Beowulf Rose did not see the beauty in the world. He had never seen the way the dew drops collected upon the leaves before morning, nor did he appreciate the look of passion in two lover's eyes or the way the lights painted the sidewalk bright colors when it rained. To his sister, Gwyneth, it had seemed as if he was only capable of seeing black and white. She had told him this on numerous occasions, but he had always dismissed her acute eye for details as nonsense. That was, before she died.

For a few weeks after the funeral he had found himself struggling to look for the pictures of the world she had painted of with her words, but everything he cast his gaze upon only looked ugly. She had been right, he concluded, he was incapable of seeing beautiful things. As it would happen, he was incapable of seeing the unexplainable things as well and when he was forced to it completely broke him.

Time had blurred for Beowulf after he had been chased through the hall of mirrors. His mind had simply become too loud to focus on the world around him as the gears in his head spun feverently, desperately trying to comprehend the incomprehensible. Every possibility he explored only led him back to the sickening conclusion that he had some sort of schizophrenic break. The realization cut through his layers of pride and self worth like bullet every time he thought of it. How had he built himself up to be so powerful and successful only to fall victim to his own mind?

Beowulf felt a familiar vibration in his pocket. He didn't move for a long moment as he tried to discern whether or not it was worth even picking up his phone. If this was all in his own head, there was hardly a point to reading a text that his mind had constructed itself. Then again, if only parts of this vortex of insanity were of his sickened mind's creation and he actually was wandering around an abandoned fairground in a delusion he needed to contact help.

Numbly, he reached his hand into his pocket and pulled out a phone. The diamond encrusted case that he clutched in his hand wasn't his own, after a brief glance at Jessica's phone that he had swiped off of her dead body earlier, he placed it back into his pocket. He wasted no time in pulling out his own sleek android, quickly swiping it open. Two things struck him as odd, the first being the fact there was no signal to receive a text from, the second that the text was from Jessica, whose phone was in his pocket and who was very possibly dead. One's own hallucinations were hardly something that could be reasoned with though, he painfully reminded himself.

Bet you want to get out of here. Meet me at the ferris wheel. You know... Where I died.

Jess Xx

After gazing at the brightly lit screen for a second and taking half of that second to cringe at the sentence structure, he cast his gaze toward the shadowy skeleton of the ferris wheel that rose above the carnival like the clock tower of the ghost town. Beneath it, framed by the soft glow of the archaic lights of the carnival a slender silhouette stood. Her slender figure was blackened by the the yellow lights that haloed her. The light breeze tossed her hair softly as she placed a hand on her hip in a fashion that Beowulf knew all too well.

Jessica.

Curiosity was the only thing that made Beowulf decide to waltz with his insanity, humoring it to see where his delusion would take him. It was funny how decisions seemed suddenly so pointless when you came to the conclusion that you were crazy, after all roads led to a white padded room or an untimely death.

As he approached her the features that had originally drawn him to her began to appear, features that he had never allowed himself to appreciate after that fateful night when their pretentious relationship had turned into blackmail. She held herself with a sort of elegant power and her lips turned upwards into an almost playful smile contrasted by her eyes that gleamed with steely pride. "Hello, Bey." Jessica smirked taking a step from the shadows. The light danced across her skin, illuminating a complexion that was whiter than paper and a roux slash across her neck that dribbled downward onto her shirt.

"Hello, you bloody heathen woman." Beowulf forced a sarcastic smile upon his face before letting it fall into his usual irritated glower, though internally he wasn't quite sure what he was feeling.

Jessica didn't even blink. "Funny that you're speaking to me like that, considering our little incident over the phone a year ago."

Beowulf subconsciously crossed his arms over his chest. "Alright, I've had enough of you for one day. Quite frankly I have no idea why you are even here, this is my insanity and you aren't welcome here." He batted his hand at her dismissively, turning as if he were going to walk away but never taking his eyes from her hard blue eyes.

Her eyebrows arched and her smirk stretched into an amused smile. "Thats funny, sweetie, see this is my insanity and you are just a pawn." She took a few steps toward him until she was just a foot away. "I can't believe you aren't seeing this for what it is, most everyone else has."

It was Beowulf's turn to raise his eyebrows. "A schizophrenic break? Don't be a fool, Jessica. Nothing that has happened to me is physically possible, I mean really, a demon clown?" He forced a small laugh from his mouth, but it was void of any conviction.

Jessica beamed. It wasn't a happy smile though, it was much more malicious than that. Chills ran down Beowulf's back as she placed a deathly gelid hand upon his shoulder. "Time to show you how real this is." With those ominous words she shoved him backward.

He fell.

Wind whipped past his body, it pushed against him as if he was being dragged away by a riptide. He reached forward trying to grab something to stop himself but his fingers only groped air. His heart seemed to leap upwards into his head as he tore through the ground that should have stopped his fall with a sickening thud. The world blurred around him as he pinched his eyes shut and clenched his tongue between his teeth to keep from screaming. There was no reason to scream, this wasn't real after all.

Beowulf never stopped falling, rather the momentum around him ceased and he was left standing in a brightly lit room that smelled of overpowering sanitizer and body odor. Slowly, he opened his eyes. Jessica leaned against a wall beside him, her eyes following something in the room. "You know, you were so much more human back then...."

