IMPORTANT, PLEASE READ! What follows is a copied-and-pasted tumblr roleplay between stupidsecrets and myself(tumblr tag: xxx-strangeandunusual-xxx/xxx-theartofsuicide-xxx). She is playing as Lydia, me as BJ. Because of the nature of roleplay, the point of view changes often and you will see each event as it was perceived by our renditions of these characters. It's being posted here so that we can have a comprehensive archive to look back on and reread easily rather than having to dig through tumblr. Please be warned going in that this may never have a clean or concise ending as that is not the point of roleplay.

Reminder that this was something that was meant to be fun, not judged. Therefore constructive criticism is not welcome.


Flower in the Attic


A man's home is his castle. That's what mama used to say, to both Lydia and her father. Lydia, when she was tired of being bedridden, and Charles, over the phone as she sobbed on the kitchen floor. Always staying overnight on a business trip. When Lydia was alive, she had been sickly from the day she was born. That's what her mama had said, too, brushing her long, black hair through as she read a bedtime story. Because of this, she'd been home-schooled, home-fed, home-bound.

Constantly. Home, home, home. Her mama's saying never really soothed her. All it meant was that at least at home, she could do what she liked? but she couldn't do what she liked. Lydia had migraines, stomach pains, low strength and a tiny frame that barely held her own weight, tummy always too upset to stomach much food. She couldn't dance, or play, or do anything except sit and read.

But... really, she was happy. She had mama. Mama loved her like nothing else. She let her meet the neighbors even though she wasn't really supposed to go outside, she dressed her up in the most beautiful outfits for her tea parties, she was always talking about her on the phone. Though she was always cold, mama's love warmed her heart.

It wasn't her fault Lydia could only leave the house a handful of times a year. Mama fed her and held her hair back when her tummy refused it. She drove her to the doctor and consoled her when they couldn't find what was wrong. Mama was her world, and she was mama's.

Lydia knew that daddy was busy. That was why she accepted his many, many gifts of toys in all shapes and sizes? porcelain dolls, giant teddy bears, ornate jewelry boxes. Even when he was barely home for months on end, Lydia had mama, and all of her toys... At least mama never left her side.

Death took that away from her.

Lydia was always sure she would die sooner rather than later from the moment she understood its concept. She'd been sickly from the day she was born, right? Naturally, that sickness would be her downfall. But watching the little ant-sized people all dressed in black from the roof, she'd never felt more lonely - and after that moment, the feeling never left her.

At the end of it all, Lydia's death was far too similar to how her life had been. Stuck in that house, hosting tea parties and wearing frilly dresses, reading each book from cover to cover. Sometimes people would move in, but they would never stay for long. Lydia found that they often wouldn't go near the attic. The house's reputation preceded itself? it was haunted and creepy, so maybe a locked door needed to stay locked, and that was fine with her.

She'd hide away in the attic with her dolls and her bears and her toys, infrequently spying on the families occupying her house. It felt wrong to peek into their lives so rudely... but the main reason for her avoidance was that she couldn't stand it.

They were always so frightfully happy, and joyous, and free, and healthy. All the things Lydia had never been able to be. She'd discovered the extent of her ghostly powers after witnessing one mother lovingly teaching her daughter how to cook? in a jealous tantrum, she'd smashed half a dozen glasses and one of the cabinet windows. Mama had never, ever let her near the kitchen. But at least she knew she could do more with her time than just read the same books over and over.

Now a new family was moving in again. As per usual, Lydia watches curiously through her attic window at the car that pulls up behind the large U-Haul van, her most recent favorite doll tucked neatly in her arms, purple lace and frills splayed out over her legs and hair falling endlessly over her shoulders. This family could easily be the least happy she'd seen moving into her house so far. Lydia worries her lip. This house was her castle.


"So tell me again why I have to go to this bullshit sausage fest all guys school, Ruth? I'm not a faggot like Davey."

"Don't talk about David that way—"

"Shut your mouth before I ship you off to military school, you little shit—"

Benjamin James, BJ to his friends of which were few and predominantly virtual, snorted dismissively as they pulled up to the rinky-dink remodeled farmhouse in this middle-of-nowhere shithole town, unintimidated by the threats. The place was worth more than it cost, apparently. Davey, whose temple vein never failed to throb when his delinquent stepson referred to him as such, was apparently really fucking stingy about that kind of shit even though his pockets were stacked with leftovers from some fat settlement check he'd cashed years before meeting Ruth.

