And Now…a beat of drama

Romeo and Juliet is not a story about love.

I know, I know, it's "so romantic" they died for one another, but let's be honest all of their problems could have been cleared up with a simple word.

Elope.

But that's not really the point. The point is Romeo wasn't in love with Juliet. He was in lust. Read the play people. In the first act he whines and cries over his love for Rosaline, Tybolt's cousin. He mourns that she will never be with him and that his heart will never be whole again. He says that there is not a single person in this world that he could ever love again, and then he goes to a party in hopes of catching a glimpse of her and suddenly it's "Rosaline? Fuck that bitch, I will never love anyone the way I love Juliet."

People seem to miss that part. It's easier to see his sudden complete and obsessive devotion as love because that's romantic. Fuck romance. Fuck love. I'm dead and the only person I could ever have is in love with someone else. Someone who doesn't even understand him.

I'm Rosaline and my Romeo just stuck his hand down Juliet's pants.

Present Day

I was lonely.

This was nothing new nowadays. In fact I had come to expect it. My unlife had been bearable for one reason and one reason only, but he was with her again. Playing cards and necking and whatever else it was he did with Violet to distract her from the fact that she hadn't left the house in over a week. The sad truth was I didn't have anything else to fall back on. Now I was just like all the others here, solemn and full of a rage that built with each passing second. A blinding, aching, boiling rage that honestly scared the shit out of me.

I needed a distraction.

It came in the form of a rugged man in his late 20's. He was walking down the sidewalk, iPod blasting some old punk band I hadn't heard in years with his hands in the pockets of a black pea coat. I had a weakness for the sleek, simplistic pea coat. It lengthened and slimmed the torso and those big buttons made easy prey for nimble fingers with wicked intentions.

I had donned my old clothes today sans rips, a trick I'd learned after noticing Tate and his vast wardrobe. My first couple of years had been frustrating when I could only wear the things I found or what I'd died in, but now I realized how powerful the mind could be. If I believed my own wardrobe was in reach then it was, I could dress in whatever way I pleased as long as I focused hard enough.

My black jeans were tight, casing my slender legs and I crossed them at the knee when the man walked by, letting my dark cropped shirt hang down off one shoulder. He noticed, of course, noting my smile as I drew a cigarette out of the pack I'd stolen from Violet and tilting down his glasses to get a better look.

"Got a light?" I asked when he didn't speak. The guy smiled, glancing down the street once before stepping onto the property. I felt it as he stepped onto the lawn, as all of the others must have, like a ripple of warmth and life. Behind me the house opened it great jaws and drew in the scent of him as if readying for its next meal and I was happy to oblige.

"You look a little young to be smoking." He said, offering up his lighter anyway with a dazzling smile. I shrugged, drawing in a breath of the smoke that could never give me cancer and grinned back, wrinkling up my nose.

"I'm perfectly legal." I replied, "I can do whatever I want." Whomever I want. I didn't say it aloud, but I didn't have to, he filled in the blanks on his own and chuckled softly at my flirtation. Some things were spoken through the eyes, and mine were telling him to follow me inside and ravage me like I'm sure he wanted to.

"What's your name?" he asked, leaning up against the stone wall beside me, his gaze slipping down my legs and returning up slowly.

"Cynthia." I smiled, drawing in another breath of smoke and releasing it as I spoke. "And you?"

"Marcus." He replied, though the hesitation said he was lying to me. It didn't matter though. I could give a shit what his real name was. When I didn't do more than watch him, he smiled again, leaning in closer and brushing his fingers across my thigh. "You have grey eyes." He murmured, "they're rare you know, and beautiful."

I batted my lashes, resisting the urge to vomit all over him and giggled softly. "They change color you know." As I said this, I slid off the banister and up against him, fingering the button of his coat. "When I'm happy or angry."

"What color are they when you're horny?" he asked, thinking himself clever. I only grinned.

"You tell me."

Step into my parlor, said the Spider to the Fly

Our conversation hadn't lasted long before the wannabe actor had followed me inside and down the hall. The Harmon's were away today, and Violet was busy upstairs with Tate, whom I did my best not to think about. We hadn't even made it to the basement door when I grabbed his coat and pulled it from his shoulders, tossing it aside and shoving him back against the wall. I grabbed my cropped shirt and pulled it over my head, leaving the grey tank in place.

