A/N: I've had this one saved up for a while, and I figured today would be the perfect day to post it. I know I haven't finished Out To Lunch yet, but here is the immediate and serious sequel to Home Is Where The Heart Is. This story will cut back to the BF5, every so often, but mostly it's going to focus on Vert's mother, Janet Wheeler. For those of you unaware, Janet has been in a mental institution for several years, after being diagnosed with schizophrenia. She hears voices, she sees things, and she believes things that can't possibly be true...can they? I mean, she's crazy, right? There's no way any of this could be real... Oh, god, what if it is... If it is... We're all going to die. Soon. And horribly...

Disclaimer: I do not now, nor have I ever, owned any stock in or had any say in any television franchise based on Hot Wheels brand merchandise. I recommend reading this right before bed. With the lights off.

Janet's eyes began to droop, but she continued to wander through the forest. Between the thick cool mist that hung in the air and the seemingly endless forest of gnarled, dead trees, she was completely and hopelessly lost. Janet had no idea how she had even come to be in a forest, being that she could not remember leaving her family home in her little desert town, but with the complete lack of discernible landmarks she more than likely wasn't leaving any time soon.

It felt to her, in a way, that she had always been here. Of course she remembered her home and her family; she remembered her life, though she could not remember how she arrived in such an awful place. But somehow, the forest felt like a part of her, called out to the darkness in her soul. When the middle-aged mother had first awoken standing against the stunted, lifeless oak, she had been terrified. There were no answers to her cries for help; no search party, no rescue dogs… No insects or birds or signs of any life other than her own. As far as Janet could tell, she was the only living thing in these woods.

Except for him.

This had scared her infinitely for the first few hours—days, minutes, years? Just how long had she been here, anyway?—but now she found she was strangely calm. However long she'd been wandering this awful forest, Janet was coming to terms with the fact that she was going to die. Many people are able to accept their mortality in the abstract and eventual, for we all grow old and the end waits for no one, yet much like various types of accident or tragedy, people rarely consider that it could happen to them. Janet, such as events were, was accepting the concept of her death in the immediate. The forest was dark and cold. She had no resources, no food or tools, not a jacket or even a vague idea of where she was or how long she had been there. There was little chance of her creating a shelter or building a fire with what she had ("Smart move, quitting smoking," she muttered bitterly. "A cigarette lighter wouldn't have helped in the least.") She was deep-down bone-tired, and Janet knew if she fell asleep in this desolate landscape, hypothermia was the most optimistic outcome she could hope for.

Of course, in the early stages of her wandering, aimless and without a clue as she was, Janet had descended into panic. She ran without heed to direction, skidding on the wet, rotting leaves and scraping her elbows on the bark of trees as she passed. When she couldn't run anymore, she screamed. When she could no longer scream, she leaned against a tree and cried. And when finally she had no more tears to shed, Janet straightened up and continued trudging ever forward.

She was exhausted, it was true. It was also true that she had spotted from time to time what appeared to be an unnaturally tall, thin man in a black suit. And, unfortunately for her, it was also true that Janet was all too familiar with the aforementioned being; she knew him all too well and was sure who was following her, even if he was too far off and moving too quickly for her to make out his face.

She didn't need to recognize his face. He had no facial features to recognize, but Janet knew him all the same. The villain that tailed her now was the same monster that had haunted her nightmares for years, the same monster that shadowed her everywhere. He was always watching, waiting, blending in with the shadows or taking someone else's face, but no matter what manner in which he disguised himself, Janet could always feel him watching her. She could feel him intruding in her deepest thoughts, feel his slimy, spidery fingers molesting her brain with unwanted caresses.

Janet could feel him stalking her even as she pondered why he didn't just rip her apart and get it over with. The Slender Man in the black suit was with her in the forest.

No… She was trapped there with him.

Janet slowed her pace to observe a shadow in the distance. Despite her pounding heart she steadied herself, watching something thin as a sapling move almost imperceptibly. Shadows grew fuzzy as claws raked the leaves, and she knew the end was near. Sooner or later, that thing was gunning for her.

Something grabbed her shoulder, and she the whispering of a ragged, phlegmy voice.

"wHaT iS tHe CoLoR oF tHe NiGhT?"

Janet flicked her eyes open with a startled gasp and looked at the clock on her nightstand.

6:43 AM

Her eyes narrowed.

"Ah, close enough," she sighed. There was no way she could get back to sleep now, not when she'd gotten used to the schedule at Brush Hollow. To stay in bed now would just be lazy. The best thing to do would be to forget about her nightmare and find something to occupy her day.

