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Written by: Thomas Bohley

"Blood was its Avatar and its seal-the redness and the horror of blood."

-Edgar Allen Poe, The Masque of the Red Death.

"Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do and die,"

-Michael Kinsley, Ours is Not to Reason Why.

"Into the fire she swallowed their hate,"

-Dahlia, Silent Hill.

PART I: BIZZARE DREAMS & BARBED WIRE

CHAPTER 1: SUMMER BREAK FOR NERDS & FOWL-MOUTHS

Breathing was no longer any easy task... tears poured like heavily flowing rivers from her eyes as her Nike-clad feet pounded violently against the ground, a frantic heartbeat echoing through the dark hall. Her heart was a rapidly crushing and expanding pump, her lungs took in only short, panicked, painful breaths as she ran. The hall was dark, it's soot-laden walls barely visible. They'd already taken Caleb, her boyfriend...she'd seen them take him. The images burned like the fires of Hell upon her mind, and burnt at her eyes: Those things were catching up them, only a few hundred feet back. When they got to Caleb, pulling him into the crowd, and doing Lord knows what...but did she go back to help him? No. She kept running, never turning back, focusing only in front of her.

They got Caleb. And now they were after her. Their cries fell like a dark shadow upon her, dampening what hope she'd had, gripping her heart and not allowing it to beat for a moment. The sound was shrill, ugly: it was a mix between an inhuman cackling, loud screeching, rapid panting and low moans; all of these noises were distorted, and sounded as if emanating from an old record player. She continued on in the dark halls, turning at random through the place, rushing past whatever thing should be seen from the corner of her eye. Her vision was blurred with tears and sweat, her lungs and heart beating painfully, the soles of her feet now red and swollen, she continued running, her dark, black as jet hair (now thick and greasy) flying about behind her like a tail.

Suddenly, she came to a halt at a dead end...no...not a dead end! Before her, stood a set of tall, wide double doors, covered in rust, with writing carved deep into it:

ABANDON ALL OF YOUR OLD-FAITH, YE WHO DARES ENTER HERE, OR DIE FOR IT.

'No!,' thought she, 'I am not going to go in there! There's pretty much a warning right on the door!,' Suddenly, she turned around as the sounds grew ever louder. In the flickering light of the hallway, their shadows silhouettes could be seen, running in their bizarre, distorted way, calling for her in their horrid, guttural voices.

'Well, you really have no choice, do ya?,' Her mind told her. "Dammit!," she cried, her voice shaking and raspy from under-use. Turning to the door, she refused to "abandon her old-faith" as she gripped the bar that lay across both doors, and pushed upward with a surprising amount of strength, letting the rusted, black pole fall to the ground with a thick clang. This noise made the creatures pursuing her run only faster. And so, she planted her hands against the door to the right, which bore the last few words:

...OR DIE FOR IT.

With a loud, low creak, the door scraped against the floor as it opened slowly inward, at points making a horrid screech, to which the things behind would cackle with joy. The door seemed to put up a fight, trying to stay still as much as possible, but discovering that such was to no avail in the end. She rushed inward and, with a great hurry as well as a fury she did not know she had, pushed the door closed. 'Alright...I need to keep those cock-knockers out...but how?'

'Barricade the door, dammit!,' one of the voices of her mind called back to her, 'JUST DO IT, NOW!'

And so, she searched for something, anything to barricade the door with...aha! Apparently, the same system to keep the door locked from the outside was the same for the inside, for before her lay a thick, rusted metal pipe, and the doors bore the same holders here as they did on the outside. Not bothering to think why it may have been locked from the outside but not in, she lifted the bar, and shoved it into place. Turning around, she quickly surveyed the room...it was fairly large, appearing to be a butcher's kitchen. It was blank, save for a large oven, a sink with a faucet, and a counter in the center of the room, above which hung various knives, axes and cleavers. The counter was made from soot-covered and rusted steel, a large, flat piece of wood laid upon it's top. Spatter of crimson liquid was thick upon it, whether it be new or a dry stain; in the center of this, was jar, made from glass and dark with soot. What was it with this place and soot? Immediately repulsed, she refused to look into the jar, which stood full to bursting with fingernails.

