You'd be amazed, the wondrous possibilities that could begin with a simple hello

July 2015

"Do you have any threes?"

"Go fish." Tate grumbled, shuffling the sloppy stack of old playing cards within his grasp. Winona outwardly sighed, leaning forward on her knees to claim a fresh card from the leaning pile, the itty-bitty bones within her legs audibly cracking.

The duo was currently seated in Violet's old bedroom, lanky legs crossed as they sat Indian-style at the foot of her untouched bed. The lily white sheets were a wrinkled, disheveled mess—stacked at the foot of the mattress like a forgotten entity. The only ghost within these wicked walls that actually seemed to sleep was Winona. However, she never actually managed to slip into a peaceful slumber, but instead, merely teetered between reality and dreamland. She daydreamt of Jack Tennant quite often, warily wondering how he was—how his daughter was. It seemed as if every time she closed her eyes, all she could see was his rugged, smiling face. The memories of all of their times together haunted her, and Winona couldn't help but blame herself for his death.

Maybe, if she hadn't gone and died like a dumbass, she would have been able to keep Jack from driving drunk, that night.

"Jesus Christ, Winona," Tate groaned as he dramatically rolled his dark eyes. "Don't tell me you're thinking about that loser, again."

Ever since Violet had found out about Tate's—indiscretion—with her own mother, the girl refused to talk to him, or to have anything at all to do with him. Tate was miserable, and he certainly let it show.

"Don't call him that," Winona lowly warned as she bit down on her plush lower lip. The girl was struggling not to cry, irritated that her and Tate could not simply wallow in their despair, together. There had been numerous occasions in which Tate had wallowed, and Winona had actually comforted him during several of his episodes, curling up next to his pitiful body and wrapping her arms around his waist as he drowned in the consequences of his mistakes. She'd even go as far as burying her nose into the crook of his stone-cold neck—the nippy flesh serving as a harsh reminder of their awful actuality: they were both indelibly deceased.

It was in the early hours of a Tuesday morning when something strange happened. At half-past-six, when the big ball of orange warmth had migrated past the horizon, cloaking the entirety of the humid outdoors in a blissful array of sheer sunlight. For the third time that week, Winona's small, upturned nose laid buried within the stagnant crook of Tate's neck, slender digits kneading miscellaneous shapes against the wool of his striped sweater. The melancholy man didn't seem to notice the stentorian sound of a voice, which ricocheted off the walls and blissfully bled into the bedroom through the cracks in the door.

Winona wormed herself out of the covers, unraveling from the curled-up boy who served as her little spoon. Tate dismissively glared in her direction through hooded eyes, messy mop a despicable mess as he ran his fingers through the knotted ringlets.

"Do you hear that?" Winona wondered, slinking towards the door before clarifying with, "that music."

"It's probably nothing." Tate shrugged, shuffling back beneath the covers and disappearing from view.

Though, there was something profoundly melancholy that lurked in the air—something that alerted Winona to the fact that the state of affairs in the Murder House had darkened, considerably. Another soul had been sucked into the void—but somehow, it felt willing. The girl found it difficult to decipher what kind of person would walk into the portal to hell with open arms.

Winona followed the sound of the sorrowful music downstairs, and found herself standing in the middle of the living room. The furniture was covered in a protective layer of plastic, and on the sofa lay a clearly lifeless Constance Langdon. The woman looked as if she had carefully constructed her entire outfit—from her perfectly styled hair to her expensive heels, it was evident that the woman had wanted to arrive at her death fashionable, and judging by the nearly empty bottle of Crown Royal—drunk. The peculiar woman had even appeared to have frosted her thin lips with a fresh coat of lipstick before she had swallowed her entire bottle of prescription medication on top of a stomach full of alcohol.

Her death had been purposeful.

Winona's​ entire being was enveloped in a suffocating cloak of despair with the realization that Constance Langdon was the caregiver to the angelic little baby that Winona had held years ago. Michael. He would be left with no one, now. The girl failed to wrap her head around why Constance—the boy's grandmother—would have so carelessly abandoned him.

"Tate?" Winona called, the name slipping off of her tongue with a strangled cry. The entire room felt like it was spinning on its axis, and if it had been possible for a ghost to faint, Winona would have. Her plea for Tate was answered when the disheveled boy came bounding down the stairs.

"Winona—what is it?" Tate demanded as he braced both of his pale hands on the girl's shoulders. He searched her eyes, his eyebrows furrowing together in vexation when she did not immediately speak.

She rose a trembling finger to point in the direction of his mother, carefully judging his reaction as his eyes widened in realization. However, Tate did not seem displeased or upset—to him, his mom had displayed the extent of her adoration for him and his brother by making the choice to eternally bind her soul to the place in which they were trapped.

