Name: Joshua Clyde Linwood
Age at Time of Death: 18
Days Dead: 7
Appearance in Life:
Joshua is thoroughly average in many respects. He's not tall or short at 5'11'', and he gets just enough exercise to maintain a wiry frame. His hair is black in a cut typical of a teen his age. The boy is a bit pale and his vision is just bad enough to require glasses. He chose a wire-framed pair. He dresses plainly in dark colors and jeans most every day, and his default expression is a thoughtful one.
Manifestation in Death: From the elbow down, Joshua's left arm is swollen and useless. Huge purple splotches stretch all the way up and down the limb, concentrated particularly around the two sets of chewed-in fang marks that show where he was bitten. Both arms and the left side of his face are painted with jagged scratches. Behind his foggy glasses, there is nothing; he is faceless. His eyes are gone, but he can see. He doesn't have a mouth, either, but he hasn't tried to speak…
Personality: Joshua is, essentially, a kind human being. He's polite to strangers, helps others when he can, and can tell the difference between right and wrong. He usually errs on the side of right, but there are moments when he is tempted not to turn the other cheek, and his frustration manifests unpredictably. He's less awkward around people he feels friendly with, but no one ever really relied on him, and vice versa.
Cause of Death: They'd been walking home from school. They always had, ever since they were children, though they'd both long since stopped enjoying it. The script was always the same. Richard did nothing but pick at him about his low-key social life and unglamorous looks and hobbies, mocking him more with every step they took. They'd just been crossing the bridge over the river when he'd started nagging him about his grades. Joshua was a B kind of guy, not an A++, and he'd never be on the same level as his brother.
Joshua ignored him. He couldn't exactly disagree. He did, however, have to protest when Richard grabbed his binder from his hands. He didn't need his Calculus notes with that attitude, Richard said. He obviously didn't care about improving. He'd never amounted to anything in his life, and he was never going to change. Then he'd dropped his binder in the river over the bridge, and Joshua had jumped after it. Normally he had a better sense of self-preservation, but Richard had gone too far that day, or maybe he'd just had enough of the teasing and needed to do something to prove himself.
He did a poor job of it. The river water was cold and choppy and rough enough to make swimming towards his waterlogged schoolwork a major hazard all on its own. Richard was yelling at him again, but he couldn't make out what he was saying. He'd only just grabbed the binder when the current threw him into the branches of a felled tree resting on the bank. Joshua panicked, scratching up his arms and his face as the water whipped the branches across his skin, but it was only when he felt something puncture his forearm deep enough for stitches that he knew he had true reason to worry.
He hadn't heard the snake coming, but he knew exactly which it was: a cottonmouth. They were the only kind of water snakes around. He knew what the poison did to people, knew that he had to lie still and wait for help because the venom was going to crawl up his veins faster if he struggled, knew that he had to close his eyes and just trust that Richard had still been watching. But because he was desperate- because he was weak- he screamed for his brother, ripped uselessly at the branches he was tangled in, cried out when the snake bit him a second time.
Joshua gave up when the pain spiked and spiraled out of his control. He was faint from it, sweating buckets, and he couldn't move his brutalized, bleeding arm. His whole body tingled unnervingly. The noise his heart made as it hammered against his ribcage drowned out all his thoughts. There was nothing more he could do. He'd started to care less, anyway. He was stuck there, suspended in the icy water, with venom coursing through his veins. He could barely keep up his grip on the binder.
The last waking thing he noticed was that Richard was still yelling when his heart stopped beating.
In Life: Joshua lived in the same house in the same part of North Carolina until the day he died. In the same way, he always lived in his brother's shadow. Everything Joshua was, his older brother Richard was, too, and he'd already done it better long before Joshua even thought to. Stellar grades? Girls? Popularity? Richard had them all, and he made damn well sure that Joshua never got the runoff. He never let him forget it, either, whether they were back home with their oblivious mother and father or in the cafeteria at school. He was someone to hate and admire, and Joshua resented that he could never struggle out of his grasp.
In Death: Joshua is more than slightly bitter about his death. He's angry at himself for his powerlessness, angrier at his brother for his cruelty, and aghast that he died for nothing more than his math homework. He doesn't know what he can do in his current state, but he feels the need to do
something, and his rage is building by the day.
Haunt: Canal:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/208/63500572.jpg/
On the days when he could get away from his family, Joshua would hole himself up in the canal about two miles from his house. He didn't mind walking there; he was used to trekking long distances on foot. It was enclosed, snug enough to feel like a safe hiding place, but still open enough for him to breathe. This was where he'd learned to swim, and he still sat by the water sometimes. He'd stay there for hours; no one was there to stop him. The restaurant had long been defunct. On his worst days, he'd force the door open, sitting in the middle of the floor. It was empty and lonely, smelled a little off on hot days, and the dust got in his eyes and nose, but he still preferred it to his house.
His Haunt isn't quite the same. He can't get the door open every time he tries. The lock only gets really workable at night. Bricks have been thrown out of the walls, and he has to jump over debris on the walkway to get to the water's edge, and when he puts his hand in, he can't see where it goes.