… Which is why they needed me. I recognized the clothes on the body and the scar on his left hand…

I went out dancing that night. I really needed to forget myself for a bit. The Will reading was the next day. He'd left his house to me and had donated his body to science… I was too numb to hear anything else…

My Gross Anatomy final was the following week. We were supposed to open up a section of the lower abdomen, weigh and label the organs, and note any abnormalities. The upper halves of the bodies we had to work with were each covered with a sheet. The body I was assigned appeared just like all the other bodies in the room, with one exception. The left had stuck out from underneath the sheet just slightly. I knew the scar on that hand very well. It had served me breakfast on numerous occasions that school year.

After the low mark on the exam the previous semester, I couldn't afford a low mark on this exam. So I opened up the body anyway. I did get almost full marks…

Shortly after that I started seeing my uncle again. His bar was on my walk home, and I saw him just standing outside it. The first time, he was watching me pass. I looked directly at him and smiled to let him know I could see him, but he turned away. I saw him again the next day and tried to give him a subtle wave, but he refused to make eye contact…

It was summer by then and I was doing my first internship at the Royal Vic. I had a hard time ignoring all the… visitors I kept getting… So I started responding again. Michael had just moved away to San Francisco, so I didn't really mind the extra company the spirits offered. Mind you, I still went out Friday nights, and I had friends amongst the Goth community… but no one I could talk to about my occasional bad experiences with…

There were couple spirits that I'd helped that would lend an ear if I needed it. They explained what Specters were… so at least I knew somewhat what to expect from those…

My next semester, I took a couple of evening classes. The library was always much quieter after the sun went down and all the beautiful people went drinking… and I could much more easily get away with doing favours. I remember it was early October when I first noticed him. An older man… I would have thought him just some new professor… except for the circumstances I saw him. He was leaning against the wall in one of the less-used hallways… Leaning beside him was one of the spirits I talked with on a regular basis. I had been about to step out of the bathroom and was able to watch unnoticed. The man's lips were barely moving, but he was obviously deep in conversation…

Someone else who could see and hear them! I caught my name though, and so I stayed hidden. I didn't see him again for another year. The next time it was on my way home after a late night studying. I passed him talking with my Uncle! (He wouldn't talk to me!) I didn't see him for a long while after that…

I was in my last semester at McGill, and I was interning again. This time I had the night shift at the Morgue, acting as assistant. I'd helped out a couple of spirits in my time there - mostly pointing them I the right direction… but mostly it was quiet there… on both sides of the shroud. I remember clearly, I'd just looked at the clock and it was 11:41pm. The guy whom I was supposed to be assisting made some strange excuse about needing some air, and left me to examine the latest DOA. I recognized him immediately as my strange "professor", and I remember feeing a twinge of regret at never actually having spoken with him. I shrugged it off, and got on with the examination.

It was quite the strange subject. He appeared to have been dead for quite some time. Lack of colour indicated that he'd not had any blood circulating for quite some time - indeed I could clearly see some vessels that were obviously blue. Either he'd died due to gross lack of oxygen - drowning for example (though he didn't appear to have been recently wet) or he'd been dead for a very long time, but with an unusual lack of decay. Rigor Mortis was long over.

In was just finishing recording these comments, and getting ready to open him up for a full autopsy when his eyes opened. The last thing I remember was him saying quite clearly:

I came to in a long stone box. And due to my extensive experience in the subject, it only took a moment's hesitation to realize that I was in this box - or coffin - with a dead body. In defense I suppose, I switched to analytical mode. It was a female with long hair, only slightly older than myself, who'd been dead for roughly a year. I was able to determine in the darkness that she was most likely beaten to death. The left side of her skull had been bashed in. I couldn't bear to find out if she'd been raped too…

I spent the next few hours imagining her death in gruesome detail… and it wasn't till I realized that doing so was making me hungry, that I was able to drop my defensive analytical mode and think about how the hell to get outa there. I couldn't hear anything around me… I had to assume I'd been buried with this girl.

I found myself sucking at her wounds… at the dried blood… and I couldn't rationalize it. Yes I was a Goth, and Goths are supposed to be a bit in love with death… But sucking at the source of her death… I stopped myself for a moment and was struck by the silence around me. I'd never heard such silence…

I had no heartbeat. Funny how it took me minutes to determine not only that the girl next to me was dead, but also her exact cause of death, but it must have taken me all night to realize that somehow, I was also dead.

It wasn't till then that I called out. I guess I wasn't buried after all since all I heard was a low chuckle that reverberated as though it were a small stone room. I was in a tomb! I panicked and began begging to be let out, but all I heard in response were footsteps leaving and final-sounding thud of a heavy door.

A couple of days later I managed to get desperate enough to find the strength to open the coffin I was in. The girl whom I was entombed with must have been well off since it was made of fairly nicely carved stone.

Sitting outside, waiting for me was the mysterious stranger. He chuckled at me again, and introduced himself as Claude, and informed me that my education was about to begin.


