Fiona looked up at her new house, watching her brother dart inside to explore. He was four years younger than her, but after their parents dropped off of the map she was forced to take custody of him and move, giving up their old house and moving to a town called Strangerville. They had a small house next to a library and a trailer park.

"Matt, you know the deal. No exploring until you've done your homework!" Fiona called to her brother. She could hear him groan good-naturedly. By the time she was in the dining room Matt was already there.

"Tell you what, when the neighbors come to see who's just moved in, you can greet them first."

"Cool!" the boy chirped, grabbing a binder and slamming it open.

Fiona was knee-deep in algebra when the doorbell rang. She was so immersed in her homework that she hardly noticed, only realizing something was going on when Matt ran to the door.

"What?" Fiona mumbled, getting up and tripping over the leg of her chair.

"Neighbors!"

"Oh." she whispered to herself, walking over to the door where Matt was already chatting with the neighbors. There were three of them- the oldest maybe in his early twenties with slicked back red hair with a dark expression on his face, a friendly-looking man with a shock of blonde hair, and a black-haired boy about Fiona's age with startling pink eyes.

"Hi!" the blonde smiled, shifting his weight between his feet. "My name is Sebastian, call me Seb," he motioned to the redhead, this is Cody-" he pointed back to the pink-eyed boy "and this is Samuel Blaze. Call him Sammy B. We're your neighbors."

"I can tell." Fiona said. "Come in. Is there anyone else coming?"

Cody looked behind him, and it was him that spoke. "Maybe. There's people who have been here longer than us. They're a bit… strange."

Seb frowned. "Come on, Cody, stop being so judgmental. It's not their fault that this place has gotten to their heads a little bit. They're just a bit stir-crazy. Nothing ever happens here."

"Do things getting to their head make them act like that?" Cody demanded, sticking his thumb behind him. There were two people staggering to the house, yanking their legs out from under them in a comically exaggerated way of walking.

"So what they're a bit-" Fiona tried to reason, before Cody interrupted her.

"Look at their eyes. And mouths. Stir crazy people don't act like that. It's almost like they're possessed by-"

"Cody, will you stop about that?" Seb shouted. "Nothing unnatural is going on here! No one gets that!" the two boys' discussion dissolved into heated arguing. Sammy B looked at them, then at Fiona, then at Matthew.

"Can I come inside?" he asked, just loud enough so Fiona could hear.

She nodded. The trio moved to the living room, just out of earshot.

"I'm sorry about them." Sammy B said, standing awkwardly behind Matt. "They've been at each other's throats for a while now. I don't know why. I know they didn't agree with each other a lot, but now Seb just doesn't listen to reason. He's normally so nice."

Three loud knocks resonated through the house. Then three more. Cody entered the room, slightly ruffled from his argument with Sebastian.

"They're here. The crazy ones. That's the mayor and his wife."

The knocks repeated. Fiona went to get the door.

Look at their eyes. And mouths. Cody had said. Now she knew what he meant. Their eyes were open farther then they should be and unblinking, and their mouths were stretched into a grotesque, impossibly wide Joker smile. One of them, a woman, shoved past Fiona and staggered into the kitchen. The second one slipped in when Fiona was busy watching the woman put something in the fridge and slam its door. They both congregated in the living room, near Sebastian, who was trying to strike up a conversation with them. Something caught their attention and they looked up at Fiona, heads cocked to the point that Fiona wasn't sure whether or not their necks were intact. The man opened his mouth and said in an accent Fiona didn't recognize, "HÈR Ñ€$T Î$ $HRØÜDÈD ÌÑ BÊÅÛTY W€ DØ ÑØT DÈ$€RVÊ H€R," then ran out of the house with the woman. Fiona looked back at the seemingly sane boys. Cody looked at her unapologetically and mouthed "Crazy."

Fiona sighed and flopped onto the couch, looking up at the ceiling. She checked the time. Late. she was a little hungry. What was it that the neighbors put in the fridge? She got up, hoping it wasn't anything she had to cook. The fridge was mostly empty. Damn. she was about to shut the door before a flash of red caught her eye. Who puts apples in the fridge? She picked it up. Oh. not an apple. It looked like an apple. But the red was too bright, the stem too straight. Fiona ignored the bizarre-ness of the fruit and bit into it anyway. She put it down, noticing the stark white of the inside compared to the otherwise unbroken red of the outside.

