Viveca Moody doesn't know exactly how she got here, this place seems strange dark. It looks a lot like her house except there isn't anyone around and there is thick ice making it impossible to open the living room window.
Is she in the living room? the wall is painted with the muriel that she and her mother made but it's strange, instead of a pretty summer's day the wall is painted in a nightmarish brown and black like fall from hell, the ponies on the Merry Go Round are hanging from meat hooks and something... is wrong with them.
There is a strange sound at the front of the house like the front door slamming and then the sound a heavy feet.
Viveca shivers as she sits up, eyes widening and skin crawling at the sight of the ice that's formed over the window. It had been cold when her mother died, and it was the cold that killed her. Cold, and the treacherous ice that wouldn't hold human weight. Viveca hates ice. Why did it have to be ice?
She looks over the wall, shuddering at the twisted parody of the cheerfully familiar mural she'd seen for over half her childhood. Horrified fascination draws her closer to the wall, studying the warped corpses of the carousel horses despite her revulsion - but then the sound at the front door makes her whirl around to look towards it.
"Hello?" she asks and her voice sounds thin and weak to her ears, barely audible in the cold air. Her heart starts to pound. Whatever the hell is there can't be good, her gut says and it rarely steers her wrong. She starts to edge towards the basement. Dad has guns down there - not a huge armory, but a couple of shotguns and a spare handgun along with ammunition. Could she reach the door, though, that's the question...
She hears a different sound then the sound of children, struggling screaming crying, and then she catches a glimpse of the tall creature in her front hall, he's wearing the remains of a dress shirt under his long black trench coat, he wears a large helmet that is an oval shape, it's held together with massive rusty chains that not only connect to parts of his body, pink showing on the white shirt as massive rings cut through the cloth and flesh.
He turns his head though there his no way he could see Vivi he starts to move towards her, behind him his arm drags along with more chains each one having a metal ball the size of a tennis ball attached to it.
Viveca feels her stomach lurch with nausea - the... man, for lack of a better word is horrifyingly fascinating - like something out of a movie or nightmare, but too real, too immediate for her to possibly discount and ignore, the pierced flesh still bleeding sluggishly around the rough, rusty chains.
Viveca takes a step back, ruthlessly suppressing her reactions. React later, act now, or there might not be a later she can hear in the back of her mind, and for her it's Shane Moody's voice speaking - no-nonsense and direct advice that steadies her nerves.
The figure turns towards her and she draws a breath, grimacing. Ugly as he is, horrible as is the sound of crying children, the last thing she wants is to let him get between her and the door to the basement, but she also doesn't want to get trapped in there, either. Especially if it turns out this twisted mirror of her childhood home doesn't have what she's hoping it has.
Viveca moves towards the back door instead, looking through the kitchen door and watching the advancing figure as she starts to back towards the kitchen - if he starts to move faster than a walk she'll speed up as well, but she doesn't want to discover if he's got a partner the hard way.
As she moves towards the back door there is a second being that she notices, it's thin with bones that push out against it's skin and it's ribs bust through the skin forming a huge cage like thing with it's rib cage.
Inside the rib cage, is what looks like children, however they are featureless blobs of bone and flesh, no gender no mouths no anything, except that they have features that look like they have been carved with a knife, mouths made of slit with still wet edges.
The main creature will open the chest of the first with a sickening sound and the "children" will swarm towards Viveca.
Viveca turns and runs, fighting nausea as she flees the sight of the second creature's opening rib-cage, heading into the kitchen towards the back door. She doesn't really see the 'children' pursue her at first - but by god she hears them scrabbling behind her like an unholy pack of dogs.
Through the kitchen, she reaches the back door. A moment's fumbling with the door and she gets it open, just as something brushes against her leg from behind. Fear launches her out the back door at a break-neck pace - out into the backyard surrounding the pool, running barefoot across the ice that coats everything...
Viveca's feet fall out from under her and she falls things behind her reaching out towards her however she falls beneath the ice and into the cold dark water, vaguely above her she see the figure of the man in the coat looking down at her watching her as she's pulled into the cold wet darkness.
Viveca panics as her feet go out from under her and she starts to slide to the thin skin of ice that covers the pool - not the water, not the cold. She didn't want to die that way.
Grasping hands from behind her offering no rescue, only a different version of a horrible fate. She tries to stop before hitting the pool but there's no purchase on the ice - all she can do is watch as the water grows closer before she hits. Ice shatters and she goes under, the cold water closing over her head and blurring the figures moving around the pool.
Her bedroom hasn't changed that much, still purple, with the yellow stars that her foster mother Cindi lovingly painted one by one on the wall.
the room had even stayed the violet shade through out her High School years, on her bed is the purple Robbie the Rabbit that Morris got for her when he went to the amusement park.
The window outside is white with fog that covers the backyard.
The scream echoes in Viveca's ears. She jerks awake, eyes flying wide as she comes out of the dream, but the panicked reaction still lingers for a few seconds - heart pounding, chest heaving, feeling dizzy and disoriented with the sudden, abrupt change from nightmare to waking.