A few weeks had passed since her homecoming, quiet save for a visitor here and there. Janet had received callers from as far as California, friends and relatives by blood or marriage, all wanting to wish her well. 'Oh, how are you, I am fine, how's the kids, it's a shame about what's-his-face, that guy you were married to, whatever his name was, see ya next time.' Day in, day out; coffee, gossip, and suddenly she realized she might as well never have left because not a one of them had changed. Or they certainly pretended that nothing had changed, even though Janet had been through so much and felt like an entirely different person. She remembered their every mannerism and quirk, allowing her to interact on a relatively normal scale despite her complete lack of emotional connection. In a way, the monotony and denial was rather soothing, a nice schedule to keep; a place for everything and everything in its place. She was precisely where she belonged and exactly where and who she needed to be, and nothing was wrong.

Save of course for the fact that whenever she closed her eyes, the tough as nails mother and wife would dissolve into a little girl gripped with primal terror of a thing with no face that lurked and waited in the dark. The nights were terrible, awful things that haunted her when she woke, so much so that she occasionally wondered why she bothered with sleep. Overall, though, her days were just fine.

Not excellent, not horrible. Just fine. Nice, even.

Janet grumbled as she fried her eggs. She'd always hated that word, 'nice.' She could never really put her finger on why until well into her adulthood, during her tenure as a high school art teacher. She was speaking to an English teacher at Handler High. The young man was assigning a book by Neal Shusterman to the Freshman class and was discussing a particular passage in which an older man attempts to manipulate a young character into his way of thinking. The old man describes the concept of 'nice' with disdain: "Not good, not bad. Just nice. You'll live nice, and then you'll die nice, and your life will have been a nice waste of time." And oddly enough, that single line from a ridiculous young adult novel about aliens or something (whatever the heck it was called) had summed up her exact feeling. Nice was such a small step away from boring. Why not strive for something better, or even worse? At least worse would be more interesting than just nice.

Of course, she had suffered through more than six years of worse, and even with all the screaming, worse could get pretty darn repetitive. For a short time after her release, Janet begged and pleaded for nice like a pathetic soul crawling back to an old lover. Now that she had realized what an albatross around her neck nice was, it was too late. Her days would not be anything but nice until she could find something to do with them. Janet had been saddened but not surprised to learn that her teaching position had been filled. Her savings weren't too shabby, and she could keep afloat on that for the moment. Money was not a problem. But there was still the matter of how to fill these precious hours of daylight. Janet had taken to spending the day outdoors, enjoying the sunshine while she could before autumn came in earnest. Her son, Vert, had given her a sketchbook and some new charcoal pencils as a welcome home gift, and already the first few pages were filled. A flowering cactus on this page, sagebrush and rock outcroppings on that; one drawing she was particularly proud of was of a well-fed and oddly tame coyote that took a nap in her yard. It felt good to get back to her art, even if she was only shaking off seven years' worth of rust and going through the basics.

Truth be told, the time she spent at her sketchpad felt like waking up. Her time in Brush Hollow had been a nightmare; her first weeks at home the quiet that comes after the dream is over. Now that she had finally stirred, Janet decided it was about time she got out and did something productive with her day. She showered and dressed, ate breakfast, and took her medication. She was supposed to have a follow-up with Dr. Mendoza in the afternoon, but that gave her plenty of time to straighten up the art room and decide what was going into the attic.

Janet had been quite pleased to find her home in such great shape. It seemed that in the years since her incarceration, Vert had replaced the plumbing, wiring, and ventilation, installed central air conditioning, and for some reason felt the need to get rid of the delightfully cheerful clown wallpaper in the closet off the den. Apparently at some point, a wall in the dining room had needed to be plastered, and the new paint was not quite a perfect match, but it was likely as close as he could have found at the hardware store and Janet decided not to point it out so as to keep from hurting his feelings. And the one thing she had always wanted as part of the structure had finally been put in: A skylight. A big, beautiful pane of glass to let in the sunshine and moonlight and brighten up the attic. Oh, sure, it was mostly ugly exposed wooden beams and insulation, but it wasn't half as dusty as she remembered, and with the AC cranked up high, it was perfectly comfortable. More importantly, it was an open space as big as the house's entire floor plan. A wonderfully large open space with plenty of room for multiple canvases and easels and any and all sorts of art supplies she could ever want, with a wide berth around each piece of furniture to pace back and forth between brushstrokes. All she had to do was take a few things to the Salvation Army across town and move things up from her study downstairs, and she was in the clear.

Quick work was made of old items left behind. Baby clothes and outdated appliances that Jack had meant to fix and sell; ugly gifts from relatives they didn't like; all of it was taken down into the kitchen and sorted into boxes and bags. Janet had only meant to get rid of a handful of items, but it shocked her how easy it was to just throw it all away. Every piece of junk made her think of before, the way things had been, and a slowly building disgust made her want to drag it all back out behind the house and burn it. But she knew if Jack were there, he would balk at destroying things other people might be able to use; for all his hotshot, devil-may-care attitude, he hated to be wasteful. Finally, at long last, she had the attic junk sorted, and all that remained were a sparse few keepsakes from those no longer with them: a wedding dress that had belonged to Jack's mother, school yearbooks and caps and gowns, her brother's and father's military uniforms and medals.