With a continuous crashing noise, the double-doors began to shake violently, the cries of whatever was chasing her loud and terrible. Staring at the door, she realized something...she was standing still...she was semi-safe...for once, since she'd gotten to this God-forsaken place, she wasn't running. Laughing, she cried, "Yeah, holler all you want, bitches! You're not gettin' in!,"

But somebody else was. With a loud creak, a dark, rusted metal door on the other side of the room began to open. 'Shit!,' her mind screamed, as she searched frantically for something, anything to hide in, or under. Out of desperation, she rushed to another door, with a small, frost-covered window. The freezer. Quickly and soundlessly it opened, letting her run in and close it. Inside, it was dreadfully cold, the air seemingly ice converted into a gas. Hence the name, "freezer." Though chilling, it was not enough to keep whatever was in there fresh. In the back, veiled in shadow, a thin figure hung by a hook.

She brought her arm over her mouth and nostrils, squinting against the thick, horrid smell of rot. Through the window, she watched as a tall figure made it's way to the counter. It was about seven foot, with broad shoulders, wearing a thick black cloak. It's face was covered by a gas mask. Something hung from it's right hand...a cloth?

The Butcher, as she decided it would be called in her mind, used it's left hand to reach inside it's cloak, and brought out a knife, a kukri knife to be exact, and hung it from the rack above the counter. A kukri knife being a knife with a long blade, that curves drastically downward. Then, he raised the cloth...it was then that she realized it was not a cloth, no, not a cloth at all. Hanging from his hand, was what remained of Caleb. It was nothing, nothing but his skin, now drenched with dark blood, the bones still inside, the mouth stretched wide open. Suddenly, tears began to pour harder yet from her eyes, cold against her face as she clenched her eyes shut, her brows turned upward in grief. Her mouth was curved downward at the ends, her face a painful grimace. The room grew shockingly colder, a chill falling over her like none she'd ever felt.

He was dead...her boyfriend, dead, gone...she would never see him again, save for like this. He had died in pain, his mouth torn open, jaw broken, the meat torn out from inside him. And worse...it was her fault. If only she'd gone back and helped, if only she hadn't been so damn selfish! So many thoughts flooded her mind at once. Why had this been done to him? Why had she just let him be taken? What had he done to deserve this, what? Why would she now see him like this, why wasn't she given a second chance, to live a more selfless life with him?

Though it pained her to do it, she forced her eyes open. With her blue, wet and shimmering eyes, she watched, shaking, through the window. She closed them again at what she saw, deciding it was nothing she should ever see. The Butcher was shoving his gloved hand down through the stretched mouth, and ripping the bones out through the broken jaw. As he did so, she could here him laughing, laughing with a sick and twisted joy as he did this. Covering her mouth, she sobbed, "You son of a bitch! How fucking dare you! Drop him, drop him! Please! Don't do this!,"

After a while, she opened her eyes yet again, but was unable to see the counter- for, facing her but inches away from the glass, was the gas-masked face of the Butcher, standing still and non-breathing. She released a great gasp and scream, falling on her back to the cold ground, panting with fear and panic...Slowly, she pushed herself up. For some reason, he no longer stood before her, but was leaving through the door he'd entered. Still shaking and questioning why he'd done this, she gripped the "Emergency: If trapped in Freezer, Turn This Handle and Push" handle, and pushed. Nothing. It simply would not budge.

What? No! This couldn't be happening! She'd survived this far, why would this of all things happen? Screaming and crying in panic, she began pounding on the door, on the window, being as loud as possibly she could. "LET ME OUT! YOU SON OF A BITCH OPEN THIS DOOR! HELP! HELP ME! LET ME OUT!,"

He awoke to the booming clatter of a machine gun, firing into the stomach of a parasite ridden Spanish monk. By this, of course, I mean that he awoke to find his friend sitting on the edge of his bed, playing a videogame. Groaning, twenty-one-year-old Jamie Weston pushed away the small amount of covers that still remained on him throughout the night, and slid over, planting his feet onto the floor, contemplating the bizarre dream he'd just had. He scratched his messy brown hair, and realized that he had slept wearing the full attire he had worn the day before. A striped, green-&-white tee shirt covered his chest and abdomen, jeans below. Jamie's blue-green eyes turned toward his friend, whose eyes were fixed on the screen. "Ugh," yawned Jamie, "Don't we have to be in class, Jon?" He looked around the messy dorm room, where dirty clothes piled around the dressers, and posters of various action, horror, sci-fi and fantasy films clung to the wall, with various bands contributing to the mix. Gerard Way stood two-dimensional on the wall, telling Jamie to join the Black Parade from behind the confines of a My Chemical Romance poster. Jon's bed was littered with clothing, as well as various gaming manuals, most of which borrowed from Jamie.

