text: It started late last fall, when a little boy from my sisters art class, James, a very shy quiet boy started telling his teachers he'd made a new friend, but when the teachers asked, he'd tell them it was a secret, and he couldn't tell. Obviously, in a town as small as ours, rumours spread, some meaner then others, some hopeful that this kid was finally coming out of his shell. But when he stopped coming to school, people got worried. Friends of the parents would ask, and both the mother and father answered the same "he's sick, whooping cough and all that.". This worked for a few weeks but time went on and James was still absent. "Do yah think he'll be ok?" My little sister, Holly, asked me one day as we sat on the porch, watching the dogs run around. "Yeah, I had whoopin' cough as a kid, ain't that bad, just a fever and a rash." I explained to her, but then, my sister's best friend stopped coming to school too, and when Holly and I went to see if she was ok, we were greeted by both her parents, and James's parents, as well as the two children themselves. Neither of them looked sickly at all, but to all of our horror, James, who had once been blond with brown eyes, and the friend, who'd had brown hair and eyes, now had snow white hair and the most radient blue eyes you'd ever seen. People got worried that something was going on. Most people thought it was chemical, or it was a weird condition along the lines of poliosis or albinism. But neither kids families had a history of pigment conditions, and our town was miles away from anything, let alone a chemical facility. But we are southern, so the next logical conclusion was the supernatural. Over the next few months, two more kids changed, but strangely, more stuff started to happen to them. They started reassuring everyone that they were safer then they'd ever been, and that they were all alright. The four kids started to crave each other's presence, as if they needed to be together. Their parents tried to keep them home but at some point they just couldn't keep them apart. I started to get worried for my sister, and asked my friends to get my schoolwork so I could stay home with her. By the time winter came, and a rare flurry of blizzards hit our town, there was five of them, the oldest was eleven, youngest was five, and the town was in a mess trying to find out what was happening. A special doctor came in from the big city, and she concluded that whatever was happening to these kids, was some kind of infection, but unlike any she'd ever seen, and it wasn't long before all five kids were shipped off to a special facility to keep the rest of the town safe. The facility could be seen from the highway, and it loomed over the elementary school like an omen of death. But clearly, the infection wasn't spreading from kid to kid, it was coming from something else, because to my own horror, while I was brushing Holly's hair, I noticed a white strand, and another and another. I knew I couldn't keep her home because everyone would know, so I grabbed some of our mother's cheap dye and thanked God she had the same hair colour. I spent the rest of the day in shock, barely able to function. The kids who'd been taken had been sending letters to their parents... But I haven't seen the little red arm of James's families mailbox flip up recently, and in my paranoid brain I assumed the worst. While I was home alone, doing the chores my parents should be doing, I stopped, turning off the tap, and for some reason I just collapsed in on myself, the horror of the situation and the hopelessness finally setting in. I went to my sisters room, where all the photos were of ME and HER. Our parents hadn't raised her, I DID, and now this. I spent the next few hours sitting on her small pink bedside, tapping my left foot anxiously as I panicked inside. But as I looked down at my hands, I noticed something. A very faint blue glow from under her bed, I wouldn't have been able to notice it if the room wasn't dark. I thought I'd imagined it, but when I knelt down, looking beneath the bed, I realized that something was glowing in slow pulses under the floorboard. My sister caught me in that moment, her smallness making her tiny footsteps too quite to hear in time. She looked at me, here eyes just a bit bluer then they were when she left. "Stan?" She tilted her head. "Holly, do yah' know what that blue glow is?" I sat up, gesturing under the bed. She looked between me and the bed, no expression on her face; her head still tilted slightly. "Nooooo?" She said in that childlike drawn out manner. "We're leavin', I don't give two shits if I don't got a full license, I'm gettin' you out'a dis fuckin' town." I stood, stomping over and grabbing my sister by the arm. She didn't fight, and