Nate slowly led the girl up towards his room, fraught with the feelings of confliction. For any other young man in his prime this would have been a wishful moment, the chance to further explore the desirable parts of the girl he loved the most… but their situation always seemed to be complicated in one way or another.        In the beginning they had some sort of unspoken connection that they chose to deny for the sake of friendship among siblings and best friends, now out of guilt there’s this constant struggle to find inner peace when the strangeness of reality keeps on messing with their minds.       Nate guessed that if he was to depend on the perfect timing… waiting for their stars to align… then perhaps their love would be nothing more than a distant dream left unfulfilled.       “M, I’m giving you one last chance to reconsider this

      As if hit by a tidal wave of emotions, Marcel quickly felt her vision blurred with tears as her lips struggled to say the questions she instinctively wanted answers to, it was as if her words were painfully stuck at the bottom of her throat, unable to be produced into actual sensible language.       “Miss Rayburn… Miss Rayburn… are you alright?” Victor’s repeated calls echoed in her ear, snapping her back to reality as he stepped closer observing her reaction that was somewhat strange as oppose to others that were just told that their father had died.     “Ye… Yes, I… I’m fine. What about… his… my dad’s… where is his… body? Was he buried or cremated?” The girl barely managed to verbalize her sentence with much difficulty, her voice sounding a bit forced and choked up.      Understandably, the girl was in shock yet she did not scream out in affliction nor sob

   “I should have thought this through a bit more, now where the heck am I going to go?” Marcel grumbled in frustration, walking along the dusty side of the road, seeping further away from Acre Hills, contemplating her next move.     Though she truly missed the company of her best friend standing by her through thick and thin, she was also still very much worried about putting him in harms ways and potentially burdening him with the responsibility of chasing blind leads when it came to her confusing family situation.      Ironically enough, realizing that she was the one that wanted him to confess his true feelings amidst the chaos to offer her comfort and reassurance, but soon thereafter abandoned him in such a despicable manner.    “Auggh! I’m a female version of a jerk.” Marcel continued to sulk bitterly, roaming the streets like

   “Auggh! None of this just doesn’t make any sense; Mike wasn’t one to hold grudges much less resentment and even if his family bond was drawing him to remain in the mortal realm, then why would he want to see his parents and sister suffer to this extent?” Nate continued to reason openly after reading several more pages of the book.     Despite getting a better basic understanding of what the sacred night meant for those that truly valued its customs; he still couldn’t find a logical explanation that would suggest that the guy he knew and loved like the brother he never had, would use the opportunity he got to be sort of alive (ghostly) to drag his love ones into the abyss of insanity, would he not rather protect them from behind the scene like a good little angel?      As for Marcel returning home after the sun had set on the holy night, it might would have explaine

     “So, what do you plan on doing now?” They obviously couldn’t barge into the asylum, searching the place from top to bottom hoping to find her father without being caught or tossed out at the very least, nor could they blindly roam the streets wishful of coming across her missing mother.     “Umm… I don’t know.” Marcel puffed out a loud breath of resignation, slouching onto the nearby sofa completely dismissing her previous worries of getting the boy overly involved in her messed-up family affairs.    “You’re not going to disappear for a few hours on me again are you?”     Stunned by the sudden question, Marcel swallowed nervously wondering if it was too late to defend herself now that he knew where she had taken off to without informing him, nonetheless hesitantly admitting… “