"Dude, it's Summer Break!," replied Jon, his eyes still glued to the screen, now depicting a man with a chainsaw, the face of whom was covered with a sack. Jon was a short, chubby man, with black hair, brown eyes and tan, rather greasy skin. "School ended yesterday."

"Oh, right!," Jamie leapt out of his sleeplike state and stood up suddenly. "What time is it?"

"It's fine. Only eight o'clock. AM, I mean. You don't have to go home 'till nine PM, right?"

"Yeah. Got a lot of time," Jamie added that last sentence as a note to himself, referring to the fact that whence he was home for the Summer, he would take his sister, Alice, on their annual road trip.

"Damn!," shouted the Gamecube controller-wielding Jon. "Quick, Jamie, what's a quick way to get rid of the spider-parasite...things?"

"Flash grenade." And, sure enough, a flash grenade was thrown; in an instant, the large spider-like beings hissed and curled up on the floor, giving Jon time to stop the ceiling of spikes that slowly descended upon him. "Right," Jamie opened the dresser, pulled out some clean clothes, and walked in front of Jon, toward, toward the closet.

"Dude!" shouted Jon as the character he'd been playing as took a fatal axe to the face.

"I'm gonna get dressed and go down to the computer lab, look at mapquest or something so that I don't get lost. Agh," he sighed, "I'm a horrible driver." This was true. As a matter of fact, he has a total of nine unpaid tickets for things along the lines of: Speeding, Driving too slowly, and much, much more. "Anyway, off to change." And so, Jamie took off into the impenetrable fortress known as the closet, where he could get changed without being seen by the naked eye. Quickly, with the light of the outside room shining in as a thin rectangle through the outline of the door. Once fully clothed, and with antiperspirant on, he left the closet.

Jon, now out of his own little videogame world, turned to Jamie, who stood now in jeans and a tee-shirt depicting a character created by David Firth, entitled Salad Fingers, and said, "I knew you were gonna come out of the closet some day, James."

The words "Oh, shut up!," were just barely heard through Jamie's maniacal laughing.

Giving Jamie a confused look, Jon turned back to the game he'd re-started, saying under his breath, "You're way too easily amused."

Jamie now stared at himself via the bathroom mirror of the boy's dorm. He appeared as if he had not shaven in days, which he had not, due to the little free time that is given during finals. His eyelids were dark and heavy from lack of sleep, and this, combined with the unshaven face, gave him the look of a man on the run, quite possibly from a stampede of rabid squirrels. I am not simply being random by stating the he appeared to be running from squirrels, for he bore many small cuts, and a large amount of bruises, most of which due to the fact that he was clumsy to the point where it was almost beyond belief. You give him one of those Swedish beds that "conform to your every motion," and he'll find a way to break all of his limbs simultaneously. His clumsiness kept him away from doing anything too dangerous, like joining a sport of some kind, and rather, he stuck to videogames. However much of a gamer he may be, he was not the typical, chubby, acne-covered, "If I stand up my legs will break" kind of person. Though he would never actually join a sport, he often played smaller versions of them with his friends.

Still looking into the mirror, Jamie took out a razor and shaving cream.

-'Last day of school,' thought Alice, as she inched toward the ever dreaded math classroom of her high school. 'Last day. You won't have to deal with this class longer than forty minutes. Just go in...it'll be fine...Ugh! Damn whoever decided that math was important!'

'You know,' a voice in her mind argued, 'you wouldn't have that iPod, or, in fact, your meds if math wasn't taught.'

'Yeah, but still. I suck at it. And it's boring. And I suck at it,' now, I know what you're thinking; but, it's not that she was unintelligent, she just didn't like to work...and also, she found math to as useful as a president that starts unnecessary wars and pays no attention to people who have been ravaged by hurricanes (Sound familiar, anyone? Can I get an 'amen?' Okay, I suppose I should just continue with the story). Her black skirt hung a few inches below her knees, above which she wore a sleeveless red shirt, and black gloves that started at her elbows, and went down to her hands, her fingers bare. She wore massive amount of black eyeliner around her forest green eyes, her brown hair hung messily to her shoulders. From her knees to the floor, she wore oversized black boots.

Suddenly, the noise hit her like a brick wall, echoing through the halls, the annoying quack of the school bells. The sound, a horrid devil's cry wrapped itself around her in cocoon of dread, something that would probably not happen if she wasn't already getting an E in math. She was late: she stood right outside the classroom door, and she was running late! "Son of a bitch!," she cried aloud. From inside the classroom, the math teacher eyed her with a look of confusion, students leaning in closer to the door. Staring with wide eyes at the teacher and the students, she clapped a hand over her mouth. Through her hand, the muffled words could still be heard: "Oh. Shit!"

