The chaos was over. I changed back into normal clothing and drove with a lead foot until I could get to my new place and sleep. I’m gonna be living in an old two story building that most likely could have been a school, or office, or something. I get up to the second floor, third door down on the right, in a two bedroom apartment that would now have three people.

I was living with a girl maybe 2 years older than me named Lula, and a guy whose age was somewhere between 15 and 30 named Travis. They both seemed nice enough online, albeit a little overly so on the girls part, but I figured that was just them trying to be welcoming. As I made my way up, Wally in hand, I was greeted by Lula.

She greeted me like we were two long lost friends. She probably would have bear-hugged me if I wasn’t holding a turtle.

“Come on in! Come on in! Let me show you your room and where everything is.” Lula chimed, “Are you hungry? I know a great place in town to go for welcoming people, they have the best pizza anywhere!”

“Um, maybe, yeah, let me just get stuff set down.” I walked in to see the melancholic male on the pull out couch in the living room. He gives me a cordial nod and tacks on to Lula’s rambles with “You might be a better judge of pizza. You're Italian right?”

“Actually, I’m what the Italians have always wanted to be: Greek”, I retorted as I duck into my room. It was kinda big compared to a foster kid’s usual room in New York. It also had what looked like an old fire escape without a ladder or stairs, so I guess just a rod iron balcony. There was one full bathroom adjoining me and Lula’s

rooms, which I can only assume would create a few awkward situations, but at least it had a bathtub.

I close my doors and look over my wounds from the previous night. I was worried that the cut on my leg was still dirty based on the dark color it was. I do heal fast, but this wound was healing strangely fast. It also wasn’t infected or healing wrong like a lot of my wounds, as if it was wrapped and treated without my help. I’ll have to keep a closer eye on it over the next few days.

I put on some superficial bandages. There was a slight knocking on my door “Hey Athena, we are really hungry. Do you think you’ll be ready to go soon?” Lula chimed. Immediately after that my phone chimed.

“Yeah just give me one more minute.” On my phone was a notification from an old forum, a user named AriesAnnabell411. Her real name was Jess, she was the one who let me know about the weird activity here. It read:

“Hey there, I got a crazy story that happened last night. I can. Not. Wait. To tell you. Hit me up whenever you got some serious chat time <3”

I knew what she was talking about. I knew she would never know as much as I did about what happened there, but she could tell me what everyone thought was happening.

“Hey, Lula? Could I invite someone to dinner?”

Lula emphatically agreed. We headed out to the pizza place and grabbed a booth. Jess was exactly what you expected from her username, a bottle black haired goth girl with straight across bangs, and her skin made extra pale with makeup, in a big black hoody. Travis and Lula eyed her up and down as she sauntered over. Lula seemed cautious about her and Travis seemed indifferent, he was more interested in snooping through my MP3 player.

“Hey, are you Jess?” I asked cautiously.

“Who are you?” she replied coldly.

“I’m Athena. We talked online? We agreed to meet up here and you said you had a cool story to tell me.”

Her demeanor automatically changed. She took off her hood, jumped up and smiled “Hey! It’s so nice to finally meet you!” She hugged me. “So what brings you to Strong? Nothing good I’m sure.”

“Why wouldn’t it be something good?” I said as she sat down way too close to me in the booth.

“Because nothing good really happens here. You can’t even go to a kids’ pizza place without getting sliced and diced”, Jess said with a weird grin.

Lula replied “Oh god. I feel so horrible for those families, but we don’t need to talk about that now.”

“Don’t we?” Jess giggled. She shot me a side glance, like she knew she was going to impress me. Her smirk felt way too devious for the tragedy she was talking about. “It happened so close to us, we don’t know that they couldn't set up shop in a new town next.”

“Is this something I should worry about?” I asked, trying to rouse a little bit of sympathy from Jess. I like a good crime story as much as the next girl, but death doesn’t bring me joy.

“I heard this Chaz guy stole a whole bunch of people and was trying to make them super human by subjecting them to all kinds of torture.”

