Warning: graphic depictions of violence in this chapter.

i can hear violin strings, but inside my casket it's silent

"when they mask up, they comin' for your ice,
when they bare face, they comin' for your life"

April 12th, 2017 was just like any other Wednesday night for the Greene Family. Otis, Patricia, and Arnold joined Hershel, Annette, Maggie, Glenn, Shawn, and Beth for dinner, as they usually did after Wednesday evening church services. And then they all helped clean up before sitting together on the porch for a couple of hours, talking and laughing, sipping sweet tea and lemonade, enjoying the hints of spring that were floating on the chilly breeze.

It was actually a pretty good night, when Beth thought about it. She hadn't argued with Shawn or Maggie more than a couple of times that whole evening, her momma had cooked spaghetti and garlic bread for dinner (one of Beth's favorites), and no one had disappeared into Hershel's study for a "talk" or a "work discussion" even once. In fact, the study remained empty and locked all night, as everyone was crowded together in the kitchen or the dining room or on the back porch. It felt like a nice, happy, normal evening for Beth and her family. Which had been growing fewer and farther between over the last six months. The sudden lack of tension in the farmhouse felt like a brief reprieve, and she was almost certain that she wasn't the only one who felt that way.

And then they'd all gone to bed. Patricia, Otis, and Arnold all left and went back to their own homes, and not long after, Beth and her parents and her siblings were all retreating into their separate bedrooms and shutting the doors. The farmhouse went dark and quiet. Beth lay in bed for a while, texting Jimmy and reading a book that she'd been assigned for her Literature class. The clock had read 11:14 as she shut off her bedside lamp and rolled over to go to sleep.

When she opened her eyes again and glanced around, she found that it was 1:49. Her bedroom and the rest of the farmhouse were still dark and quiet. Everyone else was sleeping soundly, resting and preparing for their usual four a.m. wake-up calls. Beth wanted to roll over and go back to sleep, but her body had other plans. With a persistently dry throat, there was no way she could fall back to sleep without a drink of water first.

So she threw off the covers and got out of bed, quietly navigating her bedroom in the dark to reach the door. She opened it to find the second floor of her home just as dimly lit and silent as her bedroom, all the other doors shut tightly with no hints of light peeking out. The window at the end of the hall, directly across from the staircase, was open a few inches with the curtains parted to let in the glow of moonlight and the spring night air.

Beth stumbled to the top of the stairs in a half-sleep daze and gripped the railing for support. She quietly descended the stairs without turning on any lights, navigating her way through the familiar house by feel and faint sight, finding her way to the kitchen with barely more than muscle memory. Her eyelids were still drooping lazily as she chugged down a full glass of cold water.

After leaving her glass by the sink, she found her way back to the stairs and began slowly climbing them. Now that her need for a drink was gone, her bladder was making demands of its own. As she reached the top of the stairs, she had her eyes set on the dark doorway of the bathroom – her last stop before she could finally return to bed and get back to sleep. Her feet planted softly on the carpeted floor of the second story and she stepped to her right, toward the door.

Then a sound caught her attention, making her freeze in place and turn her head to inspect. Her heart skipped lightly in surprise, spooked by the darkness of the farmhouse. She squinted through the shadows and glanced around the second-floor landing, eyeballing all the closed doors before her gaze fell on the open window.

The sound repeated and her heart skipped again. She took a hesitant step toward the window, curious to see if there was a bird outside or a small animal that had somehow skittered its way up the old trellis on the side of the house – it wouldn't be the first time. The aged floor creaked beneath her bare foot and she stopped abruptly.

Another sound from just outside the window. She stared intently toward it, squinting, all the haze of sleep completely gone and replaced with alertness and a hint of fear. She thought she saw a shadow moving behind the glass, near the pane of the window, but she couldn't be sure that she wasn't just seeing things. Her bladder was still full, but nearly forgotten, urging her to take the last few steps into the bathroom for relief.

"Beth?"

The voice nearly made her jump out of her skin. She spun around to find Shawn standing a few feet away, just outside his open bedroom door, and she immediately relaxed. She gave him a quizzical look.

"Jus' got up ta get a drink an' pee – thought I heard somethin'," Beth whispered, jerking her head toward the window behind her.

Shawn took a few steps forward and approached her, moonlight washing over his bedhead and sleepy eyes. He opened his mouth like he was about to ask what she meant, his gaze following where she'd gestured to inspect the window.