"Um...," the teacher, a young man who always seemed to be out of it, said slowly, "C-care to come in, Alice?"

Nodding, Alice slowly entered the classroom, eyes wide and still with a hand tight over her mouth. As she walked down the aisle in between two rows of desks, she noticed that the students, who had been snickering as they looked at her with wide eyes, had simply taken whatever seat they wanted for the last day of the school year. And so, Alice took a seat next to her friend, Gina, who tried her best but failed to hide her laughter.

"H-h-hi, Alice," chuckled Gina, whose lips were curved into a smile on her chubby face. "I'm sorry," she said as she broke into full laughter, "that's just rich!"

Alice pulled her hand away from her mouth; her mouth was in a wide smile, her eyes squinting in comical joy. She began to snicker a tad, before releasing a full-fledged laugh from her lips. "Miss Thomas, Miss Weston," said the math teacher sharply, causing Alice to stop in mid-laugh as she heard her last name. When silence filled the room, she noticed that Gina had done the same at the sound of her surname. "Now, we all had a good laugh about Alice's fowl little mouth. But, could we please direct our attention away from that and focus on the reason we're here?," he grabbed a meter stick and, as Alice saw it, pointed to a great mass of unintelligible chicken scratch on the chalkboard, and began to speak another language that made Alice wish a drill would be taken to her temple. She absolutely despised the horrid thing known as "Arithmetic."

Alice's eyes became glazed and unfocused as she held up her head by leaning her cheek into her palm, propped up on her desk. As the teacher went on about something involving "pie," Alice's mind began to wander to strange and random things, such as 'I wonder what it would be like if the world was run by cats that rode on the backs of llamas with swords for legs,' and 'How many licks does it take to get the center of a tootsie pop? Hmm...well, I guess the world actually may never know. Wow.' Suddenly, her tootsie pop and sword-legged llama ridden thoughts were rudely interrupted by the horrid shriek of the fire alarm.

"Mr. Burton?," asked a student to the math teacher, this particular student being a blonde boy of whom Alice knew nothing, yet she still hated for no particular reason. "Is that a planned fire drill or did another kid set off a bomb scare?"

"I'm afraid it's a bomb scare," said the math teacher, just barely missing it as Alice held up her fist, while hissing "Yes!"

Jamie kept his eyes focused upon the computer screen as an image of a map, next to bullet-pointed, turn-by-turn directions appeared before him. He brought up a word file, then went back to the directions, where he dragged the cursor of the mouse along the words, just before moving it to the "Edit" option and selecting "Copy," just before pasting it on the word document. As he moved the mouse toward the close option, a simple square in the corner of the screen depicting a simple "x..."

"Hey, Jamie!," came a female voice, causing him to jump in his seat as if he were watching the scene in a horror movie where the creature jumps out of nowhere. Turning to look behind him, the now shaven but still tired-looking man automatically felt his tongue tie, and blood rush into his face as his heart began to pound at an astonishing rate, lodging itself into his throat. "Oh, sorry to scare you!," said she, a woman with long black hair, pale skin and bright blue eyes, her lips colored a bright red. She wore a red beanie on her head, as a thin green jacket hung open over her black shirt, which depicted a cartoon rabbit with a chainsaw. Below this, she wore black jeans with a white belt.

"O-oh, um.. I, eh, n-n-no, y-you didn't, um...scare me, I just, um...," Jamie released a nervous laugh. This woman was Veronica, a friend of his and Jon's who would often come and play videogames. Though the one female in this three-way friendship, Jamie and Jon both knew that she could kill them both simultaneously. Jamie never talked much when she came in their room. He didn't expect that he'd be so nervous, he never thought of Veronica as the type that he would fall for. Yet, he had, and Veronica always thought of him as the odd boy always stuttered whenever he spoke.

"Um...okay, then." She took the seat next to him, her fingers, the nails of which were painted black, gripped the mouse.

"I-I um...hi, Spike." (Her nickname was Spike, and such was used more often that her actual name. Why, do you ask? Because she often describes how she would kill the people she doesn't like with a, you ready for this? It's surprising, shocking even...a spike!)

Smiling awkwardly and squinting as if confused, she replied simply, "Uh, yeah. Hey."