"Probably says something about me," she huffed, lugging a box of nothing but hideous flower vases from the same spinster aunt down the stairs, "that almost everything I kept belonged to dead people."

Without much care, Janet plopped the box down on the kitchen table and surveyed the mess. "Mm-hmm, yep," she said with a nod. "That is a lot of useless crap." Yes. It certainly was. There was no way it would all fit in the car; she would have to make two trips. Janet drank a glass of water as she pondered whether to go shopping for new paints beforehand, but eventually she decided to wait until after all of the useless crap was someone else's problem and the attic was cleared out in its entirety. A few miles there, back, and there again, and it would all be gone. Forever. She would never see it again, any of it.

She was glad.

She never wanted to see it again, any of it. She hated every last bit. …Except for maybe the contents of one box, the items in which having always gotten to her. Wistful for her memories, she opened the box back up for one last look and picked up the first item she saw.

A red set of fuzzy footie pajamas, sized for a child aged twelve months. She still remembered how cute her baby boy had looked standing in his crib, giggling and reaching out pudgy little arms to be picked up. Janet rummaged deeper in the box and found a pair of swimming trunks from when her son was eight, and beneath that a baseball cap that probably hadn't fit him in years. All those years, all those memories, crammed into a few boxes... Could she really let them go? It was true that she wanted to throw all the bad times away and make a fresh start, but should that mean sacrificing the good along with them?

And then she recalled all the time she had missed spending with her son, nearly a third of his life, because she had become so obsessed with finding out what had really caused those bad times. She needed to let go of the darker moments, yes, but sometimes it felt like that was all she had. The music she loved was dark. The movies she enjoyed were dark. She had made a career of showing the darkness in her heart to anyone who would look, colors clawing at the canvas and shadows so real they crept out and consumed all who gazed upon them. Sometimes Janet felt like if she bleached away all the darkness, there would be nothing left of her.

But the fuzzy warmth in her hands, a bright and lively garment of fleece, was proof enough that there is never darkness without light, however small it may be.

Janet hauled the baby clothes and toys back up the stairs and tucked them in a corner of the attic. There was always a possibility that she might need them soon. Especially now that Vert had a girlfriend. That pair was clearly very much in love and might someday give her grandbabies.

Once her son's childhood was packed and stored away, she was able to just barely shove the last items in her car and make it to the thrift store in one go. Janet knew the undertaking of this whole project had been a little impulsive—throwing out all those things, moving her entire record collection and all of her paintings and supplies up into the attic, just because it had AC and a skylight. That was quite a lot of work for something she vaguely wanted and otherwise didn't think through too much. And Janet supposed also that she probably should have given Vert a chance to pick over what was going to Salvation Army in case there was something he wanted to save, but despite the earlier moment of contrariness that led her to keep the baby clothes, Janet did not care enough about anything else in the boxes to bother.

After that was taken care of, she went to the hobby store up in Sagan and acquired some new paints. She had big plans for that paint. She would start to work turning her recent sketches into paintings to get back up to speed, and then she would work on finishing the Miles Freeman portrait. After that, the sky was the limit. Who knew? Maybe Janet would even use some of Vert's friends as subjects. Agura was a beautiful young lady, no matter how uncomfortable she was with that beauty. AJ was a sweet boy, but his face said he was descended from Vikings and Janet could make all sorts of gallant battle scenes with that amazing physique. And the British kid was annoying as fuck, but Janet had to admit he had a certain regal bearing, when he wasn't whining like a little bitch; if his claims of royal blood were true, he would probably commission a portrait.

"Note to self: if the British kid commissions a portrait, price-gouge like there's no tomorrow." Janet chuckled as the steering wheel turned in her hands. "Stupid rich brat won't even question it."

All in all, things were looking up. Janet's schedule wasn't exactly full, but her art would keep her occupied. Going out today was the first step in acclimating herself to being around people again, and perhaps later she would even grab a slice at Zeke's. But the sky was bright and clear, and right now she was enjoying just driving around with the windows open so she could feel the wind in her hair. She'd bet her left ear that Crash Canyon was looking extra majestic today, just dying for a true artist to come along and render it's every crevice in striking detail.

A 1970 Dodge Challenger parked thirty feet back from the edge of a cliff, its white paint glaring in the desert sun, and the driver's side door opened. Janet breathed deep, exhaling in relaxation. The desert really was beautiful, dangerous as it could be at times. The rattlesnakes had never frightened her, nor had the tarantula wasps. The coyotes were a bit too noisy at night, but that was about all she could really complain about. Other than that, the clean, dry air did wonders for her temperament, and the juxtaposition of the red-orange rocks against the clear blue sky was gorgeous. She only wished there were a cloud or two, just to give the picture a little personality. As it was, the scene before her was perfectly nice.

"Not good, not