"Won't someone see us?" he laughed, not really concerned, but I wasn't bothering to comfort him.

"What if they do?" I grabbed his shirt, tugging it up his chest and kissing the sculpted muscle there, nipping the flesh when he hissed in a breath. He helped me remove his shirt and scooped me up by my thighs, turning us around and pressing me back against the wall.

"You do this often?" he asked as my hand went down between us to the growing bulge in his jeans.

"My boyfriend broke up with me." I answered, "He found another girl and left me all alone."

"His loss." He grinned, moving to kiss me, but I stopped him, staring intently into his eyes.

"It is, isn't it?"

He seemed confused by my intensity a moment, but was quickly distracted by the blade I slipped between his ribs. I muffled his scream with a kiss, grabbing the back of his neck and pulling my blade, Brett's blade, out to force it back inside again and then again. He stumbled back, dropping my legs, though I clung to him and followed him to the hardwood floor, laughing at the way his head bounced off the shining cedar, his eyes going unfocused a moment. He tired to shove me away, to fight me off and scream, but it was too late. I was already stabbing him again, forcing the blade up along the line of his perfect abdomen, then into his throat and covering his mouth with my own. He bit me once, splitting my lip severely, but I couldn't be distracted now, and the coppery taste of our mingled blood only drove me on.

That is until the hand knotted in the back of my shirt and wrenched me up and away, tossing me back against the wall. I wasn't startled, I knew it was him before he grabbed my shoulders and slammed me into the wall for good measure. I was laughing now, harsh and manic and Tate stared at me as if I were the psychopath.

"What the fuck are you doing?" he hissed, wrestling my knife from my bloody hand and pointing to the actor with it. "What is this?"

"You get to have your fun." I shrugged, "why can't I let loose every once and a while?"

"Damnit!" he cried, stabbing the knife into the wall beside my head. I laughed again, and nodding toward the black pea coat I had removed to avoid stains.

"I thought it would look good on you." I smiled and reached up to touch his face, smearing blood across his cheek and loving the bubbling anger that built in his black eyes because of it.

"So you killed him?"

Marcus let out a wheezing cough, splattering blood onto the hardwood and twitching. He seemed to be trying to scream, but the gaping hole in his esophagus wouldn't permit that anymore.

"Guess not."

Tate growled and shoved off the wall, moving to the actor and grabbing his arm. "We have to get him off the property." He snapped and I watched him drag the body toward the back door, leaving a slimy trail of blood in his wake. "Moira!"

The maid appeared as if out of nowhere, her pale eye seeming to lock on me and my bloody skin, then the chaos we were leaving behind. Bodies and blood were sort of our trademark though, and she hated this. Hated us, though she tolerated Tate for his passing bouts of compassion for the ladies of the house. His need to help them.

"Damn little psychos." She grit out. "Clean up your own mess."

"They'll be home soon." Tate said, dropping the body to open the door and kicking Marcus out into the grass.

"That's your job." I smiled, crossing my arms and leaning back against the wall. "Besides, you wouldn't want to have to explain all this blood to the madam would you?"

She muttered something hateful at my expense and disappeared again to fetch her cleaning supplies. This wouldn't be the first time she's cleaned away a crime scene, and it wouldn't be the last. Tate was now in the yard shielded from view by trees and hanging laundry, he struggled to drag the quickly fading Marcus across the lawn to the fence line and after an irritated groan I pushed off the wall to follow him. Moira had returned with a bucket and sponge and I glance back at her on my way out the door.

"Call the cripple. He can get rid of the body."

I hurried up behind Tate, grabbing Marcus's other arm and helping his pull until we reached our limit and Tate shoved him over the property threshold with his boot. I stood there in silence, then, watching Marcus twitch and gasp like a beached fish before finally with a wet gurgle and a rasp, he passed, his bright green eyes going dead and dull.

I cried out when Tate slapped me. I hadn't expected it, and honestly I was hurt more by the fact that he'd done it than the blow itself. "Damnit Cyn!" he growled and grabbed me by my arm, dragging me back to the house, while I clutched my cheek and sulked like a punished child. He took us directly to the basement and threw me against the wall with a curse.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" he demanded, furious and shaking. I didn't see him this angry often, and knew it meant trouble. His losing control was never a good thing. "What are you trying to do? If anyone had seen him, there would have been cops and questions!"