"S-so, um...what are you doing on the computer?"

"Hardcore porn," she joked, smiling at Jamie. "No, I'm kidding. I'm going on IMDB."

"Right," Jamie added quietly, turning back to his computer. Quickly, he closed the internet window, then began to print the directions.

Looking nosily at his computer, Veronica asked, "What're those directions for?"

Turning his eyes from the printer to the fair face of Spike, Jamie opened his mouth to speak, letting out a nervous, stuttering croak, just before saying, "I, um...well...eh, to home -from here to home that is."

"Yeah, I kinda got that. Ah," she sighed, "you strange, awkward little boy."

Jamie responded with a feeble, nervous laugh.

"So, you still taking Alice on that road trip when you get home, like every year?"

"Yeah. Well, it's, um...well, I can't see my, uh, sister for a while since I'm at, eh...college. So, this is a g-good way for us to bond and to catch up."

"Right. Well, I have suggestion of a place to visit on the ride."

"Really? A-awesome. Where?"

"Black Angeles. It's really cool and creepy. It's a ghost town, and it's like one of those landmark type places, where all the important buildings are preserved and have those plaques in front of 'em."

"Sounds cool."

"Yep. It's supposed to have a lot of ghost sightings, that type of thing. Also, the old asylum there is awesome, but you're not allowed in. Supposedly that has the absolute sickest history behind it. And get this; the plaque in front of it? Completely blank."

"Ew, that's creepy," Jamie for the first time when talking to Spike, had not stuttered. But this was because he had not thought of it as speaking to the woman he'd had a crush on for the four years he'd been at college. He had thought of it as simply thinking aloud, something his sister, Alice did much too often. By stating simply that it was creepy, he was referencing how it seemed like something that would happen in the opening of a crappy horror film, likely to premiere on the Sci-fi channel.

"Yup, creepy indeed. I read about it online, but they barely say anything about it. Now, if you wanna take your sister there, look it up on mapquest."

"Right," said Jamie, quickly clicking the blue "e" that was the internet icon on the computer screen.

"So you're going. Hm. Well, who knows, maybe it'll help, like, I dunno, give you inspiration for those disturbing stories you write."

Jamie smiled and nodded, just before typing in the website name. 'Ugh, you disgust me,' his mind taunted him for yet again failing to say anything to her. He responded to this comment with a mental middle finger.

Eight forty nine PM, now. Alice sat on the front step of her porch, reading an X-Men comic book by the light of a candle she'd brought from her bedroom. The house, small and painted a pale blue, sat amid a line of houses, the light of a flame atop wick and red wax broke the darkness. The others in the neighborhood had gotten used to the weird sixteen-year-old girl, who would often read comic books by candlelight. She sat, now, not just for the excitement of discovering Nightcrawler's secret, but to wait for her brother, who would be home from college not to long from now. She wanted to see her brother, and see whatever ridiculously horrible car he'd rented, that would take them on a long, but fun road trip.

Minutes later, she tossed away the comic book, and moved on to another one, entitled "30 Days of Night." Suddenly, there came a noise that seemed to be the cries of a dying camel. Looking up from a rather gory panel depicting a child firing a gun at one of the undead, Alice noticed that the noise had been coming from a small, rusty, sputtering red jeep, in which Jamie could be seen in the driver's seat, a duffle bag next to him and, in the seat behind him, was a small refrigerator and a thirteen-inch screen television, along with a few sheets, and a trash bag of laundry. The Dying Camel Car rolled into the driveway, coming to a stop when it was a good ten feet in. Alice closed the small book, and set it on top of a pile of others, placing the candle, which stood in a saucer, atop the pile.

Jamie, who had already noticed a woman in red reading comics by candlelight, switched off the radio, and shut off the ignition. Once the headlights had gone out, he slid the key away, and stuffed it into the pocket of his jeans, before grabbing the handle of the handle of the door. As he pulled on the handle, he heard the typical clicking that came with the opening of the door; and so, he pushed on the door. But alas, it remained closed. So, still holding the handle so to keep the door "open," Jamie continuously rammed his shoulder into the door. Again, again and again he did so, to the point where his shoulder was actually beginning to hurt a bit. Then, for what was quite possibly his eighty-billionth time, he rammed a sore shoulder into the door, and, luckily, it opened. However, the first thing to pop into Jamie's mind was not 'yay' or 'finally,' but rather, it must have been something like, 'Oh crap, I'm spilling out of the car door like a rag-doll, and my sister is going to think I'm a dumbass.'

