Disclaimer – I don't own American Horror Story
. . .
Everyone was silent. Had it been possible that everyone was too preoccupied with readying for the wedding that no one thought of a plan for Violet's body? Would they tell her parents she was gone? Would they let them find her? Would they keep it a secret? What would happen when they moved? What about the baby?
Too many questions . . .
"Are you still going with that crazy plan?" Mary whispered in Lily's ear. Lily nodded.
She walked over to Violet's body and picked up the dagger. Her hands were sweating and it was hard to grip the handle. "I—I've got an idea."
"This should be good," Chad muttered to Patrick.
"Lil's?" Violet asked, sounding a little scared. "What do you mean?"
"I—I've thought it all out," Lily explained. "A p-plan. Moira w-will find us-s."
"Us?" Tate repeated. "What do you mean?"
"M-murder suicide," Lily choked out. "M-make it look like murder s-suicide."
Chad and Patrick shuffled around uncomfortably and glared at Tate.
"The th-three of us-s," Lily continued, her voice quavering. "S-so T-Tate won't be a s-suspect. B-because Uncle B-Ben would l-love to pin it on him."
She smiled a little. "I know how to make it look . . . r-real."
"One problem," Constance pointed out. "Tate doesn't have a body Einstein!"
"That's where you c-come in, Constance," Lily said. "You have to ask to bring Tate's body to your house, make it look like you're going to care for funeral arrangements or whatever. Remember, Tate stole Hayden's identity. He'll be reported dead under her name. I'll fix everything on my computer before her family finds out . . . I'll handle everything."
"But why do you have to die?" Violet asked, tears forming in her eyes. "Don't do this Lily . . ."
"I-I . . . I don't belong in the human world and I don't belong in the spirit world either. I'm in between . . . this is the only way to get me on one side of the tracks instead of right in the way of the train," Lily said. "Tate you're going to have to play dead for a little while, but we need it to look like you've been dead almost as much as Violet. Chad and Patrick . . . you guys are going to have to clean up and fast. Moira will scream, Ben and Vivian will run down . . . and I think you guys understand from that point.
"We're dressed for a wedding," Violet pointed out. "This is crazy what are they going to think?"
Lily reached her hand down the front of her dress and pull out a folded piece of paper. "I'm going to leave this . . . a suicide note. I've written them before, it's not that hard."
Violet's hands were frozen at her sides. Tate reached out his shaking fingers and took the paper from her. He read aloud; "'Dear Auntie Vivian and Uncle Ben, None of this is your fault, I couldn't help it. You were going to make us move. I didn't want to move. I made Violet and Tate dress for a wedding and then I murdered them. This is my confession, it's all my fault. By the time you read this I'll have killed myself. I'm tired of these feelings. Violet and Tate will be my only victims . . . You miss judged me Uncle Ben, I'm not schizophrenic I'm psychotic. In eternal rest, Lily' . . . Lily this is insane!"
"Don' call me crazy Tate, don't you dare call me crazy!" Lily snapped. "I know what I have to do . . . and I'm going to do it. Now come here so I can kill you."
"You do realize that that was the weirdest thing anyone has ever said to me, right?"
"Stop stalling!" Lily commanded. Go lay next to Violet . . . and I'm sorry if this is going to hurt."
"Wait!" Violet cried. "Lily let me do it . . . he had to kill me I should have to kill him."
"Violet!" Tate cried exasperated. "That is crazy!"
"I want to know what you went through," Violet said. "I'm curious, that's all."
"Curiosity killed the cat, my dear," Chad told her.
"Not if the cat was already dead . . ." Violet replied. "Please, Tate . . ."
"It won't be the same anyway," Tate told her. "I'm already dead you won't watch me die so it's not even worth it."
"Violet, come on I'll do it," Lily said. "I won't put you through that."
"But I want to kill him!" Violet exclaimed. "Okay that sounded bad . . ."
"Oh this is ridiculous!" Tate cried. He grabbed the knife from Violet and stabbed it through his own chest. His breath caught in his throat and he doubled over backwards. When it stopped hurting, he did it again. Over and over and over. He needed to make himself look as mangled as Violet's body did.
Violet might have screamed. She wasn't actually sure . . . it was too horrific a sight to think of what she was or wasn't doing. She was watching her husband—that felt funny to think—stab himself repeatedly in the chest.
"This is the best wedding I've ever been to, let me just say," Troy told them all.
"Anyone have popcorn?" Bryan asked. Mary hit them both upside the head.
Lily took a deep breath. "My turn. See you all in a couple of minutes."
She pulled the knife out of Tate and whipped his blood off of it on her dress. "I don't need A.I.D.S . . ."
"You're gonna die anyway," Tate pointed out.
She kicked his stomach softly. "Play dead."
Dramatically, he fell backwards and stuck out his tongue. Lily rolled her eyes.
"Wait!" Violet exclaimed. "Lily . . . you can't do this! I'm supposed to make sure you don't kill yourself that's why we share a room!"
"Well, you're dead now," Lily pointed out. "So you're not responsible for me."
And with that, she stabbed the knife through her chest.
Time slowed down. Everyone stopped moving and just watched as the girl who saw more than she was supposed to see sunk to her knees, a dagger sticking out of her chest. She coughed and blood spattered everywhere.
"Lily . . ." Violet sighed. "What are you doing . . . You could have lived . . ."
