After four or so years of hiatus, I am back and, as I'd like to think, better than ever. Despite the atrocity that is my last chaptered fic (Someday Sunny Skies), I have decided to leave it up for you loyal readers to enjoy, and for me to look back on and reminisce. Nonetheless, I've started a new work. Here we go.

There was a radiant crescent out that night, shining over the suburban neighborhood below. There seemed to be an outage of lights in the small village, for even the street lights were the same color as the midnight-hued sky. Through the wooden-rimmed windows, one could see the silhouettes of sleeping civilians, hidden beneath wool blankets that winter night, lost in a world of their own unconscious fantasies. After all, what sort of person would be awake at this time of night, roaming the eerily quiet streets in the middle of a power surge? One that had, coincidentally, occurred seconds after the final citizen had succumbed to the tempting offer of sleep? Nobody normal, of course.

But as there are in every 'perfect' suburban town, there is an oddball. A person who wouldn't be considered normal, nor would they be greeted warmly by the other residents of these pristine white houses. The residents of Spring Falls Drive would certainly deny that they knew anything about their community's single abnormality. It was the corner house, number 54. Unlike the perfectly green lawns of its sister houses, number 54 had yellowing grass, with clumps missing and revealing unattractive dirt. Number 54 Spring Falls Drive was losing the rich white quality of its paint, instead turning an angry shade of light grey. The roof seemed to have cracks, and the porch was covered in cobwebs. The civilians thought that nobody lived in a house that had once had such great quality, and they deliberately sniffed and held their chins high as they passed. Mrs. Number 72 could be seen whispering to Mrs. Number 48, "Oh, what a shame that the contractors won't let us fix up this place. We'll never find a suitable neighbor if it looks like this, oh no."

What Mrs. Number 72, and the rest of the Spring Falls Drive residents didn't know, was that someone did live there. The disgusting old house was only in such a state because its single resident lived there only twice during the year: the month of July, and the two weeks that students normally get off of school for winter break. If anyone had paid attention, they would see a shadow through the curtained window, a shadow of a man who looked no younger than one hundred years old, which of course was ridiculous to think about. Nobody lived to the age of one hundred; at least, nobody with physical capabilities as proficient as this man's. He would roam the hallways of Number 54 at night, when darkness fell and people were lost in their dream worlds, in the world of unconsciousness. Only then would he come out into the open.

It was then, at two o'clock in the morning on January first, as the year morphed into the wondrous year two thousand, that he closed the front door of his run-down property, knowing that it would be the last time he would ever do so. He wouldn't even be returning come July. No, he knew it was finally time to do what his closest friends had instructed him to do. And once he completed this task, he knew that his time would finally come to an end. He wasn't scared. Those like him never got scared. They simply accepted their task for what it was, fulfilled what was required of them, and succumbed to the seduction of death. His time would come in a matter of days, and he knew it. He turned, and checked to make sure nobody could see him, even though he knew it wouldn't matter. Grabbing a fistful of his dark violet robes, he spun in a full circle before disappearing with a pop.

A vague prologue marks the beginning of a new story, since I have been a bit ~evasive for the last few years. Last time I wrote something, I was a freshman in high school. I am now about to be a sophomore in college. Oh, how time flies!