Then his eyes suddenly widened and his lip pursed tightly. Beth's heart dropped to the bottom of her stomach. At the same time, she heard the noise again and turned around to see what Shawn was seeing: an arm reaching in through the open window, swiftly shoving the pane up until it was open all the way.

Someone was trying to break into the second story of the Greene Family home.

Beth froze again, petrified with fear, mouth agape but no voice to be found. Before she could react or even think straight, Shawn was grabbing her firmly by the arm and taking a long stride to the closet door that sat between the bathroom door and the door to Hershel's study, less than fifteen feet away from the window. It was just a linen closet – a flimsy, slatted door covering a space that was barely large enough to step inside, lined with shelves of bedsheets and blankets, filled with the smell of mothballs and fabric softener.

But Beth fit in the small space between the shelves and the closed door perfectly, and before she could object or even understand what was happening, Shawn was hissing instructions in her ear as he shoved her inside the closet.

"Stay in here," he ordered, whispering in a firm tone that Beth had never heard him use before. Then his grip on her arm loosened as he finished, "Don't move, don't make a sound – no matter what you see."

She hadn't noticed at the time, but he didn't tell her not to look. Maybe because he already knew her too well. Maybe because he knew it was already a lost cause. She'd never know his exact reasoning, but she didn't really need to either.

All she could do to respond was deftly nod as the slatted closet door was shut firmly in her face, leaving her enveloped in darkness and silence, the sharp edge of a shelf pressing into her lower back. Her mouth was still agape, breath hitched in her throat, eyes wide and unblinking as she stared through the slats and watched the shadowed, moonlit scene unfold.

In the time it had taken Shawn to desperately shove Beth inside the closet for safety, the man that had been working his way inside the window successfully climbed all the way in, then quickly turned to help his assistant in after him. They'd climbed the old trellis and entered the house almost silently, save for the slight bumps and thuds they'd made while struggling through the window. In the dim moonlight, Beth could only see the shadowy figures of two full-grown men – one was a bit shorter with a wiry frame, while the other was tall and solid. The former had his back turned, struggling to help the larger man through the window when Shawn approached from behind. Neither of them had noticed Shawn in the shadows of the dimly lit second floor.

Simon and Randall were their names, she would later learn. But she'd never really wanted names to put to faces – all she wanted was to forget them completely.

Randall entered first, being smaller and more agile, and then Simon struggled to lumber in after him. Without a word, Shawn leapt at Randall. He wrapped his arms around the skinny man's shoulders and yanked him backward, both of them letting out grunts. Randall let out a yelp of surprise and quickly abandoned helping Simon through the window to turn and fight back against Shawn.

Beth's eyes grew wider, if that were possible, as she watched the second man finally slip inside the window, cursing under his breath and struggling to move faster as Shawn and Randall grappled. Her heart pounded against her chest as she watched Simon turn his face into the glow of moonlight and accentuate his twisted, heinous features. He was twice Randall's age, speckled with wrinkles and scars; dark, messy hair, sharp cheekbones, a jutting chin, a thick handlebar mustache, and a prominent forehead.

She could see it in his squinty, weasel-like eyes – he was a bad man. And he wasn't wearing any sort of mask, or attempting to disguise himself. He wasn't even wearing gloves. Neither was his partner.

Shawn had told her something a while back that she'd thought was useless information – just another in a long line of overprotective, big-brotherly rants. But now, it was popping into her head and filling her with a deep sense of dread:

"If they ain't wearin' masks, Bethy, they ain't worried about witnesses."

As she watched, petrified with terror, Shawn managed to overpower Randall and get him to the ground with a loud 'thud.' But then Simon quickly gathered his bearings and stepped in, muttering just loudly enough that Beth could make out what he said from inside the closet: "Well, ain't this nice – yer exactly who we was lookin' for, boy."

Then he was pulling something from his belt and holding it up. She recognized the shape: a knife. Large enough to be a hunting knife, just like the kinds she'd watched her daddy use to skin animals and clean fish, though she couldn't tell exactly what kind. The blade was razor-sharp. The shiny silver glinted in the moonlight and a shudder ran through Beth's frozen muscles.

And she quickly realized that these intruders didn't care about witnesses because there wouldn't be any witnesses.

One second, there was heavy grunting and panting coming from Shawn and Randall as they rolled around on the floor in front of the open window, and it looked like Shawn might've actually had the upper-hand. Beth could faintly hear him cursing and asking the intruders why the hell they were there, but he never once called out for help or yelled for the rest of the Greene Family.