Something about class action, asbestos in the factory he worked in, blah blah blah yadda yadda. BJ couldn't bother himself to file away the details. Davey wouldn't last long. None of them did. He was husband number six, and it was only a matter of time until Ruth sucked him dry and went on the hunt for number seven.

Content to leave her to her work, her son slammed the car door shut as he got out and muscled his way past the movers to get to his own boxes, stacked up strategically at the back of the truck so that he could have his first pick of rooms. No one would be arguing with him on that.

"Don't touch my shit," he snarled at the weaker hired help, heaving two worn boxes marked FUCK OFF onto his shoulders. He was the first through the doors, hustling from room to room with heavy, thumping steps to appraise which area might make a fitting lair. The master was big enough, he guessed, but right across the hall from where Mommy Dearest would end up staying with her current cunt plug.

There had to be a basement or an attic around here somewhere… please, merciful Satan in Hell…

He spotted his salvation at the top of an almost too narrow staircase toward the end of the hall. There was a door there, but it didn't budge when he jostled the handle. Impatient, already pissed off that he was standing there wrestling with this door at all, he dropped his boxes carelessly and bodily slammed his entire form into the locked annoyance; all six foot ten, three-hundred and fifty pounds of him.

To be fair, it wasn't all muscle. A healthy portion of chub coated him all over, but he was hardly looking to impress anybody.

The deadbolt snapped right through the creaking frame with that immense push, splattering shards of wood forward into the room. No big deal. He had a plethora of his own heavy-duty locks ready to install to any door that became his.

What the fuck…?

Jade eyes slowly gaped open as they took in the eerie scene before him. It was a cliché straight out of a shitty horror movie. There was an attic up here alright, already half-filled with many dusty boxes, several of them scattered and open throughout the drafty space. An unmade tiny princess bed was settled beneath the window. It would probably shatter if he sat on it.

The piece de resistance, however, was the round dainty table at the very center of the room. Large, but delicate in its craftsmanship, it housed a circle of stuffed animals and porcelain dolls. Each toy kept a little teacup and plate, an antique hand-painted pot at the center of the setting. Just one seat was left empty, though the spot didn't lack a plate or cup. This was not dusty or unkempt. It was as though it had been moved in the night before and was just waiting for some little princess like Davey to come along and join the party.

Despite the bizarre welcoming, this was clearly the best room in the house and therefore his. If Ruth or fucknugget had a problem with it, they could take it up with his middle finger.

"HEY DAVEY," he shouted down the steps jovially after picking through one of the mystery boxes and finding it filled with even more porcelain dolls. Always looking to heckle where he could, he called out, "SOMEBODY MUSTA KNEW YOU WERE COMIN'! THEY GOT A BONA FIDE TEA PARTY SET UP HERE FOR YA!"

With that and a harsh, obnoxious gale of laughter, he chucked the box downstairs, watching with sadistic satisfaction as fragile porcelain cracked and scattered over the bottom landing. Good luck getting him to clean up that mess.


Even through the little window, Lydia could see they were arguing about something. The family seemed to be made up of a petite, mousy little woman, dressed in a way that made her wrinkle her nose, and two men. One, fairly uninteresting– middle-aged, angry, a receding hairline– and the other quite possibly the most intimidating person she'd ever seen. Heavy-set and almost comically tall, Lydia's freezing stomach pooled with dread. Though he appeared much younger than the older male, he was clearly the man of the house (king of the castle comes to her mind, and it's almost funny– it would've been if his footsteps weren't so loud), the first to pass the threshold and take his pick of the rooms.

The master bedroom was big, and her room had been tiny. It was a three-bedroom house. Lydia was more than sure that if he were to pick any room, it'd be the master, and that like every family before them, they'd leave the attic alone. She decided that she'd leave this entire family alone too, in fact, and never peep on them once until they left.

Even still, each step he took felt like a stone settling in her belly. She lifted herself off the bed, eyes trailing fretfully to focus on the door, hands shaking with agitated trepidation as she hid behind the 'life-sized' dusty teddy bear resting in the room's corner. Not that he would be able to see her if he did somehow have the key and opened the door, but with her back pressed up against the wall and with only her head peeking out, she felt a lot safer.

Thumping footsteps up the attic stairs. Lydia feels her fists clench and her toes curl, holding a breath she doesn't need to hold.

The doorknob rattles.

A pause. The sound of something going down the stairs and Lydia lets out her breath in a sigh of relief before nearly screaming when the door slams open and consequently splinters, wood clattering to the floor. With the sickening crack still ringing in her ears, she looks on in horror at the behemoth of a man standing in the doorway to her room, feeling naked and terrified as he seems to soak in the sight of her tea party. When he speaks, it makes her jump – and then she lurches forward toward him when he begins to touch things.