	Satanic Mechanic \| home Petra \| Cassie \| Setite \| Dosia \| Tes \| Selkie Cassandra Small town Maine is not the most interesting of places…mostly. Most of it is pretty boring. My place, however… I grew up in this beautiful old house in beautiful Maine next to a beautiful cliff to the beautiful Atlantic Ocean, with a beautiful graveyard behind the house, and in the middle of a beautiful small town full of beautiful people…. I hate beautiful people… I used to want to be one of the beautiful people. I remember my parents showing me pictures if David and me. Me in mom's clothes, and him in one of Dad's suits. We were both about three at the time so it was one of those really really cute photos… I miss him. When we were eleven, he went over the side of that cliff. He'd always been the troublemaker of the two of us, so when he died, I tried to compensate for a bit…. Mom and Dad were too upset to notice, so I took to reading in the graveyard. I thought that'd make them snap out of their grieving and notice me… but they didn't. There was this old willow tree in the middle of the graveyard that was great for spending hours at a time in. It was during one of those days in that tree that I first saw David… again…. David wasn't the same. He said it was a horrible place he was in. He said he was there cause someone pushed him over the cliff. He said he didn't know who it was, and that he needed me to find out. Can you imagine being told that just before entering junior high? I started acting so suspicious of everyone. Any friends I'd had vanished with my strange behavior. I took to hiding out in the graveyard more often. I started noticing more and more people in the graveyard; Dead people like David. They kept asking me for little favours. They were always really happy when I did those favours for them. I'd go get a necklace, give someone a message… People in town avoided me more, but I became very popular in the graveyard… I went through junior and senior high like that. Towards the end of senior high I decided to be a doctor - so I could help the living the way I helped the dead… David didn't like that. He didn't want me to go away to college. He wanted me to get a nice job and settle down near the graveyard… I almost did… I was getting all my stuff together - getting ready to move to an apartment nearby. I found his diary. It happened to be open to the last entry… in it he was writing about killing himself… he was thinking of jumping off the cliff…. I lost it I grabbed the diary and ran out to the graveyard screaming for him to show himself. He did, and he eventually admitted to lying… for seven years. He said he needed me near him… called me a fetter… It was a pretty nasty argument and I really don't need to get into details. We both said nasty things…I ended up leaving. I went to Montreal. Uncle Peter lived there so I stayed with him, and I'd already been admitted to McGill. I thought my problems would be over…. McGill was a nice place. The campus is nice, the people were nice and though I wasn't one of the beautiful people, at least I was one of the nice ones. One of the other nice people there was a guy named Michael. He and I got along well. Nothing seemed to bother him, I eventually told him about my Ghost Sight. I remember he smiled and replied that here were some people he thought I should meet… …And that's how I was introduced to the Goth scene. I got along well with this new type of people. Most of them were freaks too. Most of them were less likely to think me crazy, and more likely to think my little talent was romantic. Not like I told anyone else though. The workload at McGill started getting really heavy soon into that first semester. I actually tried to study in the Montreal graveyard… but there were just too many distractions. With the workload I couldn't afford any distractions at all, so I actually started trying to ignore the ghosts… I remember a time when I was in the middle of a particularly difficult exam, and I suddenly head laboured breathing very close to me. I looked up briefly and saw what was once a man, now covered in weeds and quite soggy looking. At first I thought I was looking at a drowning victim, till I saw the chains around his legs and the very large stone they were attached to. He was moaning loudly and reaching out to grab at me… I forced my eyes away from him and back down at my exam paper, even though I could feel his cold and (thankfully) insubstantial hands around my throat trying to squeeze the life out of me… Ignoring them wasn't all that easy… I did actually pass that exam, tough with an unusually low mark. One of my favorite courses was Gross Anatomy. I think I'd become a little morbid over the years, but I actually enjoyed opening up a body and poking around inside to see how everything was arranged… and how it worked…. I didn't take that course till my second semester, and it was towards the end of that semester that my uncle died… I had been staying with him for that first six months or so, and I'd gotten to know his habits. I remember mom saying how he'd wanted to be a scientist when he was younger, but how his fiancÈe had died just before he took his SATs. He'd been so distracted he scored abysmally low. He never did get up the confidence to take them again. He'd gotten a good job in Montreal, but his heart never was in his work. He went out drinking every night, and often wouldn't come home at all at night - he'd pass out in an alley somewhere and stumble in long after I'd gone to classes for the day. Towards the end of my second semester he pulled one of those all-nighters. I got home after classes that evening to find he still wasn't home. That had me a bit worried. I figured he would take care of himself though and as it was a Friday night, I figured he could've come home and gone back out drinking. I was supposed to go out dancing with Michael though, so I dumped my stuff and proceeded to get dressed. Michael arrived to get me at the same time as the cops. They wanted me to come in and identify a body. Michael was nice enough to come with me… My Uncle's favorite bar is located on a fairly busy street. Vehicles often speed by at all hours. My uncle had been drunker than usual that night and had wandered into the path of one of those speeding vehicles. In his case it was a large Mac truck. The body itself wasn't too mangled since he'd just gone flying. The pole that he landed face first in however, made sure that he had no teeth left for them to compare any dental