"What the fuck do I care about the police?" I retorted, then gasped and drew back against the wall when he rushed forward, hands slamming down on either side of my head.

"You aren't the only person in this house Cynthia. One of the Harmon's could be taken away for murder! They would try to take Violet away from me! I can't let that happen."

"Violet's dead." I yelled back, shoving at his chest, though he didn't budge. Instead Tate slapped a hand down over my mouth and looked up to the ceiling as if she might have heard us.

"Shut up." He hissed, "Just shut the fuck up. What were you thinking, whoring yourself around? You're beginning to take far too much after Hayden. Is that what you are now? A goddamn whore?"

Tears of rage pricked at my eyes and I beat at his chest with my fists, forcing him back and moving out of his reach. "Is this the part where I take moral advice from the mass-murdering mother fucker?" I laughed at this, hysterical again, "You are you know, a mother fucker. Bona fied and everything. Have you told your girlfriend yet?"

"Is that what this is about?" he asked, laughing at my expense and shaking his head, "Is this some sort of jealous rage thing, because really, as far as ploys for attention go, this is just pathetic."

I lost it then. Wrapped my arms around myself and sank to my knees, letting out a sob that reached all the way down into what was left of my soul. I was crying more often these days, wracked with horror and sorrow so deep I thought I'd drown in it. Sometimes I almost wished I could, at least then I might escape what my existence had become. I might escape the agony of seeing him and not being able to touch him.

Tate watched this in silence, his expression empty and cold; something I had grown used to but now seemed utterly heartless. I couldn't help my tears, the bawling that shook my entire body.

"I'm so lonely Tate. God I'm so lonely now. You left me alone with these things and you promised," I beat my bloody fist against the floor, bending over my knees to plant my forehead against the cool concrete. "You promised I would never be alone." I sobbed into the floor, not caring that I must have looked pathetic, not caring about anything anymore but the frigid empty pit in my chest. I felt hollow and flimsy, as if I might collapse into myself at any moment.

"Liar." I choked out through my tears, my voice had become broken and soft, "fucking liar."

I don't know how long I sat there, curled around myself like a weeping fetus, but eventually I felt him sit down behind me. He pulled me back between his legs and tucked me gently against his chest, stroking my hair and holding me close, letting me get it out.

"Shhh, "he murmured against my hair, kissing my temple, "I'm sorry, Cyn. Please stop crying."

If anything could be said about Tate Langdon, it was that he had a weakness for the women of this house. He might revel in violence, but he never enjoyed the pain of a broken woman. He did his best to help us all, in the ways that he could.

"I hate you." I sobbed into his shirt, clutching him tightly as if I might drift away without the contact. "God I hate you. Why did you let me die here? Why couldn't you have saved me from this hell? You were right there! It isn't fair Tate! You let him trap me and then you left me all alone. I can't be alone."

My rant became senseless weeping after that, and he rocked me until I was calm enough to breathe slowly again, whispering that he was sorry and that he never meant it. That no one deserved to be trapped here.

"Why do you do this to me?" I asked softly, I'd shifted to lay my head in his lap, playing wit the fingers of his left hand while he continued to stroke my hair for comfort. I loved his fingers, long and slender like and artist, and that silver thumb ring he wore, it made me shiver. I pulled his hand to my face, pretending that he was caressing it the way he had in the past, before Violet.

"I can't help myself." He replied, just as soft, just as tired. "Sometimes I can't control anything."

"You don't even try." I replied, going back to inspecting his hand, and lacing out fingers together. "I never used to be like this. Emotional, I mean. I was always to controlled and now I find myself bawling every time you hurt me. What did you do to me?"

Tate sighed, reaching down to turn my head so that he look down at me, "I'm sorry Cyn. I don't want to be this person. I don't want to hurt you."

I was quiet a long moment, searching his eyes and feeling the pricks of yet more tears, "But you do."

He sighed heavily, resigned to the truth now, and bent over me, kissing my forehead. "I know." He murmured, and his expression was one of regret.