And in the same way that Beth understood exactly why her brother didn't call out for help, she would also never understand why it had to be him.

The next second, he was losing. He'd been overpowered by Randall and flipped onto the ground, struggling to free himself. And Simon quickly swooped in, leaning down and placing a large hand firmly on Shawn's chest while Randall sat atop Shawn's legs with all his weight and forcibly held his arms down.

And then it happened in a blur of movement. Beth knew because she didn't blink the entire time. She couldn't.

The blade held firmly in Simon's large hand sliced across Shawn's throat in one swift motion and the thick, crimson blood immediately began spurting and gushing out. Shawn's agitated grunts and groans turned into deathly gasps and gurgles.

A small gasp escaped Beth's throat, betraying her. Her hand immediately slapped over her mouth, and she lifted the other to cover her nose. But her eyes wouldn't shut. They were burning, filled with tears and staring endlessly through the slats of the closet door at the scene before her. Her entire body was trembling, shaking so hard that she was afraid they might hear her rattling around inside the closet. The second floor of the farmhouse had suddenly gone deathly silent, and the only sound Beth could hear was her own desperate gasps into her palms… and the final, dying gurgles coming from Shawn.

She watched as her older brother's muscles stilled and his body went limp, and the blood quickly began pooling outward from his lifeless body. Simon and Randall stepped back and away before their shoes could get covered, and for a split-second, Randall glanced directly toward the closet door that Beth was behind.

In that brief moment, Beth thought to herself, 'I'm next. I'm gonna die here, in this closet, in this house. With Shawn.'

She bit back another gasp and watched as Simon quickly got his partner's attention again and gestured to Shawn's body, blood still pooling out, soaking the carpet deep red around him. Randall turned back to listen to Simon, but the silent grip on Beth's lungs was still there.

"Now let's send a message – quick, 'fore the whole damn house wakes up," Simon hissed.

Something that resembled glee crossed Randall's face, and he quickly stepped back and aside, mumbling about something that sounded like nonsense to Beth. Then Simon stepped forward and leaned down, his knife still dripping with warm blood, and roughly grabbed the side of Shawn's head. Beth bit down on her lip to suppress the loud sob that wanted to escape. She bit down harder when she saw Simon placing the tip of his blade against the corner of Shawn's mouth, and then she could taste copper on her tongue as she watched the blade slicing through the tender skin of Shawn's cheek – slowly and meticulously, from the corner of his mouth clear up to his ear, splitting his cheek wide open to reveal grisly fat and muscle.

It suddenly clicked in her head what Randall had been mumbling about – a "Chelsea Smile." She fought the strong urge to vomit, the bile leaving a bitter taste in the back of her mouth. It was the kind of shit she'd only ever read about in books or seen in movies. The kind of shit she'd only ever wanted to read about in books or see in movies.

She was finally able to slam her eyes shut when she realized Simon was doing the same thing to Shawn's other cheek. There was an intense burning in her throat and the bile was building quicker and quicker, her stomach turning and threatening to evacuate its entire contents. In the quiet of the farmhouse, she could still clearly hear the unmistakable sound of a blade slicing through thick flesh and muscle. She fought back more sobs, struggling desperately to keep herself quiet.

Her legs became warm and wet and though she couldn't look down, she suddenly realized that her bladder had relieved itself while she stood trembling in terror. She felt it dribbling down her legs beneath her pajama pants and pooling at her feet, drenching the carpet beneath her.

"The hell is all that thumpin' an' thuddin' out here – Shawn? Shawn! Oh my – NO! SHAWN-!"

Beth's eyes popped open again at the sound of her momma's voice.

All she could think was, 'No, no no no no – stay back! Please God, no.'

There was a blood-curdling scream and the familiar sound of slippered feet running down the hallway, and then Annette appeared from down the hall. A fresh wave of tears pooled in Beth's eyes and she struggled to hold back the sobs that wanted to burst free, the shudders that were painfully wracking her body. Every single one of her muscles was still frozen in terror, practically numb and non-existent as the fear consumed her and clouded her mind. Her breaths were coming in shorter gasps, lungs tightening dangerously behind her ribcage, throat threatening to close and strangle the last bits of oxygen from her body. The back of her skull was suddenly cold as ice.