as I grabbed the keys and our jackets, I heared a knock at the door. I was pissed off and annoyed and yelled that nobody was home, stupid I know. I picked up my sister and left through the side door, the snow and wind blazing in our faces as I got her in the back seat and quickly got in the drivers. I hadn't stopped to look at who was on the front step, but when I did, I froze. James, Jessica, Henry, Linsey and Grace, the five kids looked back at me with their icy blue eyes, and in my state of complete shock, I was only snapped out when I heared the back door open. I was too late, by the time I undid my seatbelt and climbed out the door, she'd joined them, the cheap hair dye ran down her jacket, exposing the white streaks in her dark brown hair. "HOLLY! GET AWAY FROM THOSE FREAKY ASS KIDS!" I shouted at her, but as if she didn't hear me, she and the other five kids ran away like a pack of wolves. I chased them down the street, not caring if anyone saw. I chased them until I lost every ounce of breath in my lungs, and I cried out for Holly to come back, but she didn't of course. The scientists from the facility soon appeared in town, frantically searching for the kids, but not as much as I did those next few days. I practically flipped over that bed and tore off the boards to expose a strange blue moss or fungus growing underneath my sisters bedroom floor. I ripped out more and found out which direction it was growing from, and low and behold it was roughly coming from the direction of the last kid to be infected. I went outside and beneath the snow and grass was more moss, in thin lines like veins. I followed it for days, drawing myself a map as every day the snow covered up my hard work with my shovel. When I got to James's house, the ground zero of this whole thing, I came to a stalemate. The moss ended here, and I had to make a tough decision that day. I do feel guilty for what I did the next night, but I love my sister like a daughter, and I couldn't let this take her away from me. I didn't care about the other kids, or stopping the infection from harming others, my goals were selfish, and I came back that night, with a crowbar, rope, and ducktape. I knocked out the father first, and after that it was easy to take down the mother and soon they were both tied up. I wasn't gonna hurt them, I just needed them out of the way. Their house was quiet and sad, clearly the house of a grieveing family. James's bedroom door was easy to find, since the frame was covered in colourful lines with heights next to each one. I pushed the bed aside and began tearing of the floorboards, but there was nothing there. I shouted profanities in frustration and quickly began searching the house for literally anything blue or glowing. And it was then that I found it, it the basement of the house. Glowing blue mushrooms sprouted from holes cracks in the cement. I was confused why the parents wouldn't have reported these, especially after what happened, but then I realized that they were growing as I watched. These mushrooms were newer then new and the parents probably didn't even know about them. Thankfully, the father was a handyman, so there were plenty of tools down there. I began smashing the floor and walls with a sledgehammer, until the cement was in small enough chunks to simply be pushed aside. I found it, I finally fucking found it, under the floor was a colony of this weird fungus, and the cause of all of this. I went back to smashing, trying to uncover all of this stuff, but to my horror it was everywhere, probably in the bones of the house too by now. I made it to a separate room in the basement, where all the fathers tools were kept, and of course I found more fungus in there too. The fungus smelled funny, and the more I uncovered the worse the smell got. It was kinda like standing in a field of berries, that sweet smell, but x100 until it was completely overwhelming to the senses. "Stan?" My sister stood in the door way, her hair and eyes now completely shifted to white and blue. She stood in the moss, which grew over her boots and up her legs. "Holly!" I smiled, lunging forward but I realized it wasn't real. Her form waved and distorted and slowly dissolved into nothing. "I'm ok Stan, I have a new big brother to keep me safe, I don't need you anymore.." Her voice echoed around me, and I frantically searched and searched even though I knew it wasn't real, that I was exposed to that fungus and it was getting in my head. I found a gun in the basement, hidden in the top shelf of the fathers work table, and even though I had no idea what it'd do it made me feel safer. As I quickly walked up the stairs the mushrooms seemed to swiftly follow me, growing up from the stairs and spreading across the carpet. I