And spill out he did; Jamie fell out of the car and hit the lumpy cement of the driveway below, of course, making his shoulder feel as if it had been kicked by a mule on steroids with metal hooves. As Jamie pushed himself up, he saw Alice smiling at him with her arms crossed. "Hey, dumbass. Welcome back!"

"Glad to be back, Alice, glad to be back. Now," he spread out his arms, "you gonna give your big brother a hug, or are you too old for that?"

"Too old, but I know there's no escaping it," she smiled, and walked into her brother's arms.

"Oh, c'mon, you know you love it!," he laughed, patting her on the back before pulling away from the hug. "Wow," he said, examining Alice, "you've really grown!"

"Got it. You look as if you're old and rotting, yourself," joked Alice.

"Yep. Speaking of decomposition, help me bring in my things, slave."

"Oh, I'm the slave?"

"Mm-hm. Youngest. Everybody knows that in this third-world country of 'Ah-mer-eek-uh,' the youngest are used as slaves, and then eaten."

"Oh, right...," she looked at him for a while, simply giving a quiet stare.

A bit confused, Jamie looked around him, to see if Alice had been looking at something else, then looked at her, brows pressing upon eyes in confusion, and shrugged, "What?"

"Oh, nothing. Just contemplating whether I should knife you. 'Cause, y'know, you are my bitch and I can do what I want with you."

Laughing, Jamie rubbed her head, messing up her already messy hair, then leaned into the car door and grabbed his duffle bag in the right hand, his laundry bag in the other. Speaking of teenage girls named Alice with knives, oddly enough, Alice did posses a knife that she took everywhere with her. As of now, the knife was tucked into the belt that wrapped around the waist of her black skirt; this knife had a handle that was flatly shaped, about six inches long, with an image of a red, Chinese dragon slithering upon it. The blade was short, only four inches, but strong and sharp.

And so it was that a sixteen-year-old fowl-mouth with a knife and a twenty one-year-old nerd with a crush on a goth girl walked down the driveway, carrying various college supplies to their door. Righto.

'How did I get here?,' thought Jamie, staring at the blank walls of his "other bedroom." Outside of college, he had owned a small, cheap but clean and sturdy apartment. However, the room he'd slept in ever night from age two to nineteen was always ready for him, should he come to visit as he always did for a few days during Summer Break. 'Seriously, I don't remember- Oh, holy crap, it's summer break!' Smiling, with images of wallowing in laziness and letting all the stress of college burn in Hell, Jamie shifted from his side so that he lay on his back, his head resting on his arms. Suddenly, he had an odd feeling; he felt, well...as if he were a bit more unclothed than he usually was. He looked to both sides, noticing that his arms and shoulders were bare. Worried by what he may or may not see, he lifted the blanket and looked in, to realize that he'd slept in his boxers.

'What the Hell was I thinking?,' he thought. It was then the memory of precisely what he'd thought came into his mind: the night before, sill dreadfully tired from being trapped within the slave-driving college, Jamie had been changing. He was planning on sleeping in a tee shirt and a pair of shorts, but, with sleep heavy upon him, once he'd been wearing his boxers, he'd said bluntly, "Screw it," just before plopping lazily onto his bed.

"Oh, please tell me your not actually naked," came a voice. Jamie turned his head to the desk in his room, where Alice sat in front of a computer screen, playing some kind of online game, which was paused so that she could give Jamie a look of disgust.

"Why, yes, and as a matter of fact there's a midget wearing leather sleeping at the foot of my bed," joked he, but keeping a straight face the whole time. "No," he added afterward, "but still. Avert your eyes, little one. Focus on that game you're always playing."

He pushed away the blankets that lay atop him, and walked quickly to the door of his room. He opened it a crack, and peeked his head out, peering about the hallway to make sure the coast was clear. And so, grabbing some clothes, Jamie said to Alice, "I'm taking a shower. And so," he grabbed a pair of jeans, then walked to the door again, just before doing a horrible imitation of Arnold Schwartzen-something-I-can't-spell. The Terminator, yeah, that guy. "I'll be back," Just in time to hear Alice scoff and most likely roll her eyes, he headed out of his room toward the bathroom, carrying his clothes. Quickly, before he left, he peeked his head in the room, "You remember to take your meds, Al?"

