Life Inheritance

From death as it becomes in the memories when the deceased smile back at the living,  in some way and macabre form they reached a better place. Or even living on the other side waiting to communicate in some way that they were safe in their demise; from them in the horrors left behind after their memory’s been inherited. All that stands in their mind of after everything left and deceased,  after everything sits within the nightmares of a bottle of pills. In the eyes of death become the beginning of an afterlife that is left without emotion or feeling,  that black existence becomes the echoes of all that is left behind.  In them become the years of a forgotten sorrow or the beginning of a tabloid existence.  When the ferryman sees the coins resting on the eyes of the sleeping within the funeral coffin, those eyes become the focus of the ferryman’s collection.
          When all that is seen among the family of the deceased,  their life was inherited from the dead.  All that was there within their life was a series of unwritten journal entries and verses left without an owner.   His life was immersed in heavy metal music and horror novels, and each book he tried to write wasn’t complete in life. The life was inherited by the living as the deceased aspired to play the music he loved and read the books he emulated;   the man who died was named Adam Bostaph  and left the world at the young age of 28.  The events of the story happened a week before the actual wake and funeral.
          The car accident which took his life was one that was going northbound to St. Paul,  Minnesota, which he was supposed to meet up with a publisher on an anthology he wrote four stories for. One of them was influenced by Algernon Blackwood, and the other was inspired by Rod Serling. Copies of his stories were found at the sight of the accident,  and his friends were writing lyrics off his stories  in ways that could not be described in the form. He was starting to see some success with his short stories but was working on that Great American novel,  an element of horror crawled in but didn’t see the horror until the very end.   He was in the car with his girlfriend, Lynne Samuelson, age 24,  who survived the car accident –– she couldn’t explain what happened in the accident,  though all that she remembered of the accident was that the car was overturning the highway at six rotations a second.
          She was in the hospital two hours later from the accident, and barely able to walk but she lost some feeling in her left hand.   Her brother played in the local metal band and they were going to stop by the practice after dropping the short stories off at the publisher.   She was sketchy of how the car skidded off the highway but she knew it crashed on his side of the car first then rolled over a few more times after that.  She knew that she thought she was going to die, but an act of God kept her alive. The horror of it became clear to her later on as she awoke from the medicated sleep,  the nightmares of it were the most vivid after the event.
          She had Pantera’s “I’m Broken” playing on the radio when the car crashed into the railing.  She felt her boyfriend smiling back at her when he gave his final breath;  knowing that he saw at least one of his stories become published in life and now in death. He left her his manuscripts in case anything happened to him,  all of them were mostly done but never found a home with a publisher or a small press.   All that was there at the site of his death was an old plastic briefcase that had Pantera stickers placed all over it –– namely the Far Beyond Driven sticker.  Everything within the eyes of those who are still alive when everyone else around them;  dies leaves an incomplete emotion haunting them for all their living time.
          Time had passed when she reached the hospital,   she awakened slightly though still disoriented.
          “How is Adam,  if you mind me asking?”  Lynne asked,  she had a frightened tone to her voice.
          “Ms. Nicholson,  I hate to bring you this unfortunate news but Adam died instantly when the car tumbled over the side.”   Dr.  Ulrich responded with a sullen tone,  “I actually read some if his work as well,  an entire world at his hands but now lost in the demise of that accident.”
          “Did he have a next of kin?”   The doctor responded.
          “Yes –- he had a younger sister who is at the age of 16,   the parents are no longer with us because they died in an airplane crash when they were both young. Their uncle and aunt watched them.”  She replyed,  “He inherited a love for heavy metal and horror from both parents,   they were taking a plane to a local bands show – he was supposed to cover it for a magazine.”
          “He didn't quite have a will though,   all his manuscripts went to his younger sister.”   She responded to the doctor,   “is there some way I can visit him before you make all of his funeral arrangements?”
          “Okay we can do that,”  the doctor responded;   they’ve not performed the autopsy on him yet but in his will they asked not to do one.  
          “He didn’t like the idea of people cutting him open after death because he had surgery performed on him at the age of fourteen for a broken arm,  and ever since he had a fear of going under a knife. I knew this because my younger sister was best friends with his sister, I didn’t meet them until a week after the surgery,”  Lynne explained.  She felt someone brush across her cheek, but couldn’t tell where it came from or who did it.  Though she felt he was watching her in the room as they had his body covered with the sheet, and placed upon a metal tray.   
          From the metal tray she carefully tried to ID the remains of her boyfriend,  though with the wound on his head she could barely recognize him.  He died from the severe wounds to his head,  the severity of the wounds would of killed anyone but he survived just long enough to make sure that she was safe.   In life he rarely smiled but in death he smiled upon her,  saying that she would be safe from the demise he suffered.   
