Milton Mulberry, Jr.

It exists in its own universe and is *not* part of the Crypt Monster Universe or the Featured Creature series.

## Milton Mulberry, Jr.

* Current
* Elderly
* Child

## Traits

### Age

* 80 (resurrection)
* 78 (post-timeskip, death)
* 8 (pre-timeskip)

### Species

* Zombie
* Human (formerly)

### Hair

* White
* Black (formerly)

## Personal Information

### Fate

Suicide via dropping a plugged-in radio into his bathtub

### Relatives

**Ancestors*** Great-Grandpa Mulberry (paternal great-grandfather) †

**Grandparents**

* Grandpa Mulberry (paternal grandfather) †

**Parents**

* Milton Mulberry, Sr. (father) †

### Enemies

* Harold Henderson
* The Slaughtered Lambs

## Media

### Actor

* Thomas Orr-Loney (elderly)
* Valin Shinyei (child)

**Milton Mulberry** is the main protagonist of the 2014 short horror film *Dead Hearts.* A depressed mortician who committed suicide in his old age, Milton rose from the dead to find his missing heart, which he later discovered was donated to his childhood love.

He is portrayed by Thomas Orr-Loney as an old man and Valin Shinyei as a child.

## Physical Appearance

Milton is an elderly Caucasian man with fraying white hair, a thick broom mustache, and dark-brown eyes. He wears a black formal suit with a dark-gray dress shirt and black tie. When he comes back from the dead, his skin coloration is more sickly and his suit is torn and fraying. He is also missing some skin on his nose.

As a child, Milton wore a similar suit to the one he wore as an old man, and he had black hair. On Halloween of 1942, he wore a vampire costume.

## Characteristics

Milton was a very depressed, morbid child, and this attitude carried on well into his old age until his death. Though he was resigned to his fate to become a mortician like his forebearers, Milton didn't want to go into the profession and was forced to do so by his father. Being forced to work with the dead for his entire life made Milton depressed and cynical. However, there was a brief light in Milton's life when he made fast friends with Lola Littleton, and for a few weeks, he was very happy and even looked forward to becoming a mortician. Unfortunately, Lola's departure for New York sent him to an even darker spiral, and he became suicidal for the rest of his life.

After Milton came back from the dead, he had a renewed focus to find his heart so he could die again -- but when he saw that the heart was beating in Lola's body, he may have had a period of reflection where he wanted her to keep it. When Lola was being beaten by the aged-Slaughtered Lambs, Milton attacked and killed them in a fit of rage.

## Background

Milton was born to Milton Mulberry, Sr. in 1934. Like his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, Milton was groomed to be a mortician at a young age through no choice of his own. Some time before he was eight, he began smoking cigarettes recreationally, likely due to the lack of restrictions put over cigarettes during the 1930s.

Milton gained a reputation among the children in town for being "different", and was likely a social outcast. The first and only time he had another child over to his house was when Harold Henderson came over to pick up a family member's ashes -- which Milton Sr. forced his son to give to the grieving family. This caused Harold to develop a deep-seated hatred for Milton; and every day at 3:07 PM, Milton would be beaten up by Harold and his gang, The Slaughtered Lambs.

At some point before the film, Milton got a dog. After the dog died, he had it taxidermized.

## Dead Hearts

On Halloween of 1942, Milton met a new student named Lola Littleton, a blind girl who enjoyed kung-fu and taxidermy. Milton fell in love with her the moment he saw her, but unfortunately, so did Harold. That day at 3:07 PM, Harold and his gang beat Milton up while he was out trick-or-treating. However, they were stopped by a little girl wearing a Little Red Riding Hood costume and a wolf mask, who beat them all up with an astounding display of kung-fu. After the gang fled, the girl took off her mask and revealed herself to be Lola. She got down on the ground and touched Milton's face before helping him up, and the two walked off together. Lola would visit Milton at the funeral home and the two bonded over the dead "living" there, leading to Milton and Lola sharing their first kiss together.

On November 13th, 1942, Lola's parents John and Martha were killed in a car crash outside a dojo. The Mulberry funeral home would embalm the bodies and host their funeral service, and Milton hugged the heartbroken Lola as she cried. The next day, Lola went to live with her uncle in New York, and Milton would never see her again for the rest of his life. Her departure left Milton heartbroken, and he decided that he would wait for his body to join his heart in death. When he turned eighteen, Milton would hole himself up in the mortuary and would only leave the mortuary a total of six times in the following sixty years.

In 2012, the seventy-eight year-old Milton had become a mortician his family would (perhaps not) be proud of. However, he had grown tired of waiting for his body to die and of taking care of the dead, so he decided to kill himself that evening. While in the bath, he filled out an organ donor form asking for his heart to be donated, and put the electric radio into the tub. Milton was electrocuted as a result, and was buried in an unnamed cemetery. Before his burial, his heart was removed from his body and set aside for those in need of a heart transplant.

