Hello, my fellow readers and writers! Here is something new I cooked up.

OK, I was reading this great Degrassi Halloween oneshot called "An Unwelcome Admirer" by random fanfic writer, a great fellow author of mine. (It's a good read, and I recommend it highly.) The phrase "brides of the undead" jumped out at me; it's a pretty cool phrase to use in a story, I might add.

Then I got to wondering what would've happened in the story if the ghost of Rick Murray had gotten Emma as his bride. (I remember that he was referring to Emma as "what I came here for", so I think he meant that maybe she was his bride – or something along those lines.) So this is what I came up with.

I dedicate this oneshot to jayhogartismyangel for giving me the idea, as her ideas are really cool. And I also want to thank Becks Rylynn as her description of what a hell dimension would supposedly look like at the end of her Supernatural oneshot "All that Remains" was really great. Thanks, Becky!

Prompts: Rick Murray, Emma Nelson, brides of the undead, burning, fire, crimson red

Disclaimer: The geniuses at The N own Degrassi. I own the oneshots and stories. And the phrase "Hellsville" is from Buffy: The Vampire Slayer.

"Bride of a Ghost"

"She Always Takes It With A Heart Of Stone
‛Cause All She Does Is Throw It Back To Me
I've Spent A Lifetime
Looking For Someone
Don't Try To Understand Me
Just Simply Do The
Things I Say


Love Is A Feeling
Give It When I Want It
‛Cause I'm On Fire
Quench My Desire


Give It When I Want It
Talk To Me Woman
Give In To Me
Give In To Me

--Michael Jackson, Give In to Me

It was a new day at Degrassi Library – it was June, and it was Friday. Emma Nelson, sixteen, her blonde locks bouncing, walked inside, as she was looking for a book.

But this wasn't just any book. This book was about ghosts.

Ever since before the shooting, when Rick Murray, the winner of the Whack Your Brain competition that had been held at Degrassi, had placed a kiss on her lips, she felt as though something that was sleeping inside of her had been awakened.

Maybe it was. She didn't know.

She now realized he was probably trying to pay her back.

And I should've returned his kiss. What was I thinking pushing him away and telling him I only felt sorry for him, I pitied him, and that he should get a clue? Emma snapped at herself mentally. I should've accepted the kiss, and then he wouldn't have started the shooting in the first place. I will never forgive myself – ever!

After all, she had kissed him as part of a "scavenger hunt" between him and Toby, and she hadn't known she was the prize between them.

She would often reach up and touch her mouth in private, whenever nobody was looking. Remembering his mouth on hers.

She would also wonder if there were such things as "the ghost of a kiss", and she felt as though Rick would often be there, invisible, and often try to get inside her head and bring up memories that she tried to keep buried.

For example, he would recall the time when she was twelve, and she had had this friendship with that guy named Jordan. At first it seemed like innocent fun. They would chat for hours about the environment, and Emma would tell him exactly how she felt about it. He would reply that he felt the exact same way as well.

But then she had gone to a room at a hotel so she could meet Jordan in person, and had gotten the shock of her life.

"Jordan", she discovered, was actually a man in his 40s, and a pedophile. He attempted to film the rape of Emma in a hotel room. Emma's mother, Spike, and her friend Snake came to her rescue at the just in time. Emma's friends, Manny, Toby and J.T had hacked into her computer the same way that Jordan had: he had read Emma's emails and pretended to have the same interests. Fearing the worst for their friend, Manny, Toby and J.T had run to Spike's high-school reunion.

Sometimes, at night when Emma was asleep, Rick would enter her dreams....

**Flashback***

Beads of sweat ran down Emma's unclothed body as she looked up at Rick from her lying position on the crimson bedsheets with a pillow under her head, a little scared. He was wearing the same clothes he had been wearing when he had been shot with his own gun – except he had taken his shirt off, giving her a good view of his smooth chest. On his face was a dark smirk. His dark brown eyes were crawling lustfully over every luscious curve of her body.

"Rick," she asked, "what am I doing here?" She looked around. Her bedroom had changed to some dimension involving a burning pit of fire. Everything was all crimson and burning. It looked like something out of a movie. "And why is everything all, well, fire and brimstone?"

Rick, smirking still, replied,

"One – you're my bride, Emma. Two – the reason why everything's all crimson red with fire is because I'm consummating my marriage to you."

Emma suddenly felt one of those inner conflicts – which she had read about often – happening to her. She wanted to reach up and push him away... or pull him onto her. That probably would work if she hadn't forgotten that her wrists were tied to the headboard of her bed.

But on the other hand, she really wanted to use something she hadn't gotten a chance to use in what seemed like a long time – namely, her "feminine wiles". She wanted to, when it came to what she called "the act of intimacy", be the one on top of him for a change. There was only one problem. How was she to do it?

