Warnings: violence, derogatory slurs, body horror, hints of abuse

been sitting on the backburner for a long while. I've never written anything complete beyond a short story in the horror genre so it's to test out some writing mechanisms before applying them to an original story.

and this song is named after Change (In the House of Flies) by Deftones.

When the devil pulls his strings, all the world must dance

-The Devil's Circus (1926)

—

An old village like St. Marie, nestled in between both farmland and vast forests, is the perfect place for an obsession to be born. It thrives on the mundane, pulling its victims as far away from reality as possible and changing them from the inside. It grows in a way that any living being does; it breathes, it eats, it lives.

Frowned upon, obsession is even considered a disease; one that needs to be dealt with, beaten as soon as possible lest the sufferer deviate from the norm. Some say it serves as a cautionary tale to those who lose control of themselves, most often diagnosing it as a "problem."

The degree of the problem is evident not only through what the person is obsessed with, whether it is an object, an idea, or a person, but with the depth of the obsession and how much it has detached the person from the real world.

Others, the ones that are the obsessed, may hide it under the guise of fascination, a much softer word, so that they can continue to appear as if they are living a normal life. They do not want people to know that there is something clawing away at their mind, keeping them up at night. Sometimes it works, while other times it is in vain.

Matthew Williams was one of those people whom the "problem" had latched on to and fed off of.

For the most part, Matthew Williams, adopted son and very distant relative of one Arthur Kirkland, lead a rather unremarkable life. He was a quiet and polite boy, who was of an average intelligence and of soft but fairly average looks.

Because he fit into the mould of the general population, which hovered around the one thousand range, Matthew also went rather unnoticed. Which he was perfectly fine with, since large amounts of constant attention didn't appeal to him. His brother, also adopted when Arthur's sister and brother-in-law died in a crash, was the louder and more abrasive one by nature, and Matthew was content being the one labelled the good, if slightly forgettable one.

Together, the three of them (for Arthur had never married, for he had taken in the boys when he himself was fairly young and had devoted his time to them thereon) lived a life in a refurbished old Victorian house in the middle of the village that, while not luxurious, was comfortable.

His friends were average people as well, much like everyone else in town. His demeanor earned him a job as one of three cashiers at the local general store, a job he proudly held since the age of fourteen and had used to save up for that one day he might be able to go to a college without having to be too much of a financial burden upon his father. His life was satisfying, and he thanked the powers that be daily for it, glad that he wasn't weighted with any ills or diseases or horrid situations. Matthew was perched so high up on normality, that his descent into the peculiar was most jarring.

It had started with a fascination.