reeled back in terror, nearly collapsing on the wall, but I kept on running as the shrooms pursued me. I soon realized I'd made everything worse, and the two knocked out parents were consumed by the fungus, and it began to grow from every nook and cranny, filling the house with a horrible blue glow. I scrambled, almost crawled out the door and fell on my face into the snow. The blue glow radiated from the window and open door and I huried to my feet, only to see I wasn't alone. The five victims, the children, they bombarded me, pushing me to the ground with strength I wouldn't have imagined for such small kids. I'm nineteen I should be able to take them but I struggled for what felt like forever before the smell of berries overtook me once again. This time it seemed more like a freshly baked pie. I could feel the warmth of a kitchen with its oven being used, and I could almost hear my mother humming, like she would back before she started going out to party every night, which was her way of saying she was getting away from my dad for the night. The feeling almost made me forget about the situation. The kids, the fungus, my sister. She was the last thing I saw. Her and her pink jacket looming over me like an omen of death. I blacked out soon after, only to awaken in a place unfamiliar. I found myself in what seemed like a cave, or a catacomb or something of the likes. Those blue mushrooms and that moss was everywhere, and I didn't dare touch it as I slowly sat up. I could hear children laughing deeper in the cave, and in my desperate need to save my sister, I went forward. I soon walked into a large open space, where the blue light seemed to begin. In the center of the room was a giant mushroom that looked more like a tree, and within it, fused to it, we're the five children...and my sister. Seeing her, in the belly of this beast. I shattered inside as if I was glass and I rushed to her, collapsing as I pulled her in. She was covered in that moss, and her skin was a pale blue as were the others. She hugged me back and smiled up at me. "Stan... Are yah here to join us?" She asked, but I could barely hear her over my sobs and cries. I was in way over my head, and I had no idea how to save her from this. "Are you ready to join the family?" She asked him. ".. Wha-what family?" I spoke between sniffles. "Big brother keeps us safe, big brother loves us, please join us Stan, be a part of the family..." She pulled him closer. It was then that he saw him, wearing the same white medical garbs that the other kids wore, the only difference being the numbers "00" being stitched onto the side. He had the white hair, but his eyes were completely blue, no iris or pupil, just blue. He stood with limp arms and shoulders, and looked down at me with a weariness in his expression. "Stanley, aren't you tired of being the crutch your parents lean on? Aren't you tired of the neglect, the lost innocence, the loneliness?" The guy leaned down. He looked close to my age, maybe a little younger. "The world is so cold, and so dark... Let me keep you safe..." He reached out, but I pulled away. It was then that my sister tightened her grip on me and I realized she wouldn't let me go. As the weird fungus boy reached out once more I squirmed frantically out of my sisters arm, but just as I was gonna bolt away the boy grabbed my wrist, pulling me in. I couldn't look away from those eyes, and once again I smelt berries, but this time it was as if I was laying in the bushes, looking up at the sky. I smelt morning dew and I heard distant squacking of tweety birds. My fear melted away and I eased my tense muscles. I soon fell into his arms as the children chanting in a language I didn't recognize. I felt the moss grow on my skin but I didn't mind, I was simply enjoying the embrace. The fungus boy set me down next to my sister, and sat next to me, smiling as he played with my slowly whitening hair. He told me how happy he was to have another boy his age to talk to, how he was so lonely in here with nobody to love, no family to call his own. I was falling asleep to his calming voice, and some part of me, the part that wanted to fight back, was slowly drowning in the overwhelming feeling or contentness. My sister looked happy to have me here, and the other children continued to chant. "Be mine forever Stanley, let me take care of you and our family..." He said. I only really recall slipping into the moss as it consumed me, and the last thing I saw was the boy and my sister, watching me decend into the mass. I belong to the colony now, with my little sisters and little brothers and siblings. Big brother provides for us, he protects us. I love big brother, and I will forever be a part of him, here in the mass... I love... Big brother.