She was almost chuckling. “Apparently, one kid was burned on every part of his body except his mouth. Isn’t that crazy?” I saw no such thing, there were many bad things, but none were that. “They think people in town were helping him. My money is on the elementary school teachers, or the pastor at the local church.”

“I’m sure whoever it is will get caught. Hopefully small town rumors are making it more severe than it was.” I said, sipping a diet Coke and checking my insulin levels on my pump.

“Speaking of small town rumors, has Jess told you about the angry town drunk yet? He’s something real to stay away from, unless you want a pair of broken knee caps,” Lula chimed in.

“I think he’s smart to keep him and his daughter away from this crazy town. All these Bible thumpers will do is shame and frame you into being exactly like them if you let them,” Jess said, full of spite.

“Katrina isn’t his daughter, and we all know he doesn’t want anything to do with her,” Lula shot back.

“Who is Katrina? And why does she live with a crazy guy she’s not related to?” I ask. Lula got quiet, and Jess looked at her almost dauntingly. Travis shifted uncomfortably in his seat at all this.

“He’s her step dad. Her mom died a long time ago and dad was never in the picture so all she had is Dave. She’s a bit of an odd case,” Lula trailed off.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“Like, you don’t know whether to feel sorry for her, or afraid of her. She’s too quiet to let anyone know,” Travis spoke for the first time.

“And it doesn’t help that this town seems to hate her because she was a bastard, but I think she’s cool at least,” Jess chimed in, with a sense of righteousness. Lula changed the subject after that, clearly not wanting to continue with this sad story. I tried to subtly dig for a little more info on this girl, but no one would budge, so we talked about the town. They told me what actual news they had about the events from the night before (basically, no official suspects have been identified, so really nothing) and it finally came around to whether or not this had anything to do with all the female students that seemed to be popping in and out of existence.

“I don’t know, but whatever it is, I hope they fix it soon. I look too much like a high schooler for this,” Lula tacked on. Jess rolled her eyes in disgust.

“Yeah, but they're not going to. Their daughters aren’t partying or getting pregnant. And they actually listen. The police aren’t even getting any missing persons reports anymore because no one cares.” Jess seemed incredibly frustrated, which is good because I think that’s when she talks the most.

“So, is it every female high schooler?” I ask

“No, a lot of them, but not all.” She sips her almost gone drink. “It’s all the church girls, straight A students, cheerleaders, student body officers; all the go-getters I guess.”

“And maybe Katrina,” Travis chimed in again.

“That’s a very big maybe. Missing a few days of school doesn’t mean you’ve been kidnapped,” Jess barked.

“Yeah, but coming back with cut-off hair and an eye patch means something,” Lula said, looking away at nothing and wanting to leave.

“Yeah, but that didn’t happen to anyone else, and it was like, 2 weeks before the disappearances started happening.” Jess really hated this subject. “She probably got into an accident and fell on something just like she told everyone.”

“Or Dave did it.”, Travis said, pulling apart a pizza crust with his teeth.

“What is your problem with their family?”, Jess growled.

“I only have an issue with Dave, and I wouldn’t call them a family. I’m pretty sure Katrina would rather be anywhere else than with him.” Travis actually seemed kinda annoyed by now too. I am beyond fascinated at this point, but I don’t even know what questions to ask. Lula attempted to once again change the subject as we waited for our cards to return with our checks. We walked outside to part ways and Jess gave me a hug and put her hand into the back pocket of my jeans. She was apparently giving me her phone number. I don’t fully intend on using it. As we drove back, I started thinking about the best course of action here. I know most of the activity of the cult happens at night -because it always happens at night- and I know that this girl named Katrina seems to be a strange outlier in the disappearances. I don’t know if it is directly related, but I need to rule her involvement out at some point at least. I guess I need to figure out exactly where this drunkard's house is.

Lula was a little pissed off the whole drive home. She definitely didn’t take to Jess, and I can’t say I did either. I’m glad to meet an opinionated girl, but she was opinionated for all the wrong reasons. She even seemed happy with the girls disappearing, which made me wonder how seriously I should be investigating her as well. Regardless, I can’t cut ties in a town I just go to when there’s so many things I still don’t know, so I’ll stay cordial. She might turn out to need some help herself anyway. You don’t always know when you are in danger.

“Sorry things got uncomfortable there. I didn’t know she would be that intense in person.”, I say to Lula. “So, where is this church and the place with the crazy dude anyway?”, I asked as we drove through some residential streets.

“The church is the only new and clean building, with the fountain out front. The street and cul-de-sac this guy lives on is the opposite direction and to the right.” Lula gestured to my right and, sure enough, at the end of the street we were crossing over was the perfect picture of a white, modern, stucco exterior church, with a fountain and everything. The amount of lighting in the parking lot seemed to cover the whole block enough to account for the lack of street lights. I suppose that will be easy enough to find later.

When we get back to the room, I spend about 20 minutes unpacking, enough to find my pjs and lie down in bed. I intended to sleep, but that only lasted about two hours. My dreams were filled with the tombs under Chaz’s pizza place and the strange details of tonight’s conversation. A whole town

that doesn’t care about disappearing and reappearing girls, and one girl was missing her hair and an eye. It would be hard to pick exactly which girl would be best to tail, so I should start by rolling out the anomalies. I could wait, scope out the town, get in with the locals to find information, but why wait? Why let anyone else disappear? I mean, no one else even knows I’m here really, I might not have this chance again.

I put on a hoodie and jeans. I don’t want to be caught in my costume too early on and give anyone any leverage to figure out who I am, or that I have relocated here. There were enough trees around that I could jump from my balcony to one and make my way to the ground moderately safely. I jogged through the woods, far enough to hide, but not far enough to lose sight of the road. I found the church nice and easy. I make a circle lap around it, and with no suspicious activity to report I make my way down towards the one place I have been told not to go. The houses got more and more spaced apart as I traveled farther down. By the time I reached the end of the road, the nearest house was something like 3 city blocks away. I use the term house loosely; this was a shack that looked like it barely had three rooms in the entire thing. It looked dirty in the darkness, so I can’t imagine the full extent of the disrepair it was in. There was no back fence and one window per house side, so I walked to the back window to try and get a peek at whatever's happening. It was open so I had to stay low and quiet to make sure I was not seen, but I have a good view.

As I approach it, I start to realize how deathly silent it is. No one 20

was in the room. I could see in the low light of a solitary lamp what appeared to be a bed with a side table and nothing else. The room was almost completely barren of personal belongings. This only makes sense for a place where no one person stayed for a long period of time. I hit my mark early I guess. Given that the room was empty, I could get a chance to look around. I debate whether or not being a slightly brown teenager climbing through a window in a hoodie would get me killed or not. The answer was most likely yes. The best I can do is continue surveying the house to find out why all this is happening. I walk around to the right side, but similar to the left, there are no lights on.

However, there is one thing: footsteps. They were faint, and coming from the yard, not the house.

A brief moment of bitter silence, and I felt my face being forced against the side of the house. I swung my leg behind me, and with some luck hit something. I was released long enough to turn around and see a large man, but as I went to look for his face, he was knocked sideways out of my view by some sort of projectile. I looked his way to see that after only a second of being down he was scrambling for the woods. I look to the other side and see someone. This person wasn’t as tall as me, seemed thinner built and was also in a hood.

I find my words, staring at the figure, “Thanks. Who-”

“Don’t mention it.”, the figure snapped, “Seriously.”

At that moment, a light flicked on this side of the house and I could hear the muffled anger of a grown man. I drew my attention to the window and

then back to the figure, but they were gone. I ran back to the other side of the backyard to check the window one last time with more light in the house, but there was no light in the room. The lamp was off. The window was closed.

It took the walk home for me to realize that was probably Katrina’s room. I jog home, with more questions than answers and a major headache. Poor kid, even bouncing around a system a lot I had a few posters and pictures. This girl had nothing. But, where was she before those two figures showed up? I guess she could have just been in the bathroom, but it all seemed like an odd coincidence. All Jess said was that she came back with short hair and beaten up after a few days. She never said anyone called the cops, even after she came back so injured. I know it’s still possible she has something to do with this, but I can’t help to hope I don’t ever have to hurt her anymore than she already has.