"Dying shouldn't feel this good," Lily managed to say before tipping over onto the ground, head first.
"This is like Romeo and Juliet but backwards . . ." Nora said. "It's all so romantic . . ."
She dabbed her eyes and pulled Thaddeus closer to her. Violet had almost forgotten that all the other ghosts in the house were still there.
But where was Lily? Could it be possible that Lily's spirit wouldn't appear in the house? What if Lily didn't have a soul, and that's why she could see the lost ones?
"Get moving!" Billie snapped at the ghosts. "This place needs to be left exactly how it was this morning, plus the three dead bodies . . . Violet put Lily's letter next to her so they find it."
Violet did as instructed as all the other ghosts picked up their chairs, folded them, and walked out to put them back in the crawl space where they had been hidden. Mary and Beau worked together to pull down any decorations Chad and Patrick had set up, and Troy and Bryan helped Constance and Billie bring the stupid podium thing up the stairs.
"Lily . . ." Violet muttered. "Where are you . . .?"
She looked down at her cousin's body. If she was looking at it five months ago, she would have screamed and cried. But now she knew . . . death wasn't sad. In fact, it was . . . happy. Even the ghosts like Moira who didn't want to be eternally damned here were lucky. They didn't have to deal with all the piss and the shit and the vomit that ran in the streets. Violet smiled. Tate had said that before . . . maybe in a dream. It was hard to tell.
Lily's empty eyes stared back up at her. This was the girl who had walked through her bedroom door just a month ago, wearing black leather boots and too much black make up. The girl who scared kids into wetting their pants on the school bus and the girl who had become her best friend. She looked at Tate, who looked back, annoyed. Probably wondering how long he'd have to stay lying down and pretending to be dead. He had been the boy who seventeen years ago was on the track team. The boy who had lost his way because of his mother and the boy who she had fallen in love with.
Now Violet looked at her own body. She had been the girl with the smoking problem. The girl who resented her parents and swore too much. The girl who had cut her own wrists with her father's razor to get back at him . . . The girl who married a ghost.
"I don't feel any different," Lily whispered in her cousin's ear. "Should I feel different?"
Violet turned around to look at the ghost of her friend. "No . . . being dead feels the same as being alive. Just . . . longer."
Lily nodded. "Way longer."
. . .
Ben and Vivian Harmon were a happy couple again. Their problems had been pretty much resolved and they had twin babies on the way. Their daughter Violet had nearly perfect school grades and their niece Lily had made amazing progress in her psychological development. All was well.
Until the house keeper screamed, that is. Yes, all was well in the Harmon house until the house keeper let out that terrible yell from the basement. She had gone down to find an old broom. The husband and wife were sitting at dinner when that horrid scream flooded into their ears.
"Moira?" Ben asked, though he didn't expect an answer.
Instead there were more screams.
Both the husband and wife simultaneously jumped up from the table where they sat discussing plans of their move and ran to the basement stairs. In the back of her head, Vivian thought about how Violet and Lily had never shown up for dinner.
When they reached the bottom of the stairs, they saw something that haunts their nightmares to this very day. They saw their little old maid on her knees, screaming and crying all at the same time. They looked farther into the basement and saw their daughter, their niece, and their neighbor; all three covered in their own blood and not moving.
Vivian fell to her knees besides Moira, unable to move or generate any kind of sound. Ben however, ran forward towards the body of his daughter. Her eyes were facing him, but they couldn't see him. She was dead.
Next he checked Tate, he was dead too. Finally, Ben Harmon mustered all the strength he had left in him and walked over to the body of his niece. As he expected, she was dead as well. But something was different about her body. For one, it still had the murder weapon in it, where has Violet and Tate just had open wounds. For two, there was a note lying next to her head. Ben reached out, picked it up, and read it over carefully.
"Oh my God!" he screamed. "NO, NO, NO!"
The sound of running footsteps filled the air, and a few moments later the Harmon's next door neighbor was standing with them.
"Oh no!" she yelled. "What the hell have you done to my son?"
Constance Langdon had come to LA to be an actress, and it was a good thing too. She had to make her reaction convincing. Very convincing.
She ran over to Tate and grabbed his hand. "Tate . . . Tate I'm right here . . . come on Tate let's go home."
"Constance, he's dead," Ben chocked out. "They're all dead . . ."
"And in whose house?" Constance demanded angrily. She stood up, still holding Tate's arm. "No if you'll excuse me, I'll be going to my own house to phone the police!"
She took a stronger hold on Tate and began to drag him away.
"Ma'am you're ruining the crime scene," Moira said. Although they both knew very well what had happened in the basement that night.
"Crime scene?" Constance asked, her perfect acting never failing. "What crime scene? That note is all the evidence you need! It was that demon spawn you brought into this house, wasn't it? It was her who killed my son! Or perhaps it was your slutty bitch of daughter!"
Constance continued to drag Tate up the stairs, and it wasn't until they were at the very top and out of the Harmon's eyesight that Tate stood up on his own and thanked his mother.
"I did what needed to be done," Constance replied. "I put on a show."
She left then, probably to call the police as she had promised. Tate followed her to the door, making a clearly obvious trail of blood so it looked like his mother really had dragged him all the way home. Or at least out the door.
Violet appeared by her husband's side. "I'm glad that's finally over."
She fell into his arms and he told her, "No it's not. It's never over."