Simon had barely pulled the blade of his knife from where it was embedded in Shawn's cheek when Annette appeared a few feet away, stopping abruptly where she stood and letting out another scream.

"Christ – shut 'er up! We gotta go!" Simon demanded, speaking loudly for the first time. His voice was icy and emotionless and it sent aching chills up Beth's spine.

Without hesitation, Randall stepped over and grabbed Annette by the arms before she had a chance to turn and attempt to run – her eyes were glued to Shawn's lifeless body, the shock taking over as she continued to scream. Randall threw her to the ground at Simon's feet, inches away from the pool of blood that surrounded Shawn.

"Cut 'er throat an' let's git!" Randall demanded, dashing toward the open window.

Then everything seemed to happen at once: the sound of doors opening and Maggie screaming while Beth watched Simon take his blood-drenched blade to Annette's throat. Another swift slice, just like the one that had opened up Shawn's neck, and Beth's momma was reduced to a heap on the floor, blood draining from the wide wound in her throat as her limbs flailed and her muscles went slack. Before she was even taking her last, gurgling breaths, Simon and Randall were climbing back out through the window and disappearing into the night.

Something like loud, maniacal laughter echoed out from beneath the open window, and Beth was almost certain she was the only one who'd heard it. She still couldn't figure out if she'd imagined it or not.

At the same moment, Maggie stepped out into the hall from her bedroom. She was still screaming – loud, blood-curdling cries of anguish, nearly identical to the screams from their momma just seconds before. And a lightswitch was flipped on, flooding the second floor of the farmhouse with blinding light. Revealing the grotesque scene on the blood-drenched floor between the stairs and the open window.

Beth was still petrified, back pressed against the sharp edge of a shelf, hands pressed tightly over her nose and mouth. She was still struggling to breathe, cheeks wet, nose covered in snot and eyes filled with tears. Every muscle in her body was trembling, the urine down her legs already forgotten. She watched as her daddy appeared, frantic, struggling to move down the hall as fast as he could, holding a shotgun in his hands and rushing to the open window.

But old age and aching joints had slowed him and he was mere seconds too late. It didn't matter anyway – the shotgun was dropped from his hands and abandoned as soon as he laid eyes on the bloody, mutilated bodies of his wife and son.

Maggie and Glenn had rushed from their bedroom, which was at the same end of the hall as Hershel and Annette's bedroom, and they seemed to be the only ones who were capable of thinking logically. Maggie was still screaming, but she'd screamed at Glenn and demanded he call 911, and then she'd screamed in anger as she leant down and clutched the lifeless body of her younger brother.

She switched frantically between Shawn's limp body and Annette's body – which was still twitching with slight after-shocks. Hershel dropped to his knees and let out a long, anguished wail, tears pouring from his eyes, hands visibly trembling as he reached out to hopelessly grasp his wife's arm. Maggie yanked off her pajama top and attempted to wrap it around Annette's open neck, but it was pointless. She was beyond saving.

Beth still couldn't move.

"Beth – where's Beth? Jesus Christ, where's Beth?!" Maggie screamed, hands soaked in blood.

Her big sister's terrified cries sent a fresh wave of shivers and shudders through Beth's body and she finally allowed herself to whimper quietly. Even though she wanted to scream until her throat was raw.

On that normal Wednesday night in April, the entire Greene Family's lives had been turned upside-down within a matter of five minutes. The 911 call from Glenn's phone was placed at 1:54 a.m. But the police didn't arrive until 2:03 a.m., and the ambulance didn't make it out to the Greene Farm until 2:17.

By that time, Annette's body had finally stilled. The urine on Beth's legs and feet had dried. Maggie's screams had quieted and Hershel's wails had become muffled sobs.

And Shawn's eyes were still wide open, staring hopelessly upwards with a grisly, bloody smile left permanently etched onto his face.

The large crimson stain left on the carpet proved to be just as difficult to scrub out as the memory in Beth's brain.

"so destined i am to walk among the dark,
a child in keeping secrets from
(will they know what i've done in the after?)
in the sought for matter when the words blame you,
in a blood red summer i'll give you
(i don't want it)"

The Greene Family held a joint funeral service for Annette and Shawn on April 22nd, a week-and-a-half after their violent murders. Closed casket, of course – because more than enough people had already seen the horrific state of the bodies. And the police had enough gruesome photos to fill an entire album.