Beauregard and Tate knelt at Constance's body, and when her spirit form emerged to lovingly stroke their faces with her mysterious fourth daughter, Rose, cautiously lingering in the background—her eye sockets bloody and ripped of orbs that would grant the poor girl sight—it was obvious that the woman was right where she wanted to be. The mother and her children were huddled together, basking in their silent joyous reunion, and Winona kept stifling the urge to demand an answer to the only question she had: What about Michael?

The voice rang out loud and clear—frantic with worry, but much more deepened than it should have been.

"Grandma?"

Winona shot an accusatorial glare in Constance's rigid direction, her fists clenched together in vexation as Tate's eyes flashed with an unspoken warning. Suddenly, they vanished—as if, quite literally, into thin air. Evanescing away into oblivion, shielded not only from an apprehensive Michael Langdon, but also, from Winona. She stood frozen in place, sneaker-clad feet gruffly glued to the ground as a lanky boy—sixteen or so, but the looks of his tall, teenage physique—stumbled into the room.

Immediately, Winona Wexler's eyes significantly widened, watering gaze raking over a stunningly tall boy—who, apparently, actually was Michael Langdon, that itty-bitty baby she held within her arms only three years prior. Stunned, she watched as he shuffled into the room, muttering a defeated: "Grandma?"

The young, deceased girl took several staggered steps backwards, a shaking palm clutching her stagnant chest. If the still heart beneath her bones could still beat, she was almost entirely certain that it would be dramatically drumming beneath her fingertips. However, Winona had no such luxury of feeling that very melodic and mollifying feeling.

At the sheer sight of his clearly deceased Grandmother, a mortified Michael tossed his palms airborne, a series of splutters spilling from parted lips as woeful whimpers emerged. The cries were breathy and weak, filling Winona's chest with a peculiar prickle of warmth as the young boy fell to his knees before the sheet-clad sofa, claiming Constance's paled face between trembling fingers as he begged and pleaded for her to wake up.

Sympathetically, Winona rounded the coffee table, hands curled into fists at her sides as she, too, fell to her knees at the rounded edge of the couch cushion. Her hands were shaking immensely, eyes wide with wanton abandon as Michael sloppily slung his arms around Constance in a weak attempt to move her. They were within inches of one another—he and Winona—and the ghost of a girl found herself wanting to hold him, to cradle him within her arms and pepper kisses along the edge of his prominent jaw. However, she remained hidden, like the occult organism that she was, and forever would be until the end times.

Michael Langdon profusely apologized to Constance's corpse, exclaiming a fibbing fact: "It's all my fault."

Ruefully, as Michael continuously cried out for his clearly dead grandmother, Winona stood to her feet, brows knit together in vexation before, quite literally, stomping from the room. Moments later, she'd hear a sorrowful Ben Harmon attempt to console a sobbing Michael, but instead of turning around and joining in—instead of comforting the beautiful baby she'd sworn to protect—she begrudgingly roamed the halls, easing in between solid walls and appearing suddenly in empty rooms in search of that wretched, selfish Constance fucking Langdon–

"Show yourself, you fucking coward!" Winona exploded, razor-sharp nails digging into the shy skin of her palms, drawing blood. The warm liquid oozed between her fingers, splattering the wood floor in an array of miscellaneous designs. Constance, however, refused to be seen—and after an hour of vengefully pacing the premises, Winona found herself seated outside on the front concrete steps, fingers knotted in her hair as sporadic spurts of wind sent the tangled locks awry.

That night, Winona found herself hovering the parted doorway of a particularly spacious room, one which held nothing but a bleak bed and a dresser. A sniffling heap of teenage boy laid buried beneath the silken white sheets, red-rimmed eyes studying the surface of the ceiling as fat, salty tears skid down the slopes of his rounded, flushed cheeks. She'd been watching him cry for thirty-seven minutes, feet frozen in place as her chest inordinately heaved. Admittedly, the action in itself was quite creepy—standing there, completely invisible to the naked, existing eye. Ben Harmon had been the only spirit to show himself to Michael, and although Winona could hardly feel anything at all anymore, she could almost feel Michael's loneliness burrowing deeply within her bones.

With one final burst of bravery, the seventeen-year-old girl kicked the door closed with her heel, prompting Michael to jump upwards in fright as a startled gasp slipped off of his lips.

"Who-Who's there?" He queried, his voice low and husky.

It was then that Winona revealed herself, a hearty, thin-lipped grin strung across her lips as Michael shuffled backwards in the bed, the rounded arch of his back colliding with the wall.

"Don't be afraid," she cooed, almost laughing out how oddly cliché—and weird—this all was. "I'm not going to hurt you. I just want to help. I know your Grandma, and your parents . . ."

Expectedly, Michael continued to cry, folded fist darting upwards to hastily wipe away his tears. "A-Are you d-dead? Like Dr. Harmon and th-the others?"