On October 30th in 2014, Milton suddenly rose from the dead and climbed out of his grave, shocking the gravedigger Alegis Caesar into fainting in an open grave. As Alegis's heart stopped, Milton realized that his own heart was missing and beating in someone else's body. Milton travelled until he came across a house on October 31st, and realized that the person who had been given his heart was an elderly Lola Littleton, who had suffered a heart attack two years earlier. As Milton went to greet her, he was pushed aside by an elderly Harold Henderson, who had been trying and failing to win Lola's heart for the past seventy-three years. After Lola rejected him again, Harold and his elderly gang went to beat up the zombified Milton. Lola donned her wolf mask once more and beat up the Slaughtered Lambs once again, but Milton's aged heart couldn't keep up with her and she suffered another heart attack. Enraged, Milton got off the ground and ripped the Slaughtered Lambs to shreds before ripping out Harold Henderson's heart.

As Lola lay dying, Milton went over to her body and held her face. Lola reached up and felt his face, presumably recognizing him before she passed away. Some time later, Milton went to Lola's grave in another or possibly the same cemetery he was buried in. He put a pair of flowers at her gravestone, and smiled when Lola's hand emerged from the dirt.

## Powers and Abilities

### Skillset

* **Mortician Skills:** Having trained in the profession from a young age, Milton was an impressive mortician even in his late seventies.
* **Superhuman Strength:** As a zombie, Milton now possesses superhuman strength.

## Relationships

### Lola Littleton

Lola was Milton's childhood sweetheart. Milton fell in love with her the moment he saw her, and Lola later saved him from Harold Henderson's gang while they were beating him up. The two became fast friends and their relationship did wonders for Milton's mental health, with him finally starting to like his future as a mortician because Lola helped him see the brighter side of things. Unfortunately, Lola was forced to move to New York after the death of her parents, and Milton was so heartbroken that he swore off love completely and became even more suicidal.

After Milton's suicide in 2012, his heart was taken before his burial and saved for those on an organ donor list. By pure chance, Lola had a heart attack the day he died, and Milton's heart was used in a transplant that saved her life. In 2014, Milton rose from the dead to find his missing heart and ended up at Lola's door. However, he was attacked once again by the aged Harold Henderson and once again saved by Lola -- but this time, Milton's aged heart gave out and Lola was incapacitated. Enraged, Milton got up and viciously attacked and killed the gang to save her. He sat with her as she lay dying, and was the last person she touched before she died. Milton left flowers at her grave, and much to his pleasant surprise, Lola rose from the dead just as he had.

### Harold Henderson

Harold Henderson was Milton's childhood nemesis and rival. Though Harold was the first child to ever come over to Milton's house, it was not for a playdate -- instead, it was so he could receive the cremated remains of his recently-deceased family member. Milton's father made Milton give Harold the ashes, and this made Harold hate Milton to the point where he would get his friends to beat Milton up every single day at the exact same time. The arrival of Lola Littleton only made things worse, as both boys had eyes for her and Lola choosing Milton possibly made things between the boys worse. After coming back as a zombie, Milton was finally able to get revenge against Harold for his years of torment by ripping his heart out when he tried to fight Lola.

### Milton Mulberry, Sr.

Milton, Sr, was Milton's father, for whom he was named after. He forced his son to enter the family mortuary business with presumably little regard for what his son had to say on the matter. He forced Milton to do mortuary duties from a young age, and even made him give a funerary urn full of cremated ashes to another little boy in his class.

### Milton's dog

When he was a child, Milton had a dog that he apparently loved, and when it died he had it taxidermized. Milton carried the dog with him everywhere in the house -- to work, to his room, and even to his bathroom in his old age, so the love he had for the dog may have run deeper than was shown in the film. There are two scenes of him motioning for the dog to come to him and becoming depressed when he remembers that the dog is no longer alive.

## Victims

### List of Victims

 Alegis Caesar
 The Slaughtered Lambs
 Harold Henderson

## Trivia

* Milton's gravestone dates him being born in 1934 and dying in 2012. When the math is done, Milton was exactly seventy-eight years old on the day of his death. Nevertheless, this brings up a possible inconsistency in the film's plot; as the narrator said that at seventy-eight, Milton had left the mortuary six times in the last six decades. If the six-decade time frame begins the day Lola Littleton left town, that would make Milton eighteen years old in a fourth-grade classroom.
	+ The more likely explanation is that the six decades began when Milton turned eighteen in 1952. However, the UK's age of majority would still have been twenty-one years of age as the Family Law Reform Act, which lowered the age of majority to eighteen, would not be passed until 1969.
* Milton has only one spoken line in the entire film -- when the elderly Lola starts to fight the Slaughtered Lambs again, he cheers her on and shouts "Yeah!".

## Site Navigation

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## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 *Dead Hearts* (dir. Stephen W. Martin; September 14th, 2014)
2. ↑ The film says that at age seventy-eight, Milton had left the mortuary a total of six times in the last *sixty* years. By this math, he stopped leaving the mortuary when he turned eighteen and was no longer required to attend school.
3. ↑ "Age of majority (England)." Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age\_of\_majority\_(England)