--Oakland Town--
.
6:15 P.M
The dark hours would soon be upon the land as many moved distractedly, no one knowing what they were thinking.
Over the past few weeks, more and more people became distracted, getting into accidents and forgetting themselves in a daze.
A sense of fear overtook them although they didn't know why exactly they were so afraid.
They've never had to fear their parents/grandparents/elder relatives before. So why the change now?
Deep down although they sensed something wrong, they dared not let their thoughts wander into a psychotic rampage of idiotic conclusions.
This is a world of science.
Any meaningless and ridiculous thoughts could send them to a looney bin to be looked up for heaven knows when.
Today, Helga crossed the road with her friends, reaching the fields and skipping across the meadows.
These city folks might look down on their little farming town but she loved it quite a bit.
The city was tight and full of too many people, with little to no places for her to have fun like this.
The scene here was beautiful, the butterflies were fluttering, the trees vibrant and the air fresher.
Why, she could smell the grass stalks and flower perfume that thickened the air wonderfully.
It was already a quarter past 6.
14-year-old Helga knew she shouldn't be running along the train tracks in these troubling times when the sun was about to go down, but she didn't want to go back home and face her grandma.
"I'm telling you all. There's something really messed up with my grandma. She just isn't the same after returning."
"My Grandpa too" A curly-haired teen exclaimed, feeling a chill run down his spine.
The other children also nodded, recalling how odd their grandparents have been after returning. And the more they spoke, the more they realized how familiar all their returned elders acted.
"Last night when everyone was smiling, I don't know if it was because I was having a bad feeling, he opened my eyes to take a peek only to see my Grandma standing over me with saliva dripping down her mouth. It was creepy." Helga paused. "You don't know how much I prayed to the God of Science to make it past the night."
To her, it was truly a miracle.
"My grandpas did the same too. In my case, he was caught waking up and blatantly asked me to go to sleep while he stayed standing over me like that."
The boy also thanked the God of Science for letting him see today.
Well, with how common their grandparent's behaviors were, they began wondering if it's a common trait with people who become so old.
Maybe they were sleepwalking or facing some serious case of creepy dementia?
Even for teens their age, they thought rationally, not belonging to anything superstitiously possible.
"You know what? My grandmama also likes to stare at an open space and laugh by herself too. It's just that whenever I try seeing her front face, she stops her laughter."
It's true.
Helga has only seen her Grandmother laughing from the back.
When her grandmother laughed, her shoulders would raise high and her body would twist weirdly.
They say laughing and smoking can make one feel young again. So could that be the reason? Helga has tried to tell her parents something is wrong with her nana.
But it seems in the world of adults, she was being ridiculous.
Her parents had already taken her nana for a full checkup and apart from the previous ailments that plagued her nana, nothing new showed up.
What more could she say?
"Hey, did you hear? Timmy and his family suddenly abandoned their grandparents and are nowhere to be found now."
"Eh? That can't be right. In my opinion, they didn't abandon the grandparents but are missing!"
Jumping often on the train tracks, the boy still trusted his intuition.
He didn't know why he felt that way, but he knew Timmy and his family very well.
He found it too hard to believe the grandparent's stories of them running to the big city and leaving them behind.
Something wasn't adding up. He could feel it in his bones.
It has something to do with Timmy's grandparents, and now he was also becoming suspicious of his grandfather who suddenly decided to leave the Home and stay with them for a while.
As someone who wanted to become a police officer, he felt his grandfather was displaying psychotic behavior.
But he dared say such a thing to his parents... well, his mother's trusty slippers would locate the back of his head no matter how he ran.
Today he must find a way to sleep with his parents and let them face his grandfather hovering over their sleeping bodies at night.
That's right.
His parents were still counting on him because they were not the ones always at home with his grandfather.
To his parents sleep was very important so when it's lights out, you best believe they were snoring away to sleepyland.
Heh.
He didn't believe they wouldn't take when feeling his grandfather's intense gaze during the night.
Looking at his good friends and buddies, Gregory thinned his lips and faced them seriously.
"The adults don't believe us. So it's up to us to save their butts."
"Save their butts? From what?"
"Gregory gave everyone a side-eye look. "I have no evidence and am purely going on about it with guesses. But if my hunch is correct, Timmy and his parents are dead."
"What?" Helga and the rest gasped with pale faces. "Dead? Like in the movies?"
"Idiot. What other kind of death is there? If Greg is right, then the grandparents might have been the ones who killed Timmy, buried his body somewhere in the backyard and created evidence that made it look like the family fled."
But the question is why.
Why would they go out to such lengths in their old age?
Could it be when you're old, you have a unique bucket list you want to be done before you die?
Either way, Timmy's grandparents were one of the first to go missing and return.
Timmy had once told Greg how scared he was becoming after his grandparents arrived.
The first sign was their excess consumption of plain wheat stalks. They would chew buckets of it at a time, as though it was some delicacy.
The next sign was their constant laughing throughout the day.
Why did their bodies twitch so strangely? And why didn't they want anyone seeing their faces when they laughed?
Up next would have to be their obvious lack of sleep.
Think about it. At night they spend the time staring over them, their grandchildren like owls. And during the day they don't see them sleep.
It could be a hard case of insomnia. There are studies of people with insomnia having only 1~3 hours of sleep a day, finding it hard to sleep at all.
Perhaps it has something to do with that. But what are the odds that so many people have insomnia all at once and act the same?
When Timmy told him about his worries, he tried calling Timmy down, thinking Timmy had a wild imagination.
But this was Gregory's biggest regret as a 14-year-old boy.
He didn't take his friend's dilemma seriously. And now, he had a pounding feeling in his guilt that Timmy was dead.
Learning from his mistakes, he dared not allow any of his friends to fall victim to their deranged grandparents.
Something was seriously wrong, and it was up to them, the neighborhood kids, to save their town from their psychotic grandparents.
.
"Has everyone brought the stuff?"
Helga and the others tightened their grip on their backpacks.
"Yeah. It's all here."
Gregory nodded. "Good. Let's do a count. I've got the vinegar. You said they seemed too repulsed by it, right?"
"Yeah! My grandpop's almost flung his plate of food once when my man wanted to pour vinegar on his salad. His growl was very weird too, like animals."
"Good detailing, Ross. Keep it up."
"Yeah, boss!" Ross flashed his crooked teeth laced with braces, proud to be complimented.
Very quickly, they checked their supplies and prepared for whatever attacks that their grandparents might have.
Following Timmy's grandparents' psychotic symptoms, they estimated what stage their own grandparents fell in.
Some people also felt their time was almost up, as their grandparents' behaviors had already reached the last stage before the big disappearance.
Gregory was adamant that they save themselves before their grandparents strike.
"Why don't we involve the police in Linda's matter?"
"No way. The police would just turn us down like the last time. I think they too know it's weird, but there's just no evidence to back it up. What's more, there are over 200 grandparents who have returned after getting missing. So how will they find the time to watch every house all the time?"
Helga frowned.
There were just too many people to watch. So the police have their hands full.
"Gentlemen... ladies..." We are alone in this. It's up to us to protect our parents."
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