records to… Which is why they needed me. I recognized the clothes on the body and the scar on his left hand… I went out dancing that night. I really needed to forget myself for a bit. The Will reading was the next day. He'd left his house to me and had donated his body to science… I was too numb to hear anything else… My Gross Anatomy final was the following week. We were supposed to open up a section of the lower abdomen, weigh and label the organs, and note any abnormalities. The upper halves of the bodies we had to work with were each covered with a sheet. The body I was assigned appeared just like all the other bodies in the room, with one exception. The left had stuck out from underneath the sheet just slightly. I knew the scar on that hand very well. It had served me breakfast on numerous occasions that school year. After the low mark on the exam the previous semester, I couldn't afford a low mark on this exam. So I opened up the body anyway. I did get almost full marks… Shortly after that I started seeing my uncle again. His bar was on my walk home, and I saw him just standing outside it. The first time, he was watching me pass. I looked directly at him and smiled to let him know I could see him, but he turned away. I saw him again the next day and tried to give him a subtle wave, but he refused to make eye contact… I think someone on his side saw the few efforts I made, since there suddenly began to be more… favours asked of me. It was summer by then and I was doing my first internship at the Royal Vic. I had a hard time ignoring all the… visitors I kept getting… So I started responding again. Michael had just moved away to San Francisco, so I didn't really mind the extra company the spirits offered. Mind you, I still went out Friday nights, and I had friends amongst the Goth community… but no one I could talk to about my occasional bad experiences with… There were couple spirits that I'd helped that would lend an ear if I needed it. They explained what Specters were… so at least I knew somewhat what to expect from those… My next semester, I took a couple of evening classes. The library was always much quieter after the sun went down and all the beautiful people went drinking… and I could much more easily get away with doing favours. I remember it was early October when I first noticed him. An older man… I would have thought him just some new professor… except for the circumstances I saw him. He was leaning against the wall in one of the less-used hallways… Leaning beside him was one of the spirits I talked with on a regular basis. I had been about to step out of the bathroom and was able to watch unnoticed. The man's lips were barely moving, but he was obviously deep in conversation… Someone else who could see and hear them! I caught my name though, and so I stayed hidden. I didn't see him again for another year. The next time it was on my way home after a late night studying. I passed him talking with my Uncle! (He wouldn't talk to me!) I didn't see him for a long while after that… I was in my last semester at McGill, and I was interning again. This time I had the night shift at the Morgue, acting as assistant. I'd helped out a couple of spirits in my time there - mostly pointing them I the right direction… but mostly it was quiet there… on both sides of the shroud. I remember clearly, I'd just looked at the clock and it was 11:41pm. The guy whom I was supposed to be assisting made some strange excuse about needing some air, and left me to examine the latest DOA. I recognized him immediately as my strange "professor", and I remember feeing a twinge of regret at never actually having spoken with him. I shrugged it off, and got on with the examination. It was quite the strange subject. He appeared to have been dead for quite some time. Lack of colour indicated that he'd not had any blood circulating for quite some time - indeed I could clearly see some vessels that were obviously blue. Either he'd died due to gross lack of oxygen - drowning for example (though he didn't appear to have been recently wet) or he'd been dead for a very long time, but with an unusual lack of decay. Rigor Mortis was long over. In was just finishing recording these comments, and getting ready to open him up for a full autopsy when his eyes opened. The last thing I remember was him saying quite clearly: "Hello Cassandra" … And thinking: "Oh Shit!" I came to in a long stone box. And due to my extensive experience in the subject, it only took a moment's hesitation to realize that I was in this box - or coffin - with a dead body. In defense I suppose, I switched to analytical mode. It was a female with long hair, only slightly older than myself, who'd been dead for roughly a year. I was able to determine in the darkness that she was most likely beaten to death. The left side of her skull had been bashed in. I couldn't bear to find out if she'd been raped too… I spent the next few hours imagining her death in gruesome detail… and it wasn't till I realized that doing so was making me hungry, that I was able to drop my defensive analytical mode and think about how the hell to get outa there. I couldn't hear anything around me… I had to assume I'd been buried with this girl. I found myself sucking at her wounds… at the dried blood… and I couldn't rationalize it. Yes I was a Goth, and Goths are supposed to be a bit in love with death… But sucking at the source of her death… I stopped myself for a moment and was struck by the silence around me. I'd never heard such silence… I must have listened for an hour before I realized what was missing. I had no heartbeat. Funny how it took me minutes to determine not only that the girl next to me was dead, but also her exact cause of death, but it must have taken me all night to realize that somehow, I was also dead. It wasn't till then that I called out. I guess I wasn't buried after all since all I heard was a low chuckle that reverberated as though it were a small stone room. I was in a tomb! I panicked and began begging to be let out, but all I heard in response were footsteps leaving and final-sounding thud of a heavy door. A couple of days later I managed to get desperate enough to find the strength to open the coffin I was in. The girl whom I was entombed with must have been well off since it was made of fairly nicely carved stone. Sitting outside, waiting for me was the mysterious stranger. He chuckled at me again, and introduced himself as Claude, and informed me that my education was about to begin.