That box was full of all her most fragile dolls, the ones she didn't want to set out for fear of breaking; when he flings it down the stairs she does scream, not waiting for the nauseating shatter before she immediately swings her fists at his chest.

"STOP IT, STOP IT, STOP IT!" Lydia shrieks, not realizing her weak hits are actually landing on him in wake of her overflowing anger. "GET OUT! DON'T TOUCH THEM! THIS PLACE ISN'T FOR YOU, YOU… YOU BRUTE!"


He heard her before he felt or saw her; a pretty voice, young and feminine, though any sweetness was lost in its shrieking and whining. Weaker than a flyswatter punches were pelted against his gut in a rapid patter, and he aimed a perplexed look down at the walking, talking porcelain doll upset at him for roughing up her friends.

"… how the Hell did you get in here…?"

He scratched his head like the confused oaf he was, absolutely baffled. The door had been locked from the inside. Was there some sort of secret route the little brat could've used to crawl and squeeze her way in? But then what about all of her things? Unless they weren't her things and she was just using this place as some sort of clubhouse.

Oh well. Too bad, so sad. This was his clubhouse now.

"RUTH!" He shouted down the stairs, not even acknowledging the pipsqueak one-on-one as he hefted her up by the back of her dress, holding her aloft over the staircase as though he meant to drop and crack this porcelain doll as well. "THERE'S A SQUATTER IN MY ROOM! IT'S LIKE… TWELVE. AND A CHICK. COME TAKE CARE OF IT OR SOMETHING!"

He drew her back inside once his mother divided some attention away for this, large fake breasts staying perfectly in place as she jogged up the steps.

"Jesus, Benny, it's so dusty up here…" This was the only complaint she had. Far be it from her to make the master bedroom look more attractive to him. "Now what're ya talkin' about? What squatter? Where?"

"Here!" He shook a fist full of frills at his blind mother, hardly believing her stupidity.

Ruth slowly looked between his fist and his face, back and forth back and forth, concern beginning to creep in the longer the pause carried on. Tentatively, she stepped forward, reaching up to place a manicured palm on his forehead.

"You feelin' okay, Benny? Need a nap or somethin'? I know it's been a long couple days…"

"I'm fine!"

Did she really not see? He brandished the little intruder again, only for his jaw to go lax and eyes wide. She was gone. He wasn't holding anything. Ruth's frown deepened and she passed a burning cigarette from her own mouth to her son's, then pat his cheek lightly in parting.

"Take it easy, baby. There's no rush. You'll love it here, I'm sure…"

Useless bitch. He slammed the door shut behind her then growled around the filter, turning a narrow, hateful glare on the room.

"I know you're in here… n' I'm gonna find ya… so ya might as well just show yourself."


The moment he touches her - acknowledges her at all, even - Lydia goes dead still, eyes as big as saucers as he stared at her.

She stared back, lip quivering, hands frozen in their balled fists on his chest.

"You can s-see-?!" She squeaks and then shrieks as he lifts her up by the back of her dress, thrashing around weakly in his ridiculously strong grip. God, his booming yell rattled her bones - she was sure that some of the other dolls in those boxes were shattering just at his voice - and it was hard to concentrate as she squirmed, trying to yank her dress from his hand.

When the woman from before makes her way up the stairs, Lydia takes a deep breath in the silence and slips free, quickly returning to her hiding spot behind the bear, praying her invisibility had returned. She needed to collect herself. It seemed like he had angered her so much that she'd somehow become corporeal - which was new and frightening, naturally, but enthralling.

The cogs turned hard in her pretty little head, working fast, powered on fear. That book that she'd found once she'd died explained (probably explained, it was incredibly difficult to read) that if she got a living human to... marry her, she'd be free from the shackles dying in this house had put on her. Finally, she could go and be with mama again... But how on Earth was she supposed to marry this violent, terrifying lug of a human? Let alone convince him to help her?

She cowers behind the bear, worrying her lip and clutching at her skirt.

The man - Benny, she'd caught the lady saying - was now alone again, the woman she could only assume was his mother trodding back downstairs. Lydia hadn't gotten an amazing look at that lady, but she'd been... nightmarishly plastic-looking. There was no resemblance (left?) between the two of them besides the roots of their hair. She shivers. Everyone always said she looked like a dolly version of her mama, and she'd never want to change that. Clearly, Benny's mama didn't think the same.

When he slams the door Lydia jolts again, watching him behind her bear. He wouldn't really find her. She was invisible and dead... Right?