He crained his neck around to see a blonde boy who wore his hair in a mess, a computer club sweatshirt and jeans. While at first glance he appeared to be a casual teenager, there was nothing casual about the blood that seeped from a bandage around his head and splattered him like modern art gone horribly wrong. His features were hideously twisted into the expression of a dying man, although he was hardly the dying one. A eerily motionless girl lay on the bed beneath him, chaos raging around her. The boy was yelling and wrestling a doctor as an older boy tried to hold him back. Behind them, two figures huddled beside each other, their faces shielded by their hands as their bodies shook.

It was as if the scene had somehow managed to rake its claws across the old scabs on Beowulf's heart, tearing the free so that the blood could poor free once more. He started to walk toward the girl, tears clogging his throat. Jessica's cold fingers closed around his arm. "Tell me, what exactly were you fighting about? What was so important that you sacrificed your sister's life to fight with her over it?"

Beowulf froze, the guilt freezing him in his steps as he turned to face Jessica. "Shut up." He snapped, a single tear escaping his eye for a second before he wiped them away.

"Aww, you're crying." She pouted mockingly for a second before her smile tore it in half. "Do you want me to get you your mommy? Oh wait, she's crying too because you killed your sister."

Beowulf said nothing.

Jessica's laughter curled through the wail of those in the room around her like a exotic dancer at a funeral. "I've always had this funny idea that, despite what you told me, you aren't actually ashamed of the irrational, sentimental behavior displayed in public. Sure, I think it hurt your ego but I think you are actually tormented by the fact you killed your sister and then you couldn't save her." She was just inches from his face. "I think it stabs you in the heart every time you remember watching your sister's body seize to a halt as the machines flatlined, for once having no control over what happened."

A thousand and one defenses ran through Beowulf's mind as he stared at Jessica, but in the end it had been him driving, it had been him fighting over something stupid for the sake of being right and it had been him who couldn't save her. Around him he heard the scene playing out like it had before. He heard the screaming, the wailing and then he heard the long drawn out beep that signaled the end of Beowulf's normal life.

"What? Did I break you?" Jessica snorted with a small laugh.

"You're repulsive." Beowulf finally managed to make himself speak, through the pain that wracked his mind. A storm of self hatred raged within him, swirling in an uncontrolled vortex of agony. "Leave me alone."

"Do you think I brought you here just to mock you? No, that's simply a bonus." Jessica's eyes twinkled with a sickeningly fake innocence as they caught the light for a second before she slowly extended her slender arm forward toward the scene behind him.

He felt a light hand on his shoulder and his world shattered.

"I think I win our argument." The words were soft as they floated from the mouth like a light summer breeze rustling the trees. They came from the girl. Her awkward teenage figure flickered statically in the bright light of the hospital room. Blood still oozed from her skull and her makeup was still smeared in a way that it never would have been if she had been alive.

Beowulf's eyes drifted to the corpse on the bed, a nurse slowly draped its face with a sheet as if solidifying the girl's death, but the fact she stood before him now only mocked that assumption. "Gwyneth... what... how?" It was as if all of Beowulf's sharp words had dulled in the face of the girl he had never thought he would see again.

"Our argument, the one we were having about the ghosts before you pulled in front of that car, remember?" She furrowed her brow, brushing a strand of her black hair behind her ear. "I'm obviously a ghost so that means I was right."

He shook his head, feeling the tears begin to force their way from his eyes. "I'm sorry, I'm really sorry. I loved you, I know I was a horrible brother. I'm sorry."

Gwyneth straightened her shoulders and frowned. "You're right, you were a horrible brother. It's really funny how much everybody loves you after you die." Beowulf felt like he had been punched in the chest. "I mean, you were always telling me how wrong I was. You wouldn't let me believe in anything more than I could see with my own eyes without attacking me for it and explaining how it was physically impossible."

"I didn't know how much that hurt you, I-I'm sorry."

"No!" Gwyneth jabbed her finger into his ribs. "Don't give me that bullshit. You knew exactly how much it hurt me, you just chose to ignore it! You know, I used to tell you that you were only capable of seeing black and white but I think I was wrong. I think you are just too pig-headed to open your eyes and look! I think you are too scared to accept that some things just can't be explained."

Jessica walked over to Gwyneth and put an arm around her shoulders. "I for one, completely agree with Gwen here." She smiled deviously as the she snapped her fingers and the hospital disappeared, replaced with the nostalgic lights of the dead fair. They were alone again. "I think beneath your tough exterior, you are just a scared little boy with a control problem. I mean look at that gash on your neck, look at the dirt on your skin and the fear in your eyes, I think Gwen was wrong about one thing though. I think you see exactly what is going on but you just can't bring yourself to accept it."

Beowulf was shaking, sweat poured from his forehead despite the chilled feeling in his chest. His eyes widened as Jessica's face began to peel from her bones, her skin flopping downward to the dusty ground. Her teeth bloodied with her own flesh turned upward into that smile she had used to flash at him whenever things were going her way. "Open your eyes, Beowulf, before it's too late."