Beth could barely remember anything from that week, let alone the day of the funeral. There were odd, random tidbits that stuck out in her mind: sporadic flashes of bright color and the tear-blurred figures of other people. She'd still been in shock. Maggie had uttered the word "catatonic" more than once, though Beth hadn't understood how it applied to her.

There was the gray haze of cloudy morning sunlight pouring into the entryway of the farmhouse as she ventured outside for the first time in days. There was vivid yellow Caution tape, gradually becoming faded and torn in the sun, blowing in the wind at the side of the house. There was a bright white outline on the siding of the house where the trellis had been, its shape an intricate maze leading a direct path from the ground up to the second story window. There was bright green grass and brand new leaves on trees, the vibrant orange-pink of the blooming dahlias in Momma's garden and the blinding light of the sun as it glared down from above. There was the faded blue and red of police car lights, their shiny black paintjobs gathering dust as they drove away from the farm. There was the dark red of the stain that permeated the carpet on the second-floor landing. Then there was the familiar and comforting eggshell white of the pages in Beth's journal, the only place where she was able to make sense of anything going through her head. But there was also the deep, dark black – in the clothes the Greene Family wore, in the wide pupils of their watery eyes, in the ominous grief for the future that hovered over their home and threatened to collapse down upon them. The same thick blackness as the soil in the cemetery, the earth that encompassed the caskets holding the corpses of Beth's mother and brother.

The weather was gloomy and they held the entire service at the cemetery, around the Greene Family plots. But it didn't rain, and the breeze was unseasonably warm. Beth's body had moved on autopilot, going through the motions of her everyday life as she performed one routine after the other, sticking close to Maggie and Glenn as often as possible, trying to avoid Daddy's sorrowful blue eyes and Jimmy's pitiful tone of voice. She kept her head down more often than not, identifying nothing more than the clothing of each person she came into contact with.

Amongst her automatic reactions, she'd programmed a reflex to stay far away from anyone in crisp, dry-cleaned suits or heavy black boots. The only words she was able to process from Maggie's innumerable hisses in her ears were "fucking cops" and "Lerner" and "disrespectful." There was always an arm guiding her somewhere, keeping her a safe distance away from the disguised enemies lingering amongst them. Whether it was Maggie's or Glenn's or Jimmy's or Arnold's or Patricia's, Beth never noticed or cared. Everything felt like a foggy dream. Or, more accurately, a nightmare.

She still wasn't sure how, but she'd managed to compose herself enough to sing for an audience. Wearing her long, black dress, blonde hair falling down around her face and flowing over her pale, sun-starved shoulders, Beth somehow found the strength and motivation to stand before her grieving family and congregation, along with Maggie, and sing "Come Back, Paddy O'Reilly" in a soft, sorrowful tune as homage to her deceased mother and brother. Even though she had the inkling of a feeling that if there weren't so many uninvited guests in attendance, her daddy wouldn't have wanted to put on such a gracefully depressing show.

They were the good, God-fearing Greene Family, nothing more than victims of circumstance. Wasn't that clear to everyone by now?

Her lips had moved on their own accord, lyrics spilling from her mouth in recitation without much thought. She'd sang the song so many times – in church, at home, with Maggie or Momma or Daddy. She could've sang it in her sleep. She didn't even bother to acknowledge the numerous times that Maggie's voice cracked throughout their performance.

There was a brief moment when she was afraid that people would think it was odd that she wasn't crying. But then she didn't care because it felt like she was constantly sobbing, quietly. Inside her head, the wailing screams of her mother played on repeat, and she couldn't silence the final gurgling breaths of her brother. The tears no longer came – in fact, she was almost convinced that she'd literally cried herself dry. But there was still a deep, aching pit in her stomach that was constantly opening up and swallowing her every emotion, engulfing every inch of happiness or hope that was left. She wanted to cry and scream and throw an absolute fucking fit. But her body simply wouldn't allow it. Breathing had become just as much a chore as falling asleep nowadays, the invisible noose tightening around her neck and slowly strangling her of any will to live.

After a while, it all felt like nothing at all. As if it had all hit so hard and simultaneously that it had left her reeling, unable to process or understand any of it. At times, she didn't feel sad in the least bit. In fact, she felt absolutely nothing. There were no words to describe it, no matter how many hours she spent hovered over her journal with a pen in her hand. There was no way to overcome it. She found herself not caring at all. Not caring about anything. And then she would realize how utterly heartless and selfish she was being and she would tell herself that this was the part where she was supposed to feel bad. This was the part where she was supposed to feel like an awful human being, and she was supposed to suddenly find all that grief and heartache and desperate need that had been meant to be there.

