"Excuse me?" Melody stated. She drew away from Minho and the doorway. She less than an inch away from my chest. I wiped my sweaty palms against my wet jeans. This was one of the many times that I wished that we could call the police—or anyone. Before it had been because we were you know, stranded, but now it was because of a death case.

"I said that there's a dead-"

"Don't say it again!"

"You said to!"

"I didn't mean it!" Minho threw up his arms in defeat. "What do we do with him?" Melody asked Minho and I.

"I think we should bury him," Minho stated, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Are you crazy?" Melody asked. She looked as though she actually meant it. Her voice was serious and calm. She looked concerned for Minho's mental health.

"No," he said, "you are though. What else are we going to do? We can't burn him, well we could, but I'm not too excited about smelling burning flesh. If we want to stay here, we can't live with a rotting body in the same house. The fridge and sink are already bad enough."

"What if someone comes looking for him?" I asked.

"Then we'll have our rescuers," Minho stated. We stayed silent. Minho let out a breath. "Look, I'll go get an extra sheet from the guest bedroom. I'll wrap him in it and then we can bring him outside. I don't think we'll be able to dig very deep with the ground almost solid from the coldness."

"Ok, let's do it," I said. Minho looked at me, his eyes saying "thank you."

"I want to go and see if I can find out what his name was, so we can like say something before we leave him out there," Melody said.

"Fine by me," Minho said. Melody left to search the house and I followed Minho to get the sheet. We got the sheet and returned to the man's bedroom.

His skin was pale and wrinkled. He had gray hair that looked like he had been cutting it himself for a few years. It was jagged and uneven. His hand was clutched around a notebook sheet of paper. He was dressed in a pair of thick sweatpants and a blue sweatshirt. None of that bothered me though. The part that bothered me was his glassy eyes. His eyes were open and they looked to have been blue, but not they just looked like glass eyes of a doll. I took the sheet from the dead man's hand. I stuffed it in my pocket. Minho dropped the sheet over him.

After standing and looking down at the sheet covered figure. We agreed that neither of us wanted to pick him up. We rolled him on a thin rug that we found in the bathroom. It was a little shorter than his full body—and he was a pretty short guy, around 5"5. We pulled him out of the bedroom and straight outside. We left him in the winter snow and went to get Melody. We found her in the guest room with a hundred or so pictures scattered around her and in her lap.

"Did you find out his name?" I asked her. She handed me a bunch of bills, all of which were addressed to Mr. Clark Bents.

"He has such a large family, why haven't they realized that he's dead?" Melody asked, she handed Minho and I a few photos. On the back of each photo was the names of all the people and what year the photo was taken in.

"I don't know, maybe something happened between his family and him. Let's just go say goodbye and thank him for his home," Minho said.

We went outside, shivering from the chilly gust of wind. We stood a distance from the man, but still close enough for our small funeral. A layer of snow had already gathered on the sheet.

"Goodbye, Mr. Clark Bents. Thank you for letting us use your home," Melody said. She paused for a moment. "It's a very nice place." Minho pulled out the Bible that he had taken. He flipped to a random page.

"2 Thessalonians 3:16," he started, "Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times and in every way. The Lord be with all of you."

"That's nice," Melody said.

"He had it highlighted," Minho replied. We carried on inside. Minho went to start a fire and Melody started covering the hole that Minho had made in the door earlier. I pulled the sheet of paper that I had forgotten about from inside my pocket. I scanned it over.

I feel myself being taken from this world. I feel that I don't have too much time left.

Rachel, darling, I give my love to you. Tell Charlie and William that I love them as well. I wish that I had gotten the chance to see them more, not just over trips in the summer. I still have your old dresses in the closet of your room, Rachel, ones that your mother made you. Take care of them. She loved them so much, and we both loved her. May she rest in peace.

Kate, love, I wish that you hadn't left. I wish that I had kept you here longer. Rachel and I never even found you when Caitlin died. Now I feel myself leaving from this world. I only wonder that if you regret the mistake as much as I do.

Caitlin, my love, I hope to see you in Heaven one day.

-Clark

"He knew that he was going to die, he felt himself slipping away," I said to Minho, who had started a small fire by now.

"What?" Minho asked. I handed him the note and let him read it over. "How sad, the second daughter must have lost contact with her family." Melody came from behind me in silence. She read the note over once as well.

"I wish that we could let them know what happened," Melody said.

"There isn't anyway," Minho said. I glanced out the window. The sun was starting to slippery and lower. The clouds took over most of the sky, large snowflakes falling gently in the wind.

"I wonder if someone will come up here, maybe in the middle of the night. They'll be looking for their father, maybe grandfather if Charlie and William come as well, and they won't find him. They'll find out that we left his body out in the cold. They'll find three teenagers that took over their family member's house," I stated. Both Minho and Melody looked over at me in shock.

"That makes us sound like bad guys," Minho said.

"Maybe we are," I replied.

"We're tired, cold, and lost teenagers. We literally have no other choice," Melody insisted. I shook my head.

"This still feels wrong guys, really wrong," I said.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Author's Note

Ok...so I think that I imagined the dead man too well in my head and pictured these scenes too hard. 'Cause now I'm thinking, what if Clark wasn't dead and wakes up outside and starts banging on the door with a gun in his hands.

Or what if one of his daughters find out and get so mad that they left their father outside that they lock the kids in the house and burn the house down—-Kyle, Melody and Minho trapped in there.

I'm lowkey creeped out by this whole situation. And I'm the one writing it.

Word Count: 1274