The stars and moon shined so bright
But I was crying on that night
The light was clear but I turned dark
As I accepted death into my heart
Roman woke up with a weird scream. It was the weirdest dream that somehow felt like a nightmare without the classic monsters or being chased around. He had been standing in the dark night somewhere with naked, half dead trees spread around. A voice had read that poem out loud. A voice he hadn't heard since high school.
"Ah, what the fuck is this?" He asked.
He tried sitting up but he felt a cramp. He held himself up on his elbows and looked down. He had wet the bed during his sleep. Something he hadn't done since he was a toddler. That dream had gotten to him way deeper than any other dream before.
"This is fucking embarrassing," he mumbled.
He managed to power through the cramp and get up. He gathered all the bed sheets and walked to the laundry room. He started the washing machine and walked to the bathroom. He needed a shower to wash himself clean of pee and the weird dream. He turned on the shower and turned to the mirror while waiting for the water to turn hot. His cheeks were red and swollen. He had cried in his sleep.
"Fuck," he said lowly. "What happened to you, Lala?"
Lala was the girl who had written that poem back in those days. Words of a teenage girl growing up and struggling. She was being bullied by a lot of the other kids. Roman never bullied her but he didn't do anything to stop it either.
She was always the quiet kid with a weird love for horror movies and metal music. She dyed her hair black and got a nose piercing, and that was when the bullying got worse. It was no longer just words. She was being shoved and sometimes punched or kicked. Day after day she would come to school and it would start all over. There was never a day of peace for her.
The last day he saw her, some of the boys were at it again. She was being pushed so hard that she landed on the ground. A book fell out of her bag but she didn't see it. She was too busy getting up and running for safety with six boys chasing after her.
Roman had picked up the book. A brown book that turned out to be some sort of diary. The poem from his dream had been the first thing written in it. He brought the book home, reading it even though it was private, feeling his heart breaking for every word. A suicidal girl putting down her inner thoughts and feelings about the hell she went through everyday.
He had every intention of giving it back to her the next day but she never returned to school. After a week rumors started circulating. Lala had killed herself. No one ever asked the teachers if it was true. She was gone and that was all they knew. Some of the worst bullies proudly talked about how they finally made her kill herself. Months went by and everything went back to normal. By next semester no one talked about her. It was as if she had never existed. He never forgot her though.
He got into the shower and cleaned himself as fast as he could. After that he got dressed and drove to his parents' house. They were still asleep but he had a key. He let himself into the house and tiptoed to his old room. It was a guest room now with his old bed still being in the spot he had left it. Under that bed was a loose floorboard he had never told his parents about. He laid down on his stomach, got the floorboard up and reached his hand down into the hole. He pulled up a bag with that brown diary still in it. He got back up, sat down on the bed and opened the diary. The poem from his dream was laughing in his face.
"Lala. What was her surname again? Something with an R," he said.
He turned to the last page and found her name written in the bottom corner. Lala Roselle. He took out his phone and googled her name. He had to know if the rumors back then had been true. He was surprised to see so many pictures and articles turn up about her. The most recent one was about a movie convention taking place that same day in Florida.
HORROR MOVIE WRITER AND DIRECTOR LALA ROSELLE ABOUT TO REVEAL NEW PROJECT TODAY
He couldn't help but smile at the pictures he found at her. Still keeping up with the goth look with black clothes and black hair. The nose piercing had gotten a twin. Two silver rings dangled side by side in the right side of the nose. Her bottle green eyes shone through every picture. She looked happy. He was happy too. Happy to see she was still alive, and happy to see she had followed her passion and started writing horror movies, and on top of it she was successful at what she was doing. He found a list of movies she had written and most of them had been hits.
"You did it, Lala," he sighed happily. "You fucking did it, girl."
He left the house just as quietly as he had entered it. His parents would never know he had been there this early. He had made up his mind. He was going to that movie convention to see her. The article had announced she would be there for a Q&A and sign autographs. He had to see her with his own eyes and make sure it really was her and that she really was okay.