"Yup," said she, dully. Then, once he'd left, Alice turned her attention away from the horrible atrocity done to the "Governator," and quickly turned back to her game. Pounding the keyboard with fury, she spilled a rather colorful vocabulary of creative and cleverly used profanities at the large octopus that had been slapping her away as if she were a rag-doll. And finally, the octopus took a fatal shot to the face from an abnormally large weapon that would have been impossible to be carried without breaking one's shoulder. Watching the beast screech as if sunk back into the ocean, black liquid spewing from the various bullet holes she had graciously spared, Alice laughed maniacally, and cried, "Yes! Suck it, muthafucka!"

She turned to the sound of an opening door, seeing Jamie giving a confused look. "You talking to the octopus-thing or the midget?"

As if she had not heard him, Alice said abruptly, "I got a name for that car."

"Righto, then," he said with an exaggerated British accent, just before completely dropping it with; "shoot. What's it this time? I remember last time it was the 'Burgundy bullet.'"

"Yup. This one's the Dying Camel."

"Dying Camel? Let me guess, it sounds like a-"

"-Dying camel-"

"-Right. Hence, the Dying Camel." Jamie sat down on the edge of his bed, looking at the computer screen, watching Alice play and occasionally giving her tips and warnings. Jamie had felt more clean than he ever had at college; when he was at the dreaded school, he'd be constantly working on some kind of analysis of some kind of poem or play, usually about a few hours before it was due. And so he, being a rather nervous person, had always been sweating, a bit, with stress. Now, he sat on his old bed, stress-free and watching various creatures be sent flying like rag-dolls with the fire of a gun. He wore jeans and a tee shirt that read ACDC, lightning bolt and all. However, Jamie had never liked that band, he just liked that shirt for no apparent reason. His dark brown hair was wet, appearing darker yet and a tad longer than it usually was.

Finally, once Alice had been torn limb by limb whilst attempting to destroy two large octopi simultaneously, they decided to head downstairs. "So," asked Alice, who wore a black tee shirt and flannel pajama pants from bed, "You think we should go and look for a movie, James?" She turned to him as they reached the living room; she had been speaking of their tradition, that each time Jamie gets home from college, they would rent and watch a horrible film, just before starting their road trip.

"Well, it's early in the morning, isn't it? We just woke up, we should have plenty of time."

"Yeah," replied Alice, pointing at the clock, "not really. It's five twenty three PM!"

"Resident Evil: Apocalypse?," Alice indicated the film, which sat next to it's predecessor, amid a great mass of science fiction films on a plain shelf. The video purchase and rental store, which was cleverly titled the "Video Purchase and Rental Store," was packed with people, due to the fact that Summer had come to the rescue of stressed teens everywhere. It's blue walls where full of various newly released video discs, giving Jamie and Alice a fantastic opportunity to find horrible excuses for movies that had gone straight to DVD. While Jamie scanned the new releases, taking into memory the candidates for the stupidest movie possible, Alice ran a search of the science fiction section.

"Hey, I really liked it! And plus, I already bought it, and either way, we already saw it," Jamie called back, grabbing the case for a film entitled "The Martian Snake." He flipped it over, and perused the few words that were supposed to a blurb, and the various pictures a crudely done CGI snake with four eyes racing down the streets of Manhattan, with the cardboard buildings aside it seeming small, so to pronounce the monster's prodigious size. Laughing, Jamie looked back to his sister, "Okay, Alice," once she had caught her eye contact, he smiled, "I think we've got a keeper."

"The Martian Snake? Sounds like a classic!," paying no attention to the fact that the room was full of more people than she and her brother, she set down a movie, laughing to herself, "Sounds pretty damn amazing!"

At the sound of this language, a mother clutched her infant to her bosom, making an overdone face of shock, pressing the baby tightly to her chest to the point where you expected her to crush it's little skull. "There are children here!,"

"Oh, come on, it's not like the thing's gonna remember me saying that. And it's not like I said anything that bad! I mean, I had plenty of really good profanities to chose from, like-"

"Think we should go and rent this, Al?," Jamie quickly stopped her, and signaled toward the counter.

"Right," the Curse-Spewing Girl Wonder walked toward Jamie, paying no attention to the woman who seemingly enjoyed suffocating babies with her breasts. "let's get it then, Jamie m'boy."

"Wow," Geoff, an employee at the store who had often been the one lucky enough to see what fantastically amazing film the super-siblings had rented, set the film down on the counter. He was a tall, skinny red-haired teen, with pale, freckled skin; his ginger-boy appearance had made his nose ring seem extremely out of place. It had also earned him the nickname, Ronald Weasley. "Now, you've rented some pretty screwed up movies in the past, but this...wow."

