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AUTHOR’S NOTE: The house used in this series is called “Family Starter Home ~ 10k” by BBanks710 on the gallery.

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Blair stepped out of the taxi, giving the driver a sizable tip with the fare she owed before turning around and looking at the place she’d now be calling home. The house was located in the neighborhood of Shady Acres and the plot was called Cliff Side Crest as it overlooks the town below.

She eyed the house for a moment. To say she was already homesick was an understatement – she missed the cherry trees and the gentle breeze that always ruffled them, the river and the park that framed it. StrangerVille, though it did have its share of greenery, was mostly desert and full of cacti placed in precarious places where one can easily, accidentally, smack into them. No to mention the sun that blazed overhead without mercy.

StrangerVille was nothing like Willow Creek, where she had moved to after her mother’s passing.

She started to question why she had come here in the first place and if it was worth it, but then she remembered the picture she had found of her father in the attic – her mom’s own personal stalker stash. She wanted to meet him, to find him and tell him all of the things she’s been through to date.

Shaking her head, she pulled the card from her pocket. It had been slipped into her pocket by Colonel Rhett III. She had given him a confused look in response, but the look in his eye told her to keep quiet about it. She hadn’t looked at it until now.

Her brow furrowed at the card. It was just like the postcards she had seen being sold at the visitor’s center, except… at the bottom of the card was his thick, almost illegible handwriting.

‘I know you won’t listen to me, but I can’t live with myself if I didn’t at least try. Stay away from the lab, Wilson.’

Blair’s brow furrowed in confusion, ‘The lab? There was nothing about a lab in my briefing.’ She was quiet for a moment, letting her mind mill over the information she had received. ‘Top secret, then.’ She concluded with a frown.

If things had turned out differently, she would have ignored his warning instantly and sought out this top-secret lab, but she wasn’t in StrangerVille to solve some mystery. Well, in a way, she was – she was here to solve the mystery of where her father is and if he knew she existed all these years.

Shaking her head, she turned to enter the house when something caught her eye from the left. It was a bizarre plant with an even more bizarre glow. She didn’t know much about gardening, but she was sure plants did not glow – aside from the ever-elusive glow fruit tree, of course, which her neighbor had all throughout her childhood.

Every minute or so, the plant would pulse as if something were growing inside of it. ‘Strange’, she thought as she pulled her phone from her pocket. As a military personnel, she had learned early on to trust her gut and to document anything that seemed suspicious to her, and that’s exactly what she decided to do.

Blair took a picture of the mysterious plant before pulling up the notes app on her phone, documenting what she had found. She wasn’t paranoid, but her superior had always taught her to leave nothing to chance, so she locked the note and the picture behind a wall, to which only she could access.

After doing so, she changed into her workout clothes and started to jog around the neighborhood to clear her head. She had always been pretty active growing up, so the military was a good fit for her since they focus on athletism. Workout or going for a jog had always been her go-to when she had a lot on her mind. It never failed to work, either.

On her trip, she noticed that the land was littered with those strange plants. They were honestly everywhere and she had to wonder how she hadn’t noticed that on her journey up to her house, but most of the trip had been spent going through the briefing in her lap.

She also spied a man kneeling by one of the plants and he appeared to be talking to it. Blair observed him for a few moments, but she was too far away to hear what was being said, plus she had to question his mental state since he was wearing a metal colander atop his head, something you see often with conspiracy theorists.

‘No wonder it’s called StrangerVille’, she thought with a frown as she continued on her way. No matter how many times she scolded herself and told herself to focus on the task at hand, she couldn’t help the nagging feeling at the back of her mind.

Something big was happening in StrangerVille and, maybe, if Colonel Rhett III had told her of the goings-on, she would have steered clear and continued to live a normal, carefree life.

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