13 Days 13 Shorts: Demons

Tired of brilliant writing? Too bad! Today's short is from... well there's no other way to introduce but through his name. Steven. Ray. Morris.

DEMONS (HEY JOSEPHINE) by SRM

It had only been a few weeks after the incident. A young girl named Josephine Elle, just barely out of high school in the small community of Anaheim Hills, was found DROWNED in the town’s reservoir. It was ruled, inconclusively, a suicide.
No one had any reason to believe it was suicide, but no one had any reason to believe she was murdered. This was a small town after all and everyone liked Josephine. She was a diminutive girl, bordering on mousey. Her hair was straight and light brown, bordering on blonde. She seemed to be always on the cusp of something, like she wanted to speak, but didn’t know the right words.
Anyway she was dead and everyone, whether you knew her or not, seemed pretty broken up about it. It was a fragile community, only knowing snippets of the outside world. It was a suburban community, product of a master plan project in the late 60s. Everything was still new, still on the cusp of becoming something other than just another “suburb.”
Although he didn’t know her, at least, didn’t know her directly, Daniel Grey was intrigued by her tale. He was a songwriter and a storyteller and thus saw an opportunity. And no, this wasn’t some slam-bam cash-grab Hollywood-type of takeover; Daniel was an “artist” and saw in Josephine’s story more than it probably more than it was in reality. So he wrote a song about it.

Here are the lyrics:

“Hey Josephine”

Hey Josephine, you were the best in town
Hey Josephine, why did you reach for the ground?
Hey Josephine, your heart reached for the sky
Hey Josephine, no one can ever know why…

Was the air too hot? Did you suffer in your skin?
Were you feeling trapped? Did the demons crawl within?
Did you have a fever and did you cure it with a swim?
Why did you go? Why didn’t we listen?

Hey Josephine, you were the best in town
Hey Josephine, why did you reach for the ground?
Hey Josephine, your heart reached for the sky
Hey Josephine, no one can ever know why…

I sit here writing trying to figure out this mess
A beautiful girl who thought there was nothing left
How do you try to make this make sense?
It can’t be done without any consequence

Hey Josephine, you were the best in town
Hey Josephine, why did you reach for the ground?
Hey Josephine, your heart reached for the sky
Hey Josephine, no one can ever know why…

The song had a simple folksy melody, buried in a bit of reverb Daniel felt befitting of the material. He rocks out a bit on the harmonica on the end. It adds a little extra passion and a little punch. Whether it was great or merely good is still up for debate; the point being, local radio stations latched onto it and played it ad nauseam.
Our society likes to embrace tragedy so tightly we still haven’t recovered from the trauma of our own conception. Daniel didn’t know Josephine, but he felt he had tapped into the “thematic character of her being.”

Boy was he wrong. Sort of.

Josephine Elle did not go quietly into the night surrounded by fish and faltering oxygen bubbles. See she was most certainly on the edge. Within this quiet girl lie dormant a frustrated woman, and in this small town that hardly gave her a chance, she fucked with them in the worst way. Then that Daniel kid had to go and ruin it with his damn song. She thought.
Halloween night seemed like the best opportunity she thought to herself as she wandered through the streets looking for Daniel’s house. She could feel his sensitive spirit. She passed by children and their pounds upon pounds of candy and their ridiculously cute costumes. For all they knew she was in costume too. She could hear his goddamn acoustic from miles away.
She appeared through the wall of Daniel’s room, through his Bob Dylan poster. He was scribbling notes in a journal. “I wonder whose death he’s taking advantage of next,” she thought smirking to herself. He hadn’t noticed her yet.
“Hey asshole,” she said. He looked up startled at the floating corpse of Josephine Elle. He fell off his bed and threw his journal against the wall. The guitar hit the carpet with a clang. She grinned, satisfied he had wet himself, metaphorically anyway.
“It’s you!...Josephine…what…are you…doing here?” Daniel stuttered as he picked up his guitar. She crossed her arms and said coarsely, “How dare you presume what happened to me or what my life meant!”
“You…heard my song?” stammered Daniel. “Don’t be fucking cute, it’s playing everywhere in this goddamn town,” exasperated Josephine.
She paced around Daniel’s room dripping ectoplasm onto the plethora of guitars, ukuleles and keyboards. “Eeesh, watch out for those, some of them are rare and old!” cried Daniel as he wiped his instruments with a towel. “Hey! I’m a fucking Demon Daniel,” she grabbed him by the collar. She noticed he had slight erection. “Fucking weird,” she dropped him to the floor.
“What? I can’t help it, you’re really cute,” said Daniel innocently.
“Gee thanks,” she replied cynically.
“What are you doing here anyway? Are you trapped in this world because you have some unfinished business or….” Daniel grew excited at a theory grabbing Josephine by the wrists, “Were you murdered and did you come to me to get the truth out?”
“Oh, no, I wasn’t murdered or anything.” She paused, “To be honest, I don’t really know what’s supposed to happen.” She glided onto Daniel’s bed next to him.
“Why…did you kill yourself?” gulped Daniel.
She sat there for a moment staring at him and his dough-eyed naïve eyes. “Well, it certainly wasn’t for any the reasons as romantic as you describe in your song,” she sighed, “I just felt trapped in this bubble, but I don’t think I was going on to anything greater.”
“They said you didn’t leave a note or anything, no clues,” Daniel looked down at his feet, “It just seemed that maybe you were over this whole thing.”
Josephine’s eyes glow for a moment, “You know, maybe that’s it. I didn’t go down to the reservoir with any plans to kill myself; I just wanted to go for a swim. Somewhere in the middle of that lake, I didn’t try anymore and I just let go.”
Daniel thought she had given him a way out, “Maybe, we all just need to let go of the things that frustrate us in life,” He looked at her, then his guitar. He started to get up.
“Oh no boy, you ain’t getting off that easy,” She put her arms on his shoulders,

“You’re coming with me.”

The end.