But... she didn't want him to break any more of her dolls. Their lives were as precious as hers had been to her mama. They were her duty to take care of - and she felt she needed to try to convince him to at least strike a deal to bring her closer to the possibility of marriage...

Reluctantly, and with all of the confidence she can muster, Lydia floats to the middle of the room and concentrates hard on trying to be corporeal again. With little idea of whether or not it's actually working, she looks him in the eyes (though she's a good two feet off the ground, she's really only eye level) and opens her mouth to talk. Alice, her doll, rests in her arms.

"I died here," she starts, voice as mysterious and stable and ghostly as she can manage. It's high-pitched and quivering.

"I am the ghost of this house... and I've been here for much longer than you will ever be. You are not welcome here, Benjamin. Unless you... pay a price."

Her dead heart feels like it would be leaping in her chest. Lydia can't help but feel smart for that one. Everyone's scared of ghosts, right? The 'Benjamin' part she'd guessed - hoping against hopes his nickname was shortened as opposed to just being a sweet way of saying Ben - but if it was right, she'd be successfully creepy for sure. Even if he ran away in terror from her traumatizing display, at least she wouldn't be bothered again, and it'd make him look crazy. A little smile pulls at her grayed lips at the thought.


That was one Hell of an entrance. She reappeared levitating, amazingly, impossibly, quickly robbing the mortal of any silly notions that the girl was anything as common or boring as a squatter.

I died here.

BJ grinned. Any intended effects by the girl were lost on the charmed boy as he slowly circled her while she spoke, even waving his arm over her head to make absolutely sure there weren't any invisible wires. Nope. This was the real deal, an actual, genuine as he lived and breathed ghost.

Maybe Winter River, Connecticut wouldn't be so boring after all.

What a tiny thing she was, floating there and making threats against him. Remembering the way she beat at him in the midst of that temper tantrum, his grin widened sharply, reminiscent of a shark that had just scented the blood of wounded prey. Never bullshit a bullshitter, kid.

"Not welcome, huh? Gotta pay a toll?"

He came to a pause right before her, closer than where he was when she began her initial speech.

"Or what?" He snorted, genuinely amused and not a bit scared, childishly boinging one of the perfect spiral curls at the end of a pigtail. "Y'gonna beat me up again, lil' bit? Didn't anyone ever teach you violence is never the answer?"

This was a deeply hypocritical lesson to impart upon the girl for him in particular, having often been suspended from school for physical altercations that definitely totally weren't at all his fault. It probably wasn't smart of him to call her bluff like this, in case he was fatally wrong, but no one had ever accused him of being intelligent.

"Nah," he sucked on his smoke, delighting in the falter that rippled over her carefully schooled countenance at his easy dismissal of her half-hearted demands. "I got a better idea. See, this is my house now…"

A large, sharp pocketknife made itself known in a flash. He was tempted to trace it over her tiny neck, just to flex a little, and so he did. What was it gonna do? Kill her?! He was horribly amused by the concept, so completely thrilled by this turn of events that he wasn't even insulted or annoyed by her slights against him. He did break her little dollies, and that wasn't very nice.

The knife only pressed light enough to sate his curiosity before he wandered to a supportive beam, carving out his moniker into the aged wood, deep and dark and slow so it could never be sanded out; BJ.

"My room. Look. It's got my name on it. Now, this is what's gonna happen. You're gonna be a good girl n' be nice to me, or I'm gonna personally gut each and every one of your lil baby girl stuffies and replace their innards with crushed glass."

The tip of the blade tapped against the doll's in her arms porcelain cheek, the hollow clink it made making the other half of the threat imminently clear.

"All this shit?" He gestured at the many boxes taking up a good third of the room, then the table and bed, everything that belonged to the dead girl. "It has to go. Ain't no room for it, n' my shit takes precedence. Yer lucky I'm not kickin' you out too, dead girl."

He didn't know how, even if he wanted to, which he was strangely finding he very much did not? but it was fun to threaten anyway.

"I'm a nice guy like that. In fact, I'm so nice that Imma let you keep one dolly like that," the knife pointed at the doll in her arms, "n' one stuffed animal. Ain't that generous? Guy like me lettin' pussy shit like that stay in my room? Ain't exactly a good look, kitten. Aesthetics, y'know? Now we got a deal or not?"

He crossed his arms, leaning against a wall and sucking a deep drag from his smoke, making the cherry flare-up.

"'Benjamin' was my old man, by the way." He cocked another grin at her, just as cruel and delighted as the others had been, the flash of a sharp canine catching a stray beam of light. "You can call me BJ."