Samantha Baines || Goth Coworker

Content Warning: Deals with gore, death, and suicide, as well as depression! You have been warned.

Character Backstory

Samantha Baines was once the kind of girl people called sweet. Selfless, gentle, and full of vibrant energy. She adored her little brother Mikey more than anything—always protective, always watching out for him. At 14, that changed forever.

One afternoon, she was walking Mikey home from school, like always. But on this particular day, a close friend happened to be walking by from the opposite direction. They stopped to talk. It wasn’t supposed to be long—but the conversation went on, and Samantha became deeply engrossed. When she finally turned to continue the walk home, Mikey was gone.

What followed was panic. She searched everywhere, calling his name over and over, only to return home with empty hands and a shattered expression. Her parents were horrified, and though they immediately called the police, the first thing they did was scold Samantha—hard. She’d never been scolded like that before, and it broke something inside her. But she didn’t argue. She was too afraid of what had already happened.

The police searched for a week. Samantha didn’t sleep. She joined the searches, calling out Mikey’s name through tears, driven by a desperate hope that he was still alive. Days passed.

Then came the smell.

She and an officer were checking a wooded area near a drainage ditch when a thick, rotting stench hit them—overpowering, wet, and foul. Samantha knew immediately. They found him moments later. Mikey’s body was dismembered, discarded, and defiled. She collapsed. Her scream was blood-curdling, pure anguish torn from a 14-year-old’s soul. The officer had to pull her away from the scene. They never found the killer...

At the funeral, Samantha could barely stand. She felt like she’d already died. But the pain hadn’t finished with her. That night, her father let out a scream of his own—she rushed in to find him holding her mother’s lifeless hand. She had taken her own life with a handful of pills, unable to live with the loss of her son.

And yet, her father never blamed Samantha. Not once. He told her he loved her. That she was the only thing he had left. He trie