This is Michael Jackson's beautiful but sad song: Little Susie.
I own nothing but the storyline
Little Susie
Jack ran in the direction of the door of his old home dragging Arabella with him. With his Dad gone off pirating somewhere he could finally see how his sister was doing without him.
"You're going to love her; she's smart, funny and good-looking just like me." Jack said whilst still pulling Arabella in the direction of the battered looking house.
"Oh, God help me if there's two of ye. One of ye is enough!" She joked trying to wind him up.
"Hey!" Jack tried to look offended but couldn't quite pull it off as he had a huge excited grin on his face. He hadn't seen Susie in over a year.
Arabella just smiled at her friends' contagious joy as he opened the door and yanked her in after him.
Jack suddenly let go of her hand and ran off into the room.
"Susie! Are you there? It's me, Ja..." His voice trailed off as soon as he saw the stairs or rather, what was at the bottom of them.
Arabella soon caught up with him.
"Jack? Have ye found her?" She looked at her friends face only to find that it wasn't happy or excited any longer but horrified and for the first time since Arabella had met him, she saw tears glistening in his eyes which soon cascaded down his cheek.
"Jack? Jack, are ye alright?" She looked away from Jacks face and toward what he was staring at.
The sight caused her to gasp and place her hands over her mouth to prevent her from screaming.
Jack suddenly broke free of his frozen stance and ran towards the small body strewn across the floor before he picked her up in his arms and began to sob wretchedly.
"Susie? SUSIE! Wake up! Stop playing around Susie this isn't funny! Susie, listen to me! SUSIE!" His voice turned into a screech as he shook the young girls' lifeless form, trying to bring her back into the land of the living, but to no avail.
Arabella jerked out of her trance as well before she ran over to Jack and wrenched the girl from his arms.
"Jack! Doing that won't make any difference. I'm sorry but she's not comin' back." She yanked her friend into a hug and rocked him gently as he sobbed into her shoulder. The sight of her usually strong and collected friend crying over his lost sister broke Arabellas heart.
"I'm so sorry." She whispered.
Jack was too distraught to answer.
Suddenly Arabella heard the door open then shut and then the sound of someone skipping over to them. She let go of Jack before she turned around and nearly screamed at what she saw.
There right in front of her was a young and very pretty girl. She had long black hair, a thin angular face and a pair of chocolate brown eyes that were filled with agony. Arabella had never seen someone look so pained except for Jack a moment ago. That was not what shocked Arabella however, what shocked her was the blood all over her torn dress and mixed in with her dark locks.
"Who is that?" She murmured looking towards her friend who was staring, mouth agape at the young girl.
The girl started to rummage through her pocket before triumphantly pulling out a music box. She opened it then wound it up and listened to the beautiful tune coming from it before she began to hum and then sing along with it.
"Laa laa laa laa laa laa laaa, laa laa laa la, laa laa laa laa laa laa laa laa laa laa laa laa laa laa laa, laa laa laa la laaa laa laa laa laa laa laa laa la." The music grinded to a halt as did the childs' voice. She then looked up at the teenagers and sighed before turning and walking away. Within seconds she vanished away into nothing. The child had been a ghost.
Jack simply stared at the spirit and allowed the tears to roll down his face once more before he whispered: "That was Susie."
Somebody killed little Susie
The girl with the tune
Who sings in the daytime at noon
She was there screaming
Beating her voice in her doom
But nobody came to her soon...
A fall down the stairs
Her dress torn
Oh the blood in her hair...
A mystery so sullen in air
She lie there so tenderly
Fashioned so slenderly
Lift her with care,
Oh the blood in her hair...
Arabella dragged her feet along through the sand as she made her way up to the rickety shack were Jack was waiting for her, probably still knelt by his sisters side.
She had left him for a while so that she could try and find someone to perform a funeral and take the young girl from the bottom of the stairs. She had managed to find someone after an hour that was willing to perform a funeral for Susie and lay the young girl to rest as she deserved to be.
She opened the door and walked in before closing it quietly behind her.
To her surprise she heard voices in the room that did not belong to Jack or anyone else she knew. She ran further into the room and came to a sudden halt as she nearly ran into a decent sized crowd.
The entire town had come to see little Susie and pay their respects to her and her grieving brother.
Arabella began to push her way through the crowd, receiving dirty looks and curses as she did so. She finally managed to fight her way to the front of the crowd where she found Jack still kneeling by Susie's side but refusing to look at anyone and was instead staring dejectedly at the wall.
Arabella placed a comforting hand on her friends shoulder. Jack seemed to jerk out of his trance and looked towards her with a deep anguish in his eyes. He then looked away from her and stared down at his sister whose eyes were still open and staring fearfully at an unseen terror.
A man suddenly knelt down beside the two teenagers and whisperer: "I'm so sorry. I should have known what was going on in here when I heard all the yelling the day before your father left. I should have stopped her."
Arabella stared at him with a small rage slowly building up inside of her.
"Ye could hear all this from yer home and ye didn't do anythin'?" She looked at him in disgust.
"I would have helped but Susie's family has been living next door to me for years; they're always arguin'." The man replied in an attempt to save himself from the young womans wrath.
Jack sighed and placed his hand over Arabellas.