Fiona coughed, red spraying her hand and straightened back up, seemingly out of her own control. Darkness dripped down her vision until everything faded to black.

Fiona came to standing in front of a library, furiously rubbing her eyes to get rid of a lingering dryness on them. She stopped, realizing how bright it was . School. She checked the time and started sprinting towards her bus stop.

Sammy called Fiona over to his end of a table during lunch. It could have just been because she was standing in the center of the cafeteria with nowhere to sit, because he maintained a steady silence throughout nearly all the period. He finally pushed his tray away and propped his head up on his arm, eyes half open. "Nice jacket." Fiona commented.

He looked up with a slight smile that vanished quickly. "Thanks. It used to be my uncle."

Fiona started laughing, and clearly Sammy didn't notice the error in his sentence until she did. "I'm not wearing my uncle he just used to wear it a lot."

"He stopped?"

Sammy looked back down. "He died. A few months ago."

"Oh. Sorry."

Sammy ran his fingers through his hair, keeping them there and staring at the table. "Cody and Seb were fighting."

"Like… arguing fighting or…"

"As in Cody had a bloody nose when I left and they're both going to have a fun time getting up tomorrow."

"Oh."

The bell rang.

"See ya."

"Bye, Sammy."

Matt crossed his arms, lip stuck out in a sour pout as he looked at Fiona. "Where were you?"

"Out."

His expression was replaced with a more skeptical one. "That early?"

Fiona shrugged, remembering what an acquaintance of hers had once said talking about Strangerville. "The sky was pretty."

"Okay." he said, satisfied. "I'm going to do my homework. Do we have anything to eat?"

Fiona thought about the bizarre apples in the fridge. A strange, quiet part of her said keep them. Give Matthew one.

"Not a lot, enough to last until the weekend. That's it."

She decided she was afraid of the voice and threw the fruit out.

"If you want you can grab some dinner. It's kind of late, you should probably just do your homework and go to bed."

"Okay!"

Fiona looked at the bizarre fruits in the trash, and the events of the day slammed into her, eyes taking conscious effort to keep open. She decided she was just going to skip dinner and go to bed.

Fiona woke up to low, unintelligible whispering, calling her. There were dozens of different voices, quietly screaming "ḌǑ ỈȚ. ?ￓﾪĩȵ Ǜŝ. ŦĦɆ ?ￃﾸŦᚻɇꞦ Ƈɐȴȴʂ ȺŃƉ ŸǾɄ ɱɄŞƮ ʁɘṥℙǾℕđ."

She coughed, then sprang back up, an insane smile tearing across her face as control slipped from her body and her world went black.

Fiona woke up to a gray room, hard steel under her and soaring overhead. The air was humid, something other than water polluting it, making it hard to breathe. She made the mistake of trying to look across the room.

She scrambled back at the sight of the thing laying limp, bound by electricity buzzing around it. It looked like some colossal flower, its head laying across a platform. Fiona could see teeth lining the dark petals of its face. It didn't move. She knew, by some kind of demented instinct, that that was The Mother and someone had, thankfully, killed it. She coughed, the strange-ness of the air making her feel dizzy, but not like she was going to black out.

"Hello? Oh, you're awake!" a voice Fiona vaguely recognized said from behind the massive head of The Mother.

"Cody?"

"Yep!" Cody jumped from the platform stairs, a playful grin across his face. He opened his mouth, presumably to explain what was going on, but Fiona refused.

"I don't want to know. How am I going to get back to my house?"

"Sammy's waiting outside. We should probably hurry up though, he's not known for his patience." Cody stuck out a hand. "Need help up?"

"No clue, but I'll take up." Fiona replied. She scrambled to her feet and stumbled, nearly falling but grabbing Cody's arm. He almost fell too, but it was easier for him to regain his balance.

"Come on," Cody laughed. "Let's go before Sammy leaves us behind."