** For a while I have been toying with the idea of doing a story where Daryl dies instead of Merle. And I was re-reading the Flowers in the Attic series by VC Andrews and thinking about doing a walking dead version of that. So what we have here is a combination of those two ideas, told by Beth as she is reading through all her old journals and turning them into a book. While this is not a crossover, there may be some scenes included that are similar to the VC Andrews books series, so I just wanted to give credit where credit was due. I thought it would be nice to start with a quote from the books that inspired my story. This story is rated M for sexual content, violence and general theme. Shawn Greene is not on the character list so he is listed as OC. Since we dont know much about him from the show, he is pretty much going to be an original character anyway. As always, read, enjoy and review. **

It is so appropriate to color hope yellow, like the sun that we seldom saw. And as I begin to copy from the old memorandum journals that I kept for so long, a title comes as if inspired. Open the Window and Stand in the Sunshine. Yet, I hesitate to name our story that. For I think of us more as flowers in the attic. Paper flowers. Born so brightly colored, and fading duller through all those long, grim, dreary, nightmarish days when we were held prisoners of hope...

V. C. Andrews, Flowers in the Attic

Prologue

Last night I stood by the firepit outside our humble cabin with my journals in hand. I meant to destroy them. Toss them into the fire and watch as the bindings melted away and the pages curled up and turned black. Burn them and burn away the memories that they held. Destroy the last bit of evidence that might prove my life now is anything other than the perfect fairly tale dream other people on the island believe it to be. I would blot out these words and stories in the hopes that my children might never learn the truth.

But as I stood there, the fire so hot it felt as if the soft blonde hair in my arms might begin to singe at any moment, my father's words from all those years ago drifted back to me. He stood in the doorway of my cell, one of my journals in his hands, rescued from the trash barrel where I had hurled it in a fit of hopelessness. When there was so much death and destruction in the world, I felt guilty and self indulgent spending any of my time writing. I decided there had to be some task more important that I could spend my time doing. Stabbing walkers down at the fences maybe, or sharpening knives. But my father did not agree.

"Some day, people are going to wonder how mankind made it through these dark times. Your journals might serve as a record, for future generations," he said. He brushed a dried spaghetti noddle off the back cover and tried to hand my journal back to me.

"It's stupid to keep a journal," I said, not yet ready to be convinced that what I was doing had any importance. He probably was just afraid that if I tried doing something else, I would get myself hurt or killed. That's all people thought I was good for. Dying. I could read their faces. When they looked at me, all they saw was one more dead girl.

"You think Anne Frank was stupid?," my father asked me. He had a way of asking unanswerable questions. There was a wisdom in his words that I never appreciated until long after he was dead and gone. Knowing that there was no point in arguing, I just snatched my journal back and threw it under my bunk. Next time I got rid of the stupid book I would burn it instead of leaving it in the trash for someone to find.

I could hear my father's words in my mind like it was yesterday instead of so many years ago. His face is harder to picture and more than anything I wish I had a photo of him. My own reflection is of no use in this regard. Like my half brother Shawn, I favor our mother. Fair and blonde with big blue eyes. But his voice I can still hear in my mind, crystal clear as though he was standing right next to me.

I did not burn my books. Instead I took them back inside and lined them up on the small table where I keep my sewing machine. I found my first journal, the one I started writing in before the dead rose up and came after the living. Immediatley, I knew my journals could never be published as they were. They were too raw, too real. And they contained my real name and the names of the people I loved.

Like many great authors before me, I will write this story as a work of fiction. I will hide behind a fake name, and live in fake places that are all still more real in my mind sometimes than the things right in front of my eyes. I will pray to the god that my father never stopped believing in no matter the horror that faced us. I will pray that the people who may read my words might find it in their hearts to forgive me for my sins. I am Beth Greene and this is my story.