Morbus

Author's Note

When I first created Emmaline Marie as a character, I had no idea how deeply she would settle into my bones. She didn't arrive fully formed. She didn't come crashing into my mind with a plot or a neatly packaged destiny. She came quietly — a whisper, a flicker of curiosity; a girl sitting on a porch holding a childhood she didn't understand.

And yet, the more I wrote, the more she grew.

She walked with me through the darkest corners of imagination and the softest ones too. She carried generational pain, but she also carried hope. She faced monsters that lived in houses, in memories, and in the spaces between breaths — but she never stopped reaching for the light on the other side.

Emmaline taught me that the bravest thing a person can do is simply keep living.
She taught me that fear doesn't always disappear, but we can learn to walk beside it.
She taught me that family can wound you and save you in the same breath, and that love — even the unexpected kind — can stitch you back together in ways you didn't know you needed.

Writing her story wasn't easy.
At times, I felt every tremor of her fear.
Every ounce of her grief.
Every step she took toward becoming her own kind of survivor.

But I also felt her courage.
Her stubbornness.
Her warmth.
Her humor.
Her aching desire to understand where she came from and who she was allowed to become.

And in that journey, she became more than a character.

She became a reminder that even broken pieces can be rearranged into something beautiful — and that sometimes the pieces are stronger for having cracked.

To anyone who has ever felt haunted by their past…
To anyone who has ever carried loneliness like a second heartbeat…
To anyone who has ever wanted to run but stayed anyway…
This story is for you.
Emmaline is for you.

Thank you for walking along this road with her.
Thank you for caring about her survival.
Thank you for letting her take up space in your heart the way she did in mine.

She may have crawled out of darkness, but she didn't do it alone.

You were there.
And that matters.

If her journey taught me anything, it's this:

Light does not erase darkness —
but it absolutely outshines it.

And so will you.

— Monica Marie Howart

Morbus is a story of inherited darkness, the resilience of the forgotten, and a young woman who learns that sometimes the only way out… is through the fire.