Lucid lovers, me and you.

A deal of matchless value.

I was always quick to admit defeat.

Empty statements of bones and meat.

- Kishi Bashi, 'I am the Antichrist to You'

Chapter One: Emptiness

It's exactly as I remembered it. This place, this birthing ground of so many horrible nights and dreary mornings and tense afternoons. The brick façade of the shitty little apartment building where Daddy and I lived together alone in the years following my mother's death. He was a monster. And I killed him. Simple as that, really, so don't expect me to cry about it anytime soon. I'm not sorry, not about that. Not the only monster I faced that summer. And after offing him? I wasn't even sent to some kind of juvenile detention center or anything. Nothing happened at all. No one knew it had been me, you see. The house bore signs of having been broken into, there was blood everywhere. Most of it Daddy's, some of it mine. Not a whole lot, but enough. Poor kid, poor little teenager with no one to take care of her. Always a little troublemaker, too. Best to shuffle her off someplace; get her out of the town.

And so it had been a one way trip to the home of my mother's sister and her husband.

Portland was wonderful, a safe haven away from the pain and terror that plagued my life in Derry. Welcome respite desperately needed, and my Aunt Kathy and Uncle Dan had been solicitous and immensely kind. For four years, I lived with them. Graduated high school, healed from injuries both emotional and physical. Forgot so many things. Remembered so many more. Tried to date, tried to have a normal life, tried to wash away the carousel music that haunted my dreams every night and the sick crawling feeling in my skin that came from a vile parent who couldn't keep his hands to himself. The prosecutor, the social workers, the policemen, the psychiatrist...all had tutted sympathetically at the murder. When I'd been found days later wandering as if in a dream down the street covered in blood, it was assumed that I'd fled the scene of the crime and hidden. 'You'll be alright', they all assured me. Blankets put around my shoulders, hot chocolate pushed into my hand in a paper cup. Packing a few bags and being taken to the home of a lady from church for a few days until it could be decided what to do with me. Great, now there was help and concern. The town that turns a blind eye to every crime and every disappearance had even turned a blind eye to the abuse I went through in my own life. But suddenly, I wasn't alone anymore.

When Aunt Kathy and Uncle Dan sent for me, life improved. But I'm eighteen now, and it's time to go home. The building in which we used to live, the building that belonged to Daddy the slum lord, Daddy the janitor, Daddy the pervert, is mine. The modest inheritance is mine. And I always felt wrong about running. The others all left town. Bill, Mike, Stan, Ben with his adorable chubby cheeks. Richie and Eddie. All of them gone, moved away to attend college or live with relatives. Something drove them away. And they stopped writing and picked up the threads of their new lives and chased the dreams that led anywhere but down. None of them write or call anymore. I never expected them to. Some tragedies bind people. Other tragedies drive them away.

My tragedy brought me home.