I didn't let him pull away; instead I slipped my fingers into his hair and pulled him into a real kiss. It was solemn, and harsh, a kiss of sadness and anger and fear, but he let me. He kissed me back, and that was all I could ask for now.

Then there was a thump in the kitchen and his head shot up, eyes scanning the ceiling as if he could see through it. "Violet." He whispered, and pulled away from me to stand. I didn't even bother to stop him, I didn't have the strength. He'd just patched up my heart to smash it all over again. I watched him dash for the stairs, leaving me with tiny, soft whimpers and cold tears. I hurt, everything inside me hurt, and the rage was back in surround sound. It filled me up until I let out a cry of fury and hit the ground.

At the top of the stairs, Tate had just stopped Violet from coming down. "There's blood, Tate." She was saying, panic in her tiny voice, "It's all over the floor, and Moira…we have to call the police. We have to do something-" Her words were cut off with what I could only assume was a kiss, and he laughed as if she were being ridiculous.

"Calm down. It was an animal. A dirty possum crawled in and I killed it. You know those things carry diseases?"

"No, there's way too much blood for that."

"It was a big one, Violet." He laughed again, "Besides, don't you think Moira would have called the police if it was anything else?"

She paused, not convinced, but wanting to believe him. "I guess so…"

"Come on." She and their voices began to fade as he steered her away from me and my rage. "I want to show you something."

I hit the ground again and blinked away tears that were now on fury rather than sorrow.

"I'd tell you to kill the little slut with this, but we both know it's too late for that now." Brett was leaning up against the wall below the stairs, legs cross at the ankles and holding up his old knife. He must have taken it when we'd gone outside.

"Fuck off." I grit out, pushing myself up onto my knees and whipping away my tears. Brett however was unmoved. He made his way across the room and knelt down in front of me, holding the knife aloft.

"You know you can't kill her Cyn, but you can sure as hell scare her. You can drive her crazy if you wanted to."

I only stared at him, "And how do you expect me to do that?"

"Well," he shrugged, and suddenly plunged the knife deep into my gut, right in the place he had killed me. "I assume a girl who doesn't know she's dead would be plenty freaked out by the fact that can't die." He jerked the blade back out, and dropped it into my lap while I clutched myself, feeling the phantom pain our bodied insisted we should feel. Real enough to hurt until you realized it hadn't actually happened, that it couldn't stick. "Maybe she'd think she was seeing things, maybe she'd just panic. Who knows, but what other choice do you have?"

"Why are you doing this?" I demanded, grabbing the knife and folding it away in my boot.

Brett stood, and offered a hand I refuse to take, so he grabbed me anyway and tugged me to my feet. His expression was something intense that I could decipher and he tilted his head to regard me, tucking a lock of flaming red hair back behind my ear.

"I don't like it when you cry." He said simply, then stepped away from me, backing up into the shadowed corner of the room and disappearing somewhere else in the house.

I didn't know how to take that, didn't even want to process what it might mean. I couldn't handle Brett's bullshit at the moment, and the idea that he might feel for me in any sense of the word made my stomach turn.

No, I would focus on what he'd said about Violet. Hayden had pushed for the same. Torment the bitch, drive her off the edge and laugh when she realizes she can never stop falling, never hit the bottom. What would she do I wondered, a smile spreading over my lips. How would she react to horror and fear?

"Guess we'll find out tonight." I murmured and stepped into the shadows of the room, letting them draw me in and carry me away into cold, damp comfort. The only that I really had anymore.

OH THE HUUUMAANITYYYYYYYYYYY! Or lack thereof. So we've had some angst, some murder and some "love you so much I hate you"ness going on. And now I can't help myself, I want to torture Violet. I'm not sure what all I'll do, but I have a good idea of where I'll start. If I were a ghost, knowing what I know of what's going on and what she's done, I would have some pretty specific thing to say to the little bitchface.

I lost my sympathy for her character when she let her mother get dragged off to a crazy house at the behest of her psychotic, dead boyfriend…which is probably what might be said to her…don't know yet.

Anywho, let me know what you think. As I said in the beginning, it's not so much a flowing story as it is the beats of action and drama that they go through. Though the next chapter will be happening directly after this one. YAY DRAMA!