Departed

It sounds clićhe, but his story is not for the faint of heart. It's a boy meets girl story, sure. But one you've likely never heard before. Fletcher Carlson was born to Rick and Marcy Carlson, a gym teacher and a health care worker respectively in Skyway City, Paragon. A model of cold concrete and steel - a soulless passageway on the way to more interesting destinations, Skyway City is one of the few less cared for areas of Paragon. While not as run-down as Kings Row, there's a strong possibility that it might be in a few years.

In his youth, Fletcher ran with a pack of kids dubbed "highway rats" by their neighbors; named as such for their tendency to run and play along the waysides of the towering, high-spanning bridges. Dangerous in every sense of the word, every once and awhile one of them would fall from the raised highways or be blindsided by the frantic, passing traffic. Tragic, yes. But just another symptom of the city officials' inaction.

A few years later, his younger sister Sadie was born. With hair as golden as newly-bloomed daisies (in stark contrast to the rest of her family's naturally dark hair), Sadie stood out like a sore thumb. But in the best way possible. Cute as a button and full of energy, she epitomized the 'golden child' archetype. Fletcher was more proud than jealous.

So when Sadie was clipped by a drunk driver on her way home from school, the family was devastated. Her funeral was on a rainy afternoon. Fletcher never truly recovered.

Puberty came and went a couple years later. A few ill-fated relationships left him jaded towards the dating scene in high school. Armed with a razor wit and a personality as dark and depressing as the metropolis he called home, Fletcher's increasing cynicism alienated him from most of his school's student body. He maintained a very small circle of friends throughout high school, though they were never as loyal as real friends ought to be as his dreary personality would often rub them the wrong way. It was then that a few kids nicknamed him Tuesday, declaring him "Wednesday Addams' male counterpart". It didn't bother him. He never really liked 'Fletcher' much anyways.

And then, one night, he quite literally stumbled across Isabelle Thériot. Truthfully, it's the oldest story in the book. They met during a Neverdead show; a post-hardcore indie rock band, rife with chugging guitars and murderous lyrics. Their eyes met through the hazy fog of the dingy club and that was it. Tuesday had immediately fallen for her. She very well could have been the spark that lit the fire; the one to pull Tuesday out of his listless slump. She was that kind of girl. You know the type. The fun-loving, carefree party girl, maybe a bit too wild for her own good. Almost a polar opposite of Tuesday. With deep and dark eyes, enticing and inviting, she was the one to make the first move. The two stuck together for the rest of the night, chatting and laughing together. With surprisingly similar interests the two headed back to her place after the show to "compare record collections".

Things got hot and heavy after the two had a few drinks and suddenly records seemed very trivial. In her inebriated state, Izzy had neglected to mention she was currently in a relationship... Then again, Tuesday never really asked. Either way, her thuggish significant other wasn't happy when he stopped in to surprise his girlfriend. He'd been drinking too. Tempers flared and it wasn't long before things got physical. Tuesday tried to split while the two were arguing, but the boyfriend was blocking his only exit. Enraged by his girlfriend's infidelity he pulled a knife and stabbed Tuesday as he made his way towards the door. Lights out. Fade to black.

A haze of chaotic urban sequences flashed through his brain – a series of macabre visions darkened by the creeping dread of infestation and the smell of rotting flesh. When he finally awoke, it was to escape claustrophobic hell, to leave behind a bleakness so genuinely upsetting that it took him several minutes to recover his senses. Rising from the dead'll do that to you.

Standing over his corpse (body?) was a would-be Circle of Thorns mage. His robe was open and Tuesday saw his office attire. The guy was clearly not a member yet. Apparently, resurrecting someone was part of an initiation ritual. Lucky Tuesday. He ran off when he realized he screwed up the spell and Tuesday wasn't under his control. For what must have been a half hour, he laid next to his grave, staring up into the inky black sky as he tried to get a grip.

An hour later, he stumbled back to his home to discover he'd been dead about a year. His parents, god bless them, had left his room and his things untouched. And while he scrounged through his possessions, he could only wonder if they'd ever be able to get over his death. During his furious attempt to dress himself he caught sight of himself in a mirror. His skin had naturally grown pale and dozens of stitches covered his body. It was then when he decided that he wouldn't return to his parents. Coping with the death of two children is hard enough without having to discover one of them is now an undead freak.

Rather than seek out his killer and bring him to justice in true action movie fashion, Tuesday was more concerned with finding a place to stay. He found that becoming undead wasn't exactly as bad he thought it would be. He no longer required sleep or food. The cold weather didn't bother him. Most of his nerve-endings had gone dead. Pain was officially irrelevant.

Tuesday lives alone in an abandoned mansion on the outskirts of Dark Astoria. With all the time in the world now, Tuesday's taken up investigation, acting as a 'soldier of fortune' of sorts and combating occult threats for money. Thrust into the world of the paranormal, Tuesday often finds himself fighting against evil, bloodsucking vampires, mystic mages bent on world domination, twisted demons, and malevolent spirits. He only sometimes dabbles in superheroics.

Perhaps the best part of being dead is the ability to die over and over again. Knowing he's virtually immortal allows Tuesday to throw himself into the line of deadly fire so his less immortal friends can live. Tuesday's muscle fibers have the consistency of nylon rope, his ligaments and tendons thickened, granting him a degree of superhuman strength. Similarly, his body no longer produces fatigue poisons, greatly boosting his stamina. Not truly alive, Tuesday is impervious to pain and immune to certain other mortal vulnerabilities, including suffocation, extremes of temperature, high voltage electricity, and poisonous gas.

Tuesday heals at an incredibly fast rate, fully recovering from burns, lacerations, and gunshot wounds within a matter of minutes. Tuesday can mentally command any severed body parts. Though he cannot regenerate missing limbs, he's able to "borrow" other severed limbs through a form of substitution. A limb pressed against the area it came from will usually reattach itself.

He can safely "survive" toxic conditions deadly to anyone else. He is able to communicate telepathically with dead spirits either using their physical remains or on the astral plane, temporarily resurrect the recently deceased as zombies or ghosts, and briefly summon images of deceased people from the minds of others. If the wind is right, zombies can smell humans from as far as several miles away, and Tuesday is no different, granting him almost superhuman tracking abilities.

Tuesday expresses an adverse fear of fire, so much so that he has collapsed in its presence more than once. As his burns will eventually heal much faster than an ordinary human's, much of this fear is psychological in nature. Tuesday can also be dispatched by causing extreme trauma to his brain, usually accomplished by driving a long knife, hammer, or some other blunt object into his skull. Tuesday would be temporarily incapacitated until such objects be manually removed from his skull by a third party or himself.