          “He always wrote of this sort of thing,  but never thought it would come to him in this way or form,”  Lynne replied in a nervous tone,  “I felt someone brush their hand across my cheek but cannot tell whom.   It was almost if he was in the room with us.   I’m not a psychic by there is nothing that could explain the brushing up against my cheek ––  it was him saying his goodbye.”
          “It was like he was right in the room;  looking at the remains what were once him,”  she said with an eerie tone,  “when one thinks about it – that is just eerie. Knowing things like this shouldn’t even happen yet they do happen is what leaves the haunting feeling in my eyes. I don’t think it is even possible for someone to haunt  a place so soon but I felt him when he was dying in the car wreck as well.”
          They couldn’t make sense of why she was still there,  but why she was in the hospital for injuries that were less serious than what killed the author,   just that he was smiling down upon her in death. Knowing in  his death she would be well taken care of, and asked her to be the guardian of his younger sister.   The words left for her in his journal,  “Just be sure to take care of my sister.”
          When she returned to her room,  his sister arrived with another letter –– the letter left some haunting details.   It was in his death and the words he wrote told them in a way that haunted her long after knowing that he died.   She got the idea  of what was going on when the news actually did the broadcast,  “writer dies in a car accident,  girlfriend is in critical condition.”
          “Lynne,   is he really……..”  The sister’s voice trailed off,  “Just as he was getting ready to get his second anthology ready to publish I hope I can continue to get his story published for him.”
          She went looking at the pages of the manuscripts,   all that was kept within the pages described the things that were kept on the shelves in the room.  Those pages written stared back at her,  almost if he was still alive –– and his memory still remained. Though in death, they felt he was very much alive.   Beneath all that remained ––  the memories of the horror was still fresh in their mind.   Some of the things within his collection were quite macabre;  since his best friend owned a museum that had a series of macabre oddities including a cast of the hand belonging to the lobster boy.   He got one of the few castings in existence.  He walked around in the museum because it reminded him of a circus show full of freaks.
          He did write some of the visits of that museum, and they found some way or form in his short stories.   Namely when he wrote about the Feji Mermaid. The subject was something that interested him since his days in college.  The photos he took within the place gave his death even more of a haunting tone to them,   the way the photos told were that of a nightmare that couldn’t be written of –– just that the photographs told the story of the place on its own.  In the collection of photographs became the research for the short story he wrote, the one that became published in the anthology he was going to meet with the editor of this afternoon when the accident happened.  The story was sent via email over to the editor but in the return message,  the editor invited him to the office.
          The nurses read into the journal while Lynne slept,   since they knew a bit of how the author was from the other project.   It was almost in death,  he invited them into his dark world.   As they read the passages of the journal it was almost if they were brought into the nightmarish pages he conceived,   the ghosts and demons he wrote about walked into the room as they watched and in their alarm passed through the walls as they described them.  The journal was a leather color -– green with gold pages,   almost if it resembled one of those award bibles. They were reading into his mind and the black world he conceived upon.  The horrors they saw were almost real within their minds, the rusty wheelchair wandered the halls with bloodstained wheels ––  or what was seen or conceived.  Each page drawn within his imagination and they were shut like a lock to the outside world;   a passage deeper within the gates of the cemetery he was soon to be buried in.  He smiled upon them as they took to his dark invitation;   when each world they were brought into were of a place that cannot be described by mere words but almost the close similarity would be the music of Pantera.  The horrors they’ve seen were that of one they describe becoming Godsize, and the creatures within the pages stared at them with snake’s eyes. They even felt him watching them from wherever  he was almost if he was saying,  “Welcome to my imagination and allow me to be your guide within this morbid landscape.”
          “Did he even describe what the Ferryman look like,” One of them said with a haunted stare at each other –– hallow-eyed in their emotions to what they were about to step into.   He smiled upon them as they went further into the darker world he penned, the world where Good and Evil had no boundaries,  just that they stood in a place when the nightmares had been broken into the darker than reality of his macabre world.   
          “It was like he was writing with a hangover,  but at the same time he almost needed a clear head –– unfuckingbelievible,” the other nurse looked back at the other nurse,  small in stature while she changed the Iv’s on Lynne,  “I cannot believe that he died at such a young age of 28,  that is about the age of my younger brother.  My younger brother listened to Pantera as well as many other heavy metal bands, but it was because of Pantera he started playing guitar.  He knew of this writer who I’m reading the journal of –– sad thing I have to break the news I saw him in the morgue. It would break his heart because he could of possibly been in the same class with him,  just being the same age.   He remembered online seeing photos of the author wearing an old Pantera shirt with the pot leaves on the sleeves.”  
          “I remember that photo,  the editor used that photo with a short story.   I have the anthology he was in too,   scary thing because that author didn’t survive to see a book signing,”  the nurse responded,  “your brother was planning to go that signing too to meet him, wasn’t he?”
