My Dear, Sweet Abby

I met a woman upon my stair,

and how I wish she wasn't there.

She cried and wept,

The stairs she swept,

and yet again she cried.

Abbigail Fare, a withering young woman in her early teens, passed away not two days after her birthday. Her passing though was not natural. Twas' kidnapped, she was. The men who took her hid her in the basement, where they fed her gruel of several kinds. She would lie there, day and night, tied to chains from both arms. Her hair remained long and her white dress grew short. Her nails, unkempt, grew to long lengths.

"Why, Mister?" She would say.

"Shut up," he groaned, and we would go away.

Her body, abused and tortured, was the remnant of this futile kidnapping. When she was freshly born, the mother had a chip implanted to her skull. Using this, the mother was able to find her dispaired daughter. The two men who took her were locked away.

The child, dead from her many beatings and malnutrition, lied there in her chains. No word could possibly describe the pain her mother felt at finding her daughter's corpse. Her arms were broken, torn back in hideous deformation. Her hair covered her face entirely. Her white dress, torn and destroyed, remained slightly intact, covering her cold body.

She was buried the next day after the finding, and the men were prosecuted for murdering and kidnapping her.

In prison, the men were separated. The first convict, Henry Ford, lay in his cell, crying. Wiping his eyes, he noticed he was going to be forever alone. Within days, he claimed to the jail guards that he heard scraping on the walls of his cell. The marks would never show up, however. They moved him to the psychiatric areas of the prison.

In here, he heard chains rattling and dragging. They drug slowly, passing his cell every night. He was driven insane. One night, he managed to escape his cell. He dashed out into the cafeteria area, screaming, claiming he saw the dead girl in his own cell. They strapped him up and threw him into the white room.

Here, he saw this girl every night; Bloody, dead, cold. Her hair covered her face only slightly. One eye could be seen, but it was blackened. She had chains on both hands with balls at the very end. The ball-and-chain routine behind her haunted him every day. She would smile in front of him and vanish.

Every day, he would see her doing different things. Occasionally, she would fix her somewhat transparent white dress. Other days, she would pace around menacingly. Sometimes, he would catch her trying to speak. One day, he had it. He went crazy and burst out of his ties and banged on the front iron door. The guards, assuming he's trying to break out completely, shoot him on sight. He falls over, bleeding from his wound.

The second man, James Carson, reported the same instances. The two men were completely insane. However, James was more calm. He was able to remain in his cell until he hung himself. When the clock struck twelve that night, lighting struck the highest bell on the prison. As it rang, the dead bodies shook and burst in the morgue, as if they were being electrocuted.

The voice of the girl echoed in the morgue. ''Tick Tock, the clock strikes twelve. Shock, Shock, the bad men die. Tick, Tock, they gently shelve. Shock, Shock, the bad men fry. ''

The reports spread to the home of the mother and her husband. The news seemed shocking, as they have also seen their daughter. She roams the halls of their home. Her old friend, Samantha, came to them one day, claiming that she also saw her roaming her home. They all said their prayers, hoping she would move on and never return. She's avenged herself, so why would she stay?

That night, her brother lie in bed, sleeping. He turns over to his side with his teddy bear to see his deceased sister in the hall, staring at him. "Tick Tock. The clock strikes twelve." Lightning strikes outside as it begins rain. She leaves the room to her parents.

"Abby?" Her mother asks, peering above her covered to the girl. The light from the lightning barely shows her figure in the doorway.

"Abby's here?" Her tired husband ponders, looking up. She walks into the room, looking the same as always.

"Abby! You need to go away. You can't stay here on this earth any longer dear--you need to go to the light!" her mother cries. She walks up to the bed.

"Shock, shock, the bad men die."

The windows in the room burst open. A man in a black mask crawls up to see the sight. This man planned on robbing them and has been scaling the window for a while now. Suddenly, as he reaches in, lightning strikes his body. He falls back, screaming and falling out of the window. He splats onto the ground.

"Tick Tock, they gently shelve." The man's body slowly tumbles downward.

"Shock, Shock, the bad men fry." She vanishes. The rain pours in through the window.

From this night on, she never came back to her parents.

Samantha, her old friend, remains able to see her on occasion. It's never truly menacing. And though she has departed from her family and only true friend, she continues to follow anyone with a criminal history of kidnapping. She stalks the potential killers until they let the victim go. She sometimes even stalks the victims, but not menacingly.

She's always there--she never leaves. Do you have something you regret? If so, you should probably hide. It isn't safe when it's raining.