But she didn't. She just felt… numb.

There were cars at the service – so many of them. Cars and trucks and compacts and vans and even a couple of motorcycles. But the detail that stuck out to Beth was the odd pattern of vehicles. There was a pristine, black Dodge Charger or Chevy Caprice – easily distinguishable, unmarked police vehicles – inconspicuously parked between every six or seven civilian vehicles. And a little farther down the road from where the service was being held, there was a small crowd of shiny black BMWs and Range Rovers parked – not police cars, Beth knew, but still ominous all the same. All the windows were too darkly tinted to see inside, and she wasn't sure if the drivers of all those vehicles were actually in attendance for the funeral. But she had a bad feeling that they were nothing more than spectators. And more than once, she could see Maggie from the corner of her eye: glaring at the vehicles, muttering under her breath with a deep scowl on her face, or whispering with Glenn or Otis or Daddy.

All the fear had left Beth days ago, though. She was pretty sure that she was actually incapable of feeling such a thing anymore. She knew what the suspicious vehicles were, who they really were – for the most part. But at this point, she wasn't even sure she'd care if an entire swarm of police cars pulled up and surrounded the funeral. All she really wanted was to wake up from this ongoing nightmare.

It seemed that her daddy didn't care either, from what she'd bothered to observe and overhear. Most of the conversations and well wishes from faceless funeral-goers drifted in one ear and directly out the other, barely registering in her brain. But at one point, when she was standing off to the side in a small moment of solitude that she'd barely stolen for herself, she heard the familiar voices of Otis and her daddy.

Hershel's tone had been menacing, almost vengeful. "God forgives, Otis… I don't."

He didn't sound like the daddy she knew. At least not the one she'd been allowed to know. And though she hadn't been able to make out much else of what they'd said, or what they might've been talking about, she didn't really care to know. She was sick of being reminded of the state of things, of the horrific actions that had driven Hershel to this point. She was sick of thinking about Shawn's and Annette's desecrated corpses lying on the upstairs floor. Most of all, she was sick of seeing those heinous men's faces in the backs of her eyelids when she tried to sleep at night. She wanted them to pay, too. She wanted to see them die just as gruesomely as they'd slaughtered her mother and brother.

But wasn't that what the police were supposed to be doing? Why did she have the gut feeling that her daddy wanted more than judicial justice?

All she really knew for sure was that her family was splitting apart, right down the middle, before her very eyes. Momma and Shawn were being put six feet underground. Maggie and Daddy were at each other's throats over something no one could fix. The veil of happiness and stability that had shrouded their family in security for most of Beth's life was bursting into flames and smoldering to ashes around them. And all she could do was keep her head down. It was all she'd been told to do.

Beth stood between Maggie and her daddy in front of the row of uncomfortable fold-out chairs, her legs numb as she listened to the sorrowful music play and watched the caskets slowly being lowered into the ground. She felt Maggie's clammy hand grasping hers and squeezing tightly, and she could hear her big sister fighting back the loud sob that wanted to escape her throat. Beth knew she should've been crying, too. Or at least holding back tears.

But she wasn't.

She was staring intently as the ground swallowed up the last remnants of Momma and Shawn. Focusing on the deep black of the soil and the glossy brown of the caskets. And surprisingly, an emotion was brewing to life in her stomach for the first time all week as she spotted a small group of men in dark suits and sunglasses from the corner of her eye, circling the service like vultures.

It wasn't fear this time, or terror or remorse or even grief. It was anger.

Pure, thick, palpable, blood red anger.

to be continued…

A/N: First flashback lyrics are from "Work Remix" by A$AP Ferg.
Second flashback lyrics are from "Blood Red Summer" by Coheed and Cambria.

While writing the murders flashback, I drew up a visual aid to help picture the second floor layout of the Greene farmhouse, since I've loosely interpreted the layout from the show for my own purposes. You can find the photo on AO3 or the MW pinterest board! As always, you can also find a photo for this chapter in those places. And my tumblr.

Sorry for the slightly late update this time, I had a long weekend in Reno and just returned home. If you've left reviews on last chapter or sent me a PM, I promise I'm going to respond very very soon! Thank you for reading and especially for your kind words and comments!