Interfectores in Triu

Chapter 1

It was a bright summer day in Rockland County, New York, where the three teens, Alice, Michael, and Terrence Stark, were sitting around the family entertainment diner that Michael and Terrence's father built as a place of joy in the town for kids and teens to enjoy.

Alice was reading an old Uncanny X-Men issue that her brother had gifted her, trying to distract herself from the fact that her mother would rather ship her off to Alice's older brother's family instead of raising her herself. But alas, her nephews and niece have been keeping her busy.

"Do you have any Jacks?" Michael asks his brother in their intense-not really intense game of 'Go Fish' with a deck they won from the arcade.

"Go fish, Michael," stated the older boy, looking at his cards before looking over to find his little brother and sister. "Liz! Quit poking around Dad's office!" The sixteen-year-old called out, placing his cards on the diner table face down to go and rangle the three adolescents standing at an 'Employees Only' door.

"That goes for you too, Bruce!" Alice states, not looking up from her comic, her half-brother has been quite the problem lately. She doesn't blame him, though; if she'd had to watch her father and stepmother get murdered earlier that year, she'd be problematic as well.

"Lords, why are we stuck on babysitting duty again?"

"Well, I do it because Nancy pays me."

"You get paid!? All I get are threats and the classic, 'they're your younger siblings, Michael, you're supposed to watch them'-" Michael mimics while doing exaggerated gestures. "- What does she mean by that!?"

"That they're our younger siblings, Michael." Terrence answers, sliding back into the booth.

"Correction: our half-siblings, and if Nancy keeps forcing us to watch her kids while she goes out doing whatever she does, I'm going to stage a coup." The fourteen-year-old proclaims, cleaning up the deck of cards, ‌that the game would not continue.

"Can we go to the park now?" Whined the four-year-old Eliza. "I'm bored, and Daddy won't let me play with the characters!"

"I wouldn't mind going to the park." The quiet voice of six-year-old Garrett voiced.

"Why? You're just going to complain the entire time we're there?" Michael questioned, annoyed that the three kids were demanding to go to the park.

"It's fine, Michael. You all could use some color in your skin anyway." Alice fought, closing her comic and getting up from the booth, grabbing her bag and sunglasses. "Let's go."

***

The park in question was this patch of grass with a bit of playground equipment near the front and the dense forest of Appalachia bordering the back. Eliza took the first chance she could to run off to the playground, finding friends at her preschool already there. Garrett and Bruce broke off from the group of teens to find some shade. The two aren't the most social in the world, but they enjoy each other's presence. While our favorite group of teenagers found themselves near the woods, the younger kids don't usually trek near it, and the older folks of the town are always spewing 'myths and legends' about what goes on in there. The three teens didn't care, though; they just summed it up to superstition and stories.

"I pity you two; you're both so pale." Alice dramatizes, climbing a tree for a comfortable high spot.

"Very funny, Allie. So very funny." Terrence responds dryly, grabbing a cigarette and lighter.

"That shit's going to kill you," Michael states, joining Alice in her treetop heaven.

"Since when did you care? All that D.A.R.E. stuff getting in your head?"