          “Yes I remember that, he was cranking all his Pantera Cds and getting ready to go out that day but learned of this.    It really brought him down too,  someone his age making it huge – well seeing a major anthology with his name in it,”  she responded,  “he won’t believe us about this happening in the girlfriend’s hospital room.  There were candlelight vigils for the author at the venue, and at the nighclub he used to hang out at.”
          “They were talking about him all over the news,   the author who died before his time –– at the age of 28,” the nurse replied when she turned on the news,  “the anchor was basically saying what we knew all along;   how unfortunate for us to see him in the morgue like this.   It’s almost unreal – or more the word to describe it,  quite unreal.”
          The glow within the television screen told the horror in its full effect,  but no one can really say or tell how it happened even if the television was showing this. The slightest mention of the sister receiving the life inheritance of his craft was the thing that became the sole responsibility after his burial.   The heavy handed responsibility she had to deal with at the age of 16,  death will age a teen to an adult in a matter of seconds.   All the things she wanted to do as a teen,  but having to live without a set of parents and now a departed brother –– the things that went with them as a childhood died after  that.   Even from those years, in death of a loved one – their soul is what ages.  In the horror they know, all they see;   the reaches of their mind and the corners of their years becoming of the dying before their eyes.  Even when the nurses handed the journal over to her;   they felt the oldness in her eyes ––  upon all the horrors she sees, and the horrors she knows,   the madness from the surroundings and the salvation in her haunted soul.
          “What’s going on!”   One of the nurses screamed,  and one looked on in disbelief. It was if his sister was levitating in the room while she sat there watching the news;  the horror unfolded before her long before the doctors and nurses confirmed what the news already knew.  Something came over her but they couldn’t explain what was going on – the doctors saw it and did nothing, just looked on in absolute horror.  They didn’t realize the madness she inherited when her brother died,  but it was only the beginning of the nightmares that will haunt her for all time   A memory she doesn’t want to remember when her parents passed,  but in those memories it became a macabre life inheritance.  An eternity of gruesome dreams where the landscape is drawn from the dead cold.   
          Of them which the dreams become as they were according to how her brother wrote of them in his journal,   or in his manuscripts –– though,  it would become in the echoes of the pages written it stood in the horrors seen in the eyes of the nurses standing in the room.   While in the moments notice the sister floated around in the corner of the room,   the nurses were trying to make sense of it –– knowing that won’t add up in their heads. Their nightmares seen standing in the room while the nurses looked on baring the witness of the grotesque life inheritance.
          From her observations it would become from them as her brother would write from an antique typewriter,when it came to his rough drafts.  Within the late hours she would see the eerie glow of the word processor as he composed the nightmares from his typed version of his journal.   All the demons he released when they were penned become the shadow dancing within the minds of his readers.   Of those would be seen among the eyes of the nurses while the girlfriend was resting in the next room.           
          From his words as they remained,  the horrors crawled in their minds after his death.  
          Passing of the thoughts within his tormented mind,  when they are seen within the life inheritance left behind.   Of all that remained of his life, was the words written within the nightmares of his insanity. It was in death when they understood,  but in life he was nothing but a walking riddle. In the days he was alive the darkness he was haunted by was one which didn’t belong to him, but to the demons within his illness.   Within a madness and nightmares which are written within his pages become an inheritance one doesn’t wish to see or know;  just that it has a grotesque way of showing its ugly head.  Among the things that stand beneath the echoes of his life,  remain the words as they were written prior to his death.  
          From within the eyes of the nurses while they stood within the room of the girlfriend,   they couldn’t begin to understand the surroundings of what was going on.   The gravity of it really didn’t sink in.   A horror within their eyes when they read the pages of his journal,  all the nightmares he penned came to life within the room.   While they stood there –– all they saw within the night didn’t make sense to them or they would tell each other,  “this doesn’t all add up!”  Among those which stand as the witness,  they watch the blank stare of the younger sister as she looked out from the window.  Into the infinite darkness and the loneliness which will be greeting her future.   That unknown future greeting her as an inheritance,   that becoming what she feared after her parents were dead and gone.  
          When she sat there,  she felt them smiling upon them from their graves ––  from what stands among the minds and memory,  it was from the grotesque inheritance they left behind;   in the reminders of a cryptic nightmare that tells of his unseen fate. Within the nightmares shared among their thoughts become the icy fingers touching their fate, becoming the cold breath within a kiss of demise.  In the chilling sense,  they felt his eyes looking upon them from his grave –– smiling in death knowing he would be forever remembered. No will ––  just the final note in the journal, just an inheritance of torment left behind to his younger sister in the form of a dark journal.  All but a final memory which stands after his passing;  cold,  dark and forlorn.