They just couldn't live there after the accident. I could barely live there after I found out I was sleeping in the room of a dead boy.
The darko's moved two weeks after Donnie's room had been rebuilt - Sam complained that she could see Donnie behind the bathroom mirror, and Rose said something in the night kept asking her about her 'man suit'.
I didn't see it until just after Christmas. My little brother got given a stuffed rabbit from my Auntie, and it kept going missing. I found it in the bathroom cupboard, under my bed, then - in the middle of the night - next to my pillow with its head ripped off and missing an eye.
I met Donnie that night.
Although when I saw him standing at the end of my bed I didn't know who he was. I shot up after seeing the beheaded rabbit, and saw him starring at me from under his brow.
I didn't scream - I'm used to waking up to strange people in my room. I'm not always sure they're dead or not, but they usually are, and after finding out a boy was crushed to death in my room just a few months earlier, I was surprise I hadn't met him earlier.
"Did you destroy my brothers bunny?" I asked blankly, my breaths settling into rhythm.
"I don't like rabbits," he answered, a childlike essence hanging in his voice.
"Well I don't like people in my room while I sleep, yet here you are," I said sternly.
"This used to be my room." He stood, hunched, and looked around, lingering on the roof, before finding me again - sitting on a strange bed where his used to be. "I died here, y'know?"
A normal person would have jumped out of their skin at his comment, but Donnie wasn't my first ghost, and I'd been left creepier things in the middle of the night.
"So your Donnie? Donnie Darko?" I asked, trying to be gentler now. Dealing with ghosts, I had quickly learnt that sternness was only required when dealing with misbehaviour, and softness was the most thing useful when dealing with the topic of death. Usually ghosts just wanted a friend.
Donnie nodded sheepishly, his eyes piercing my soul as he looked at me - so blue, and so... Strange.
I sighed, folded my legs like a pretzel, and pouted. I pat the covers in front of me. "Come sit," I said, not looking at him until I felt him approach.
"You're not scared of me?" He asked as he sat. "I'd be scared of me."
"No," I said, sympathetic to his situation, "you aren't gonna hurt me, are you?"
He shook his head, but wouldn't look at me.
That was the beginning of something, but what, I wouldn't know for a week or two. I've always had a little bit of darkness in me - death always sat a little too well in my stomach. My first friend was a ghost I called Checkers because of his red flannel shirt. I'd talk to him day and night, and he understood.
Donnie understood, too. He didn't ask questions about why I painted my room such a dark colour, or why I kept the blinds closed and only illuminated the space with fairy lights. He just lay on the bed and counted each light, and told me the turquoise green went well with the red of my hair.
I'd get home from school, and Donnie would be waiting for me on my double bed, just as he was today.
"How was school?" He asked, excited to see me. His smirk made me smile, and the playfulness in his voice found its way into mine.
"Terrible," I answered with a smirk, dumping my bag. "As always."
"I know," he said, waiting for me to flop on the bed next to him - and I did.
As I lay starring at the ceiling, Donnie leant over me. I expected him to speak, and his lips parted as if he were going to, but he just starred. His eyes trailed over every detail on my face, and lingered at my lips. He looked so calm.
I reach up and ran my fingers through the dark hair on the back of his heAd, and pulled his lips into mine.
I'd never kissed a ghost, but I'd kissed plenty of boys. Boys tasted like skin, and salt, and their lips were often course. A girl always kept her lips sweet and soft with lip balm, but real boys didn't have silky lips. Donnie did. His lips were sweet, and velvety. He tasted like chocolate.
I liked kissing him a little too much, and I hummed happily as his lips moved against mine.
We parted only to reposition. I wanted him on to of me, between my legs, inside me...
Too many people think that ghosts are weightless, that you can't touch them, that they are like images projected into our world rather than being really there. A ghost is not something you can mimic with smoke and mirrors, they are the purest form of what that person used to be, no longer bound by the imperfections of mortal tissue.
The feeling of Donnie against me, of my legs wrapped around his hips, pulling him closer, drove me mad with lust.
He ran his hand up my thigh, under my school dress, and pulled down my underwear. It only took him a moment to guide his cock inside, and with one thrust the hardest half hour of my life began - how on earth was I supposed to stay quiet enough that my parents wouldn't hear?!
I whispered for him to go slow, but I felt the tension in his muscles as he tried to restrain himself, and felt it in every passionate kiss.
Every so often his rhythm would pick up and the bed beneath us would squeak, and I'd hear him curse under his breath.
I'd pull him into me with my legs, and clench his cock with my pussy just to hear his breath hitch every so often, or for him to bury his face in the crook of my neck and drag his fingers down my back.
It got hard for him to control himself very quickly. Donnie's muscles trembled beneath my touch, and every so often he would push inside me with such need that I'd have to cover my mouth to stop myself from moaning.
I came muliple times before him, but those last few thrusts and he came sent a wave of pleasure through me so intense that not even his hand over my mouth could muffle the sound. Donnie hovered over me, chuckling as he saw what he had done.
"Damn you, Donnie Darko," I said breathlessly, "my parents would have heard that."
I pushed him off and made my way to my wardrobe. I felt his eyes on me as I slipped out of my dress, replacing it with track pants and a shirt before leaning against closed door.
It took me a moment to look at him as he lay on my bed - part of me was too bashful. His skinned glowed under the yellow light as if he was one of the living, but there was something so dark about him that it would be difficult to mistake him for someone who was alive. His shirt was wrinkled, his hair messy, and his eyes flickered past every bulb around the room - the light reflected in his blue eyes light sunlight. He did not look like he was full of wonder, or the child like innocence I had learnt to adore in the past weeks, he looked groggy - high. It made me smile to think that he was high on me.
I crept back to the bed, and curled into his arms.
"You have 257 fairy lights," he said as I closed my eyes, letting sleep tempt me away. "Don't you think that's excessive?"
I let out a titter. "You're such a fuckass, Donnie."
"Youre a fuckass," he replied, curving his body around mine.