So lost was she in her own thoughts that Rick took the opportunity to lower his head and capture her mouth in a kiss. Then his mouth moved along her neck to her shoulder and then down to her...

**End of Flashback**

Shaking her head, Emma pulled herself back to reality, and looked around the library. Noticing it was empty, she then headed over to the section that had books on the supernatural.

She then ran the fingers of her right hand across the spines of the books, scanning them for a really good one, as she had always wanted to read about ghosts. Now she had gotten to do just that. After all, she had always wondered about, besides ghosts, the afterlife, hell dimensions, fire and brimstone – things like that.

She picked out a book at random and began flipping through the pages. The pages, feeling like silk gloves or a dress on a princess in those fairy tales she would often read in secret, rustled silently.

"I knew you would come here, Emma," said an eerily familiar voice.

One she knew all too well.

Uh-oh. This was not good – not good at all.

She froze, looked up, and sucked in her breath in surprise.

It was him.

Rick Murray. Only, he didn't look like a ghost – all see-through and floating above the ground like ghosts were supposed to be portrayed as. Instead, he looked the same as he did when he had died.

Emma swallowed, closed the book, and then put it back on the shelf.

"Emma," said Rick as he walked over to her, his voice seeming to echo all around her.

Emma looked around, hoping that maybe one of her friends – Toby, JT, or Jimmy – would come to help her. But she knew that would not work. Toby was on vacation at science camp, JT was earning money selling paintings he made himself, and Jimmy, she knew, had become an art teacher, and he was doing really well. Plus he was very fiscally responsible, as she knew all too well. She had seen him working on a check register his father had given him a week ago.

So she knew she had to deal with this alone.

Oh, great, she thought. I am so in big trouble. Wait. Those aren't the right words to describe the situation right now. Actually, I feel like I fell into a "lake of burning fire", only it's all warm and stuff. However, I feel like I did something wrong, but I'm not sure what it is though.

She hadn't realized that she was backing away and was soon up against the wall of the library until she felt the wall against her back.

Rick walked up to her, a dark, evil smirk adorning his face, and placed his hands on either side of her head, preventing her from escaping. Then all of a sudden she was right in front of him, and he had his arms around her. Emma looked down to see his arms around her waist, and was suddenly reminded of that scene from the film "Vampire in Brooklyn" where the vampire, Maximillion, was behind Rita Veder and had his arms around her.

"You're hiding something, Emma," he purred, his lips dancing across her neck with the barest suggestion of a kiss.

Emma bit her lower lip. "Rick, I...." she began to say and then stopped herself. She let the sentence hang in the air, trying to find the right words. What am I supposed to say? Nuts!

"What is it, Emma?" Rick asked, his voice now gentle and soft as a kitten's fur.

As she wasn't giving him an answer, he then looked into her mind and read her thoughts. He smirked as he scrolled down the expansive posts she showed as her secret thoughts. They were like those posts in a forum he would usually read in the Media Immersion class with Toby whenever he got the chance.

Toby, he thought, seeing an image of the smile on Toby's face after he gave him the dice that Toby had rightfully gotten as a prize in the contest they had initiated to see who could kiss the most girls. I'll see him later. I hope he's doing well.

In the meantime Emma had closed her eyes. She felt a flash of white light that eventually turned to red.

Then she opened her eyes, and looked around her surroundings. Her eyes widened at what she saw.

Fire.... crimson....flames...

Hey, this is exactly how I would see it in my dreams. Except this looks kind of different, she thought.

Before she knew it, she was lying on a four-poster canopy bed with red silk hangings pulled back, unclothed with her wrists chained to the headboard. Rick was on top of her, smiling, his white teeth gleaming.

As he bent and placed his mouth over hers, Emma's last thought was, Well, if I have to be here, in Hellsville itself, at least I can be here with someone that had a crush on me.

With that thought, she closed her eyes and let Rick do what he wanted to her. His hands flowed all over her body as a shiver went down her spine. To Emma it was amazing as he slipped inside of her, thrusting in and out of her. All she could see was him smiling. He chased her other thoughts away and made it so that he and only he was in her thoughts. It was as though his hands were a pen and her body was the paper. She remembered watching as he held the pen in his hand while writing poetry in English class when he was alive.

Memories of her time at Degrassi Community School were nothing to her now. Rick had erased them from her mind, telling her that they were nothing more than a brief dalliance in a moment of weakness.

All Emma knew was that she would be with him as his bride...

Rick Murray, the school shooter, was to be her husband..

Forever...

Well, I hope you liked reading this as much as I liked writing it – as in a lot. After all, Rick Murray and Emma Nelson sure are such great characters to work with. Plus this idea had been tapping at the back of my brain for quite some time, so I just had to write it down.

Be sure to review and tell me what you think, please!

~Nightcrawlerlover