"Sadly." Winona murmured, gliding across the room as her fingers met the soft surface of the sheets at the foot of his bed. Michael's widened eyes studied her wiggling digits, an audible gulp easing down the slope of his throat.

"I'm seventeen," she revealed, cheeks flushed a shy scarlet. "How old are you, Michael?"

His brows furrowed together, jaw parted in angst as he shook his head—perhaps out of confusion of is age, or maybe denial? Winona damn well knew that not even ten years had passed since Vivien Harmon gave birth to him, and yet, here he was: Encased in the physical body of a sixteen year old. Nearly her age.

How the hell was that possible?

"Can I sit?" Winona wondered, gesturing in the direction of the empty space at the foot of his bed. A messy-haired Michael nodded, slowly and shakily, the thin sheet clutched between chalky-white knuckles.

A single, weighty tear grazed his cheek before soaking the sheet. Winona frowned, a sigh spilling from her parted lips as her fingers claimed Michael's ankle, which was buried beneath the blanket.

"Can I tell you something, Michael?"

Briskly, he nodded, watery eyes intently glued upon Winona's frozen frame at the foot of his bed. She still held his bony ankle within her grasp, almost as if she were acting like some kind of security blanket.

"Don't ever feel like you're alone in this big ole house," Winona began, squeezing his ankle. A sliver of a smile inched along his lips, bloodshot eyes rapidly blinking. "I know we've just met, but I'm here for you. And Dr. Harmon. And I'm sure many of the other spirits here are, too–"

"What's your name?" Michael interrupted, his tone short and shy.

"Winona." She said, softly smiling as the boy opposite her ruffled his hair, a weak attempt to fix the matted mess.

It was a forgotten pleasure—to be in the presence of so much life when the girl had been surrounded by nothing but dead people for too long—most of which had been prematurely claimed by the reaper. In some twisted way—she could almost hear the steady, comforting thumps of his beating heart. She studied the way his chest heaved with every dramatic inhale, and the way his body radiated an overwhelming essence of warmth. Winona wanted nothing more than to crawl on all fours up the length of the bed and curl into his chest, to press her ear up against his chest and listen to the rhythmic drumming of his heart.

"Did you know . . ." Winona began, her words reluctant as she timidly looked down to her feet. For some reason that she could not directly pinpoint, the girl was anxious. " . . . that I held you—when you were just a little baby?"

Her gaze darted from the floor to Michael's intense blue stare, and if Winona had a drop of blood in her body, she would have surely been blushing. Michael's plush lips turned up in a ghost of a smile, and she could see his eyes cloud over with fresh emotion the instant he began to visibly replay the ghastly, unexpected events of the day in his mind. The lost boy let out a small whimper as he slumped into the fetal position on the bed. His orbs were glazed over with sadness, and Winona feared that she had undeniably stepped over a line.

However, as the girl slowly rose from the bed in order to make her departure, Michael's hand lashed out to securely wrap around her wrist—his grip surprisingly firm, yet unsure—like a large, loveable puppy who did not yet know its own strength. Michael's hand dropped as he let out a weak, mumbled apology from between trembling lips, the mattress squeaking beneath his sudden shift in weight as Winona released a shaky: "Do you want me to stay?"

"Yes, please," Michael uttered with a small cough. Winona's heart instantly warmed the second the well mannered words left the beautiful boy's mouth. He was undeniably the physical embodiment of divine perfection—his looks rivaling those of the great Adonis—as if he was an angel who had simply been plucked straight from the kingdom of Heaven.

Winona resisted the urge to lovingly stroke Michael's hair as she curled up next to him on the stiff and outdated mattress, finally getting settled until their noses were nearly touching. It was true that the girl had laid like this with Tate on numerous occasions, but somehow, this felt different—intimate, even.

It was as if Michael had read Winona's mind when when his long and slender fingers brushed over her face, unsurely tucking a dark chocolate lock of her hair behind her pierced ear. "You know," Michael started in a tone that was adorably laced with shyness. "You're very pretty." His head nodded in assurance, his dark fan of lashes sticking together in places due to the tears he had cried as they fluttered over his glistening orbs with every blink.

For the first time in a long time, Winona Wexler actually smiled—it was the kind of smile that bloomed gloriously across ones face no matter how hard they tried to conceal it. When the girl closed her eyes, she could almost picture the times in which Jack Tennant had uttered those very same words. She hadn't realized that a lone tear had spilled from her eye until Michael carefully swept the pad of his thumb across her cheek in order to wipe it away. His features were etched with pure, genuine concern, his golden heart practically coating the entire room in its warm, sunny glow.

"Sleep, sweet boy." Winona whispered, their lanky legs tangling together in a mangled mess. "I'll be here when you wake, if you wish."

"Don't abandon me, too." He whispered, sticky eyelids fluttering closed as he nuzzled into the musty pillowcase. "Please don't."

"I'm not going anywhere."

I'll always protect you.