AN: Written for the Nine Lives Halloween Fanfiction Challenge.

Disclaimer: I don't own TWD or anything related to the show, their characters, or their love lives.


Daryl stood at the end of the long dirt drive, staring up at the house. Dust covered his boots and the muddied, ragged hem of his worn jeans. This was it. His chance to start over.

Fuck the way it was.

It was clear no one had been in the house for a while. It had an abandoned air to it. Lonely. It felt like the house was actually pulling him up along the drive, like it needed him.

The wind whistled through the trees, stirring up the leaves, their muted yellow and oranges fluttering around him and skittering across the ground. He shivered as the crisp bite of the late autumn breeze chilled him straight through the worn and threadbare cotton of his flannel.

He slammed the door to his truck, pulled a couple of boxes from the bed and made his way up the rickety porch to the screen door guarding his new place. Peeling paint greeted him and rusted hinges groaned as he stepped inside dropping the box on the creaking hardwood floors of the entryway. His steps echoed hollowly as he walked the floors. The house was supported by brick pillars beneath, lifting it a few feet off the ground.

The air was musty and the first thing he did was try to open some of the windows to air it out, at least the few windows he could open that weren't rusted shut. He took in his surroundings with a critical eye to the work that needed done. Rehabbing the inside was something he looked forward to doing. It would take time, and occupy his thoughts, giving him a needed reprieve from the torment his memories caused.

He unloaded his truck, and got work cleaning out the house, throwing out old, functionless furniture and clearing the rooms of refuse and garbage. He thanked his lucky stars that the house had working water and electric when he arrived. He didn't fancy having to trouble with the utility companies to get service this far out.

Wiping the sweat from his brow, he got out his sleeping bag (he didn't have a bed yet) and spread it on the floor-space he had cleared in the front room. He grabbed up his duffle and went to the bathroom to clean up so he could get some rest. It was going to be a long day tomorrow.

The bright, glaring light from the one hanging bulb in the bathroom flickered when he pulled the chain to turn it on. He stared in the cracked mirror hanging on the wall in front him, years of grime and dirt clouding the reflection. He didn't much care to see himself, anyway. There wasn't much to look at.

Sighing heavily, he turned on the water in the old, clawfoot tub, watching as it creaked and moaned, finally spitting out rust colored water. He let it run for a bit while he shrugged out of his dirty, sweaty clothes, till it was as clear as it was going to get, and got in the tub. There was no shower curtain so he just let the faucet run, and splashed the lukewarm water over himself. It was refreshing, if nothing else.

While he ran his washrag over his body, his mind drifted back, as it was prone to do, to that day. The day he wished he could erase from his memory, burn from his consciousness. He kept running, but he couldn't get away from it, no matter what he did.

He turned his head to the door when he thought he heard a creak in the hallway. Listening, straining his ears, he reached down and shut off the water. The faucet continued to drip, each drop growing in sound until it felt like a roar in the stillness.

A laugh. Was that a laugh?

A chuckle rolled through the air, and his skin broke out in goosebumps, the water running like bits of ice down his heated flesh. The plop of the washcloth in the water at his feet startled him, the realization that he'd dropped it sending a jolt of awareness through his mind. He stepped out and grabbed his towel, drying off in a hurry and flinging it onto the sink before grabbing his clean boxers and stepping into his sweatpants. He threw his tee shirt on, and opened the bathroom door.

A rush of cool air bowled him over and flooded the room. The light flickered again and then went out.

"Damn crappy bulbs," Daryl muttered as he turned and tried yanking the string attached to the light fixture. The whole thing must've been barely hanging together because the next thing he heard was a loud pop and the shattering of glass at his feet.

"Fuck!"

He didn't have any shoes on, couldn't see a damn thing, and water was dripping from his hair down his back, soaking his shirt.

"Shoulda brought my damn flashlight," he said cursing himself for not thinking of something like this happening. He took a breath, trying not to move his feet as he braced, readying himself to jump into the hallway and hope no shards of glass made it that far. He made it, landing lightly on his feet, but falling to his knees when he felt something sharp pierce the ball of his foot.

He felt the warm blood trickling down his skin as he lay there on his hands and knees, halfway tempted to just crawl to his sleeping bag so he could get this day over with already. He managed to get to a standing position and felt along the wall until he reached the light switch. Flipping it on, his heart lurched at the sight before him.

Instead of glass from the light bulb, there was a knife laying in the middle of the floor. And it wasn't his.

There were bloody footprints from the knife to where he was standing. But they were too small to be his.

His heart was pounding, pulse racing, and he felt his whole body growing warm, sweat beading on his forehead and upper lip.

A small, high pitched, sing-songy voice had him whipping his head and there he saw, right beside him, a little girl. Her face was drawn up in what he considered pain, but she wasn't crying. She clutched a doll to her chest. She was small, young, blonde...just like…

She looked up at him, right through him actually and her next words had him choking back sobs, praying to wake up from what he knew had to be a nightmare.

"It's better now."

Blackness engulfed him, his body hitting the floor. The little girl walked away, bloody footprints following her into the darkness.


Thank you for reading! xoxoxo