"Yup. It's a beauty, isn't it? So, how're you, Ron?," Jamie noted that, after a long time encountering them, Geoff had no longer scoffed every time he had been referred to as a character from a series of books about a bespectacled wizard.

"Good. Bored. You?"

"Goodly, very goodly."

"Same here," Alice chimed in, whilst pulling a black wallet with the words, "Anarchy in the UK," written in red, under a picture of the Guy Fawkes mask from V for Vendetta.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Jamie put his hand atop Alice's, lowering it. "I'm the big brother. Seriously, you're the baby. You're supposed to let me pay."

"Well, I'm not a baby," she quickly punched Jamie's arm, smiling, "but I can't argue with the idea of somebody else paying for me. Go ahead, James."

Amazing. Simply amazing. How could anybody have made such a film without actually having the intention of making the viewers kill themselves, now having a reason to say that their life has been tainted, and one cannot go back to normal when so much horrible things have happened. Okay, either to kill themselves, or go to the Gray Havens, and yes, that was a Lord of the Rings reference. Please refrain from laughing at the nerdish narrator. Nonetheless, their jaws had been dropped. As the credits rolled, just after a rubber snake peeked it's head out of a seemingly cardboard egg, so to make room for a sequel, Jamie and Alice watched with sheer...dumbfoundment? Dumbfoundedment? Dumbfou- Anyway, Alice slowly raised the remote control, and switched off the DVD player.

Jamie opened his mouth to say something, then let whatever words were going to pass through his lips become an ashamed sigh, as he looked down and shook his head, sitting hunch-backed toward the screen in their slightly messy living room, the coffee table in which was covered with boxes of Chinese food. Silence. Eyes on the blank screen as images of horrible actors shooting plastic laser guns at giant snakes swam through their heads, like visions of gumdrops and sugarcanes, only crappier. Silence. No sound. Nothing to be heard. Got the point? Silence. Alice, her heavily lined green eyes wide, let out a confused croak, and cocked her head as she stared at the screen. "Wow...," she said eventually, breaking the silence quickly.

"Wow indeed," Jamie did break eye contact with the cold glare of a shining black screen. Their reflections were warped, tall images on the empty lens, with raised eyebrows, staring at the screen with nothing better to do.

"Wow...," slowly, the siblings turned toward each other, smiling. A cackle began to pass through Jamie's closed lips, his eyes gleaming with joy. Alice had begun to chuckle as well, looking directly at her brother. It was not long before their silent cackling had become full-blow laughter. Alice leaned her head into her hand, a hysterical laugh flying loudly from her mouth, as Jamie leaned back, clutching his stomach as a maniacal cackle filled the room. The laughing continued for an extended period of time as they sat in their blissful mockery of a horrible movie.

"D-d-d," Jamie began trying to speak through his laughter, the result being a mass of unintelligible yelps that would likely be uttered by a mutant hyena, but alas did words finally find their way through a maze of somewhat creepy chuckling. "Do you remember that part, w-when that guy! That guy-," but then, his voice backed into the maze again, and was drowned out by the laughter.

Seemingly knowing what he meant, despite his complete lack of ability to use the English language, nodded and cackled, "Yeah, th-that was...that was awesome!"

And so they laughed away the moments; years and gears went by, the glaciers melted into the oceans, and the skies began to glow red, through the sand and dust that blew through it. In this post apocalyptic world, all buildings were entirely buried in sand, and skulls laid like rocks upon the bleak desert; very few now still live, but it may not be for long-great beasts, with large heads and tentacles had fallen from the sky: it was their turn to rule. That was a lie. A complete exaggeration. I got carried away. Sorry about that.

Once they had decided it would be wise to breathe, the laughing had been reduced greatly, as Jamie and Alice gasped for air through small chuckles, eventually sighing, letting the laughter float away. After a while's silence, Alice spoke. "Well, Sir James of Aberforth, it's pretty late now. Y'think we should probably go now?"

Glancing at the clock, Jamie yawned, "Yeah, I guess so," cutting the yawn short, he continued, "but let me take a quick shower first, and then we gotta say by to Mom and Dad."

"Another shower, Jamie? What're you, a nerd-fish?," She giggled slightly at her own, rather obscenely cheesy joke, just before thinking, 'Oh, crap, why the Hell did I even laugh at that?'

"No, actually, I'm a halibut. Now, grab your stuff, if you're packed."