"He's right, Bell. Don't blame him for this; it isn't his fault." But then Jacks face darkened with hatred and a rage so deep that it scared the two people around him. They had never seen Jack so angry.
"I know who did though and I will get him for this. I promise, I'll make him pay for what he did to her."
Everyone came to see
The girl that now is dead
So blind stare the eyes in her head...
And suddenly a voice from the crowd said
"This girl lived in vain!"
Her face bears such agony, such strain...
But only the man from next door
Knew Little Susie and how he cried
As he reached down
To close Susie's eyes...
She lie there so tenderly
Fashioned so slenderly
Lift her with care
Oh the blood in her hair...
"What are ye two talking about? Who did this to Susie?" Arabella looked at them both in confusion. How could anyone harm someone like Susie?
Jack looked up at her with dead eyes.
"My father did this." He stated in such an emotionless voice that caused it Arabella to shiver with the sheer coldness of it.
"Why could you father throw her down the stairs like this?"
"He didn't kill her physically. He murdered her mentally." Arabella just stared at him not understanding what he was trying to tell her.
Jack groaned, realizing that he would have to explain it to her.
"My father only ever wanted a son, he never wanted a daughter I think that he was like that 'cause of the heartbreak me mum caused him when she left and me Da would have sent the girl straight back to ma Mum if she hadn't of died last fall from a brain tumor. The bastard used to take out all his anger on Susie because he didn't have the guts to realize that it was his own stupid fault for not giving a damn about Mum. When things got really bad, she used to listen to the music box and you couldn't help but feel her pain. I was the only one that ever gave a shit about her and when I left she had no-one."
It was all for God's sake
For her singing the tune
For someone to feel her despair
To be damned to know hoping is dead and you're doomed
Then to scream out
And nobody's there...
She knew no one cared...
Jack paused attempting to compose himself before he continued.
"My Da always wanted me to be a pirate captain after him and take over as Keeper of the Pirata Codex when he died but I never wanted a while he got tired of me tellin' him that I didn't want to be a pirate like him and told me that he was gonna take me out on the sea with 'im and teach me how to be a good pirate whether I liked it or not. I couldn't take it. I hated everything about him and I knew that piracy was what corrupted him in the first place. It wasn't goin' to happen to me if I had anythin' to say about it."
He stopped as his eyes glazed over, clearly lost in the last memory he had of his sister.
"I would have ran away from 'ere there an' then but I knew that if I left Susie she wouldn't stand a chance but she knew what Da had planned and she knew how much I despised pirates so she convinced me to leave, that no-one should be forced into their own death sentence if they could prevent it from happening. 'Go on Jack' she told me 'Leave, I'll be fine here but you won't be if you stay another minute. Go.' I wanted to take her with me but we both knew she was too young for the danger that I might end up facing while out at sea. So I left."
Tears began to well in his eyes once more.
"I never saw her again until now" His voice cracked as he looked at his sister, the only one who had ever truly understood him.
Father left home, poor mother died
Leaving Susie alone
Grandfather's soul too had flown... No one to care
Just to love her
How much can one bear
Rejecting the needs in her prayers...
As the crowd began to file out of the old house the people all tried to comfort Jack telling him that it wasn't his fault and to just let it go. But he just couldn't and he probably never would.
"He neglected her so much that she threw herself down the stairs and I wasn't there to stop her." He pressed his lips in a thin line trying to stop himself from screaming. No matter what anyone told him he would always blame himself for this.
Arabella sighed not knowing what to say to him and he was too lost to notice.
Someone cleared their voice from behind them. Jack and Arabella turned to face an old man with crooked, yellow stained teeth and empty grey eyes.
"I'm sorry for yer loss Mr Sparra but I was called to take yer sister to be buried." He said in an emotionless monotone; completely detached from everyone around him. He had been around the dead so long that he didn't know how to act around the living anymore.
Jack gave a slight nod and moved away from his sister, allowing he man to pick his sister up and take her away to prepare her for burying.
Neglection can kill
Like a knife in your soul
Oh it will
Little Susie fought so hard to live...
She lie there so tenderly
Fashioned so slenderly
Lift her with care
So young and so fair.
Ding.
Suddenly a pair of footsteps sounded from within the house. Jack frowned and turned around and very nearly screamed.
There was Susie. She was completely transparent and moved in a way that looked as though someone had taken many pictures of her and placed them in order, so that you could not actually see her move properly. Jack had never seen anything like it.
Ding.
She looked up at Jack and allowed a sad smile to flicker onto her lips.
"Goodbye, Jack. I love you." Her voice echoed through the room. She then turned and walked out of the room.
Ding.
"Susie? Susie? Wait!" He leapt to his feet and ran after the girl followed closely by Arabella.
"SUSIE!" His voice cracked as he called for his sister. He ran outside and skidded to a halt as he spotted his sister walking away with her back to him before she faded away once more. This time forever.
Ding.
Jack fell to his knees as he stared at the place his sister had just been.
Arabella ran over to him and grabbed his arm before hoisting him to his feet.
"Come on Jack. Let's go tell the others. They'll want to say goodbye to her; even if they never actually met her they know her through ye."
Ding.
Well, I hope you liked it even though it is really miserable. Ta for reading!