Carlton ✔

4| The Whimsical Escape

Thanks a lot for opening this book and if you're reading this it means that my story has sparked interest in you so I want to genuinely thank you again for giving it a chance!

Please hit me up if you have tips for me!

Also, I absolutely have no problem with you pointing out my mistakes. Your opinions and corrections are appreciated and will help me become a better writer :)

Enjoy the read!

Love, K

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

Dedicated to:DarrenDean1

Thanks a million for being such a sweet person and supporting me and also my friends! I appreciate all your amazing comments and votes!

(Also guys, he's such an amazing writer omg! Please check his books out, you won't be disappointed I swear!)

"It's easy to believe in magic when you're young. Anything you couldn't explain was magic back then. It didn't matter if it was science or faiytale. Electricity and elves were both infinitely mysterious and equally possible – elves probably more so"

~ Charles de Lint

Carlton's POV

Since I was a child, I had always believed that if you couldn't perceive something, it was probably not real.

That is also why I never believed in ghosts, or what Uncle Jerry said about the crooked man who lived under my bed and watched me sleep.

But the whole irony of the situation was not that I didn't fear his stories, but that I feared the story-teller himself. "Do you know what this is, young Hargrave?" He would ask me, placing a hefty pistol in my small hands, "It's a gun. You use it to take out the people who get in your way." And apparently, I was too young to own such a magical object.

Also, I found it hard to believe in happy endings every time my maid, Mrs. Cheryl, would read me bedtime stories.

She would smile down at me, ruffling my hair as she spoke in her soft, ever-charismatic voice, "Sometimes, dear one, you just have to believe. You don't always have to be straight and logical about everything. After all, you can't really say it doesn't exist just because you don't see it."

Reasonable, I thought.

And just five days after that, she jumped off from my fourth-floor balcony down into the numerous shrubs, bearing a vast variety of flowers she had planted with her own hands.

Everybody refused to explain to me what had just happened until one of my other maids told me that Mrs. Cheryl was in a better place and we should pray to God for her safe journey from this world to the next.

As an innocent soul, I smiled back at her when she told me Mrs. Cheryl is going to a place more beautiful than this one, and I was happy because she was happy too.

But that also meant I would never get to see her again.

I spent numerous nights just wondering – how could someone exist at one moment and then completely vanish the next, never to be seen again? It was bizarre.