So Homey...

The living room is just like any other; happy family photos are on the pale gray walls, the tan living room set facing the television over the well-used fireplace. A matching recliner sits off to the side, a multicolored chevron blanket draped over the back, adding a color accent to the room. The beige carpet is clean and slightly worn.

On the couch sits a girl of maybe eight, eating a bowl of cereal and brushing her dark brown hair at the same time. She looks up at Devin, and she and smiles a full, but closed mouth smile, her brown eyes sparkling from her smile, then goes back to eating and brushing. She is dressed in a cute school uniform of khaki skirt and white polo top. Devin can hear her happily crunching away on her cereal. She is also watching some cute cartoon on television, looking like a fun anime.

"That's Cameron," the father says, "she's always this happy to go to school, which I find weird," he mutters under his breath, so that Cameron doesn't hear, Devin suspects. "Oh, I'm Mike, by the way. I already know your name. It's Devin."

He walks towards a doorway across the living room, but not towards the hallway. "Come into my office, and we can talk. Cameron will leave soon, and you can um, get to work then." Devin takes a moment to peer down the hall.

It is dark towards the back, and she notices several doors along the corridor. 'I wonder which one is my room,' she thinks to herself.

Devin walks across the living room following Mike, her footsteps making soft swishing noises on the carpet. Cameron is oblivious, now finished with her cereal and hair, and looking more like a child zombie with her mouth slightly hanging open as she watches the television.

Devin follows Mike through the doorway into his office. A beautiful office greets her; wine red walls with mahogany wood paneling, inset-round lights in the pale gray roof light the area, making the mahogany desk shine. The bookshelf on the right wall is filled with books, beckoning to be read. Some she knows, such as War and Peace, others she doesn't. Two chairs with forest green upholstery almost sigh in wait of being sat on. How could this family home have such a sinister problem?

As Devin sits down in the chair, she notices a faint smell of something she can't place. Mold? No, maybe a rotten vegetable? She sniffs inconspicuously, so that Mike won't notice.

'Not vegetable, or mold,' she tells herself. She brushes it from her mind, figuring it might be a trash can that is out of sight in the office. Time to focus on the conversation at hand. She looks directly at Mike and watches him intently as he rounds the desk to the chair.

Mike sits down in the black leather chair across the desk from Devin, and steeples his fingers under his chin. He leans back in his chair, an almost complaint-like crunchy squeak coming from the leather. He takes a deep breath, almost as if he is clearing his mind to cast a spell.

'He seems like he is just barely holding it together,' Devin tells herself.

Pulling her out of her thought, he speaks now, in a sorrowful, but intent tone," My oldest child Sarah has a curse upon her. At sunset, three times a year, she becomes a beast, a murderous beast. She has never truly ever been able to be controlled during the change or while in the beast mode. The only way we have been able to protect ourselves and everyone outside our home is to chain her down to the bed and lock her in the room we use for her changing." Devin sees tears in his eyes as he continues," She took my only son from me. He was her twin brother."

Mike loses it for a moment, choking back sobs at these words. Devin can see how lost he is, but still is wondering how he has been able to keep this under wraps from the neighbors and others.

She can't help but think about the fact that all of this is happening right under their noses, just meters from their own homes and families.

As Devin lets this revelation sink in, she can't help but dam the questions that want to overflow from her mind. She sighs and settles on one," How did Sarah become cursed?" No time to be sensitive, she tells herself.

Mike wipes his tears with a handkerchief from his pocket, and then rests his arms on the desk, holding the small cloth in his hands. "I don't know." He looks behind Devin as if checking for something, then begins in a hushed tone, "Melanie is not my first wife, and Sarah and Evan are not her children." Devin understands he is speaking of the former two, now just one, oldest children. "My first wife, Victoria, she died giving birth to the twins. I met Melanie a few years later while on vacation in Maine. We have been married for twelve years now, and I honestly don't know why she hasn't left us with the horrors that have been happening."

Devin sees a moment to interrupt," So Cameron is only a half-sister to Sarah?"

"Yes," he answers, "she is mine, too."

As if on cue almost, a knock at the door, and Cameron comes in. "Bye Dad, the bus is here!"

"Bye Cameron, love you!" he replies with a loving smile. She can see that he loves his children in his eyes as he watches his daughter close his office door.

He waits until he hears the front door close before he continues, "She is perfectly normal, my Cameron. However, Sarah started turning four years ago. Cameron doesn't know, by the way. We send her to her grandmother's when it is time for Sarah to change." He looks down in his lap, "It's in one week."