Lights | A Forever Fanfiction

Prologue

It was a dark December night when Lights LaVaughn shoved the little brass key she always carried into the lock on the front door of the apartment she shared with her father. She could barely see in the pallid darkness - the moonlight was the only thing between the door and total blindness. The girl stood, a diminutive form in the doorway as she opened it, fumbling through the shadows for a switch.

And brightness filled the room.

The softly carved wood of elegant string instruments lines the room. A viola, here, a cello there. There was a rack on the wall, filled with bows and stacks of rosin.

Silence held the room in a fiery vice-like grip.

It was barely late. Often, Lights came home to hear the gentle grating of her father hewing away at wood, but there was nothing. "Dad, you awake?" she called, picking her way through the labyrinth of instruments and gracelessly prancing across the wooden floor. "Dad?"

The lamp in his room was off. Lights knew he was afraid of the dark. His imagination was brilliant but grilling, haunting his every terror in the midst of the shadows and light that played across the ceiling and walls.

She stepped into the room, trepidation vibrating through her, like staccato notes drawn harshly from the highest pitches of the violins, like long breaths pulled from the heavy tones of a bass.

Her fingers on the doorframe, she flicked on the light-switch, and moved forwards, eyes closed and mouth pressed into a fine line.

Her foot met something soft, something sticky and lukewarm. Something wet. The air smelled odd, like metal after being held in sweat hands for too long, or after a long, warm rain.

She opened her eyes.

He could have been sleeping, with eyes closed, curled into the fetal position, hands curled around a knife as though it were a security blanket. Crimson blood stained the blue and white sheets around him, and a stark, gaping wound in his eye opposed her hopes of him still having life.

He was still, and his hand was cold. His face was pale, like bluish marble in a grotesque museum, displaying life that had been, and death that always would be, in its most picturesque of forms. And above it, the tag, labelling the display, scrawled in bright, stark shades of drying blood.

Lights yanked herself to life, moving jerkily for her phone, punching in the number for 911. Her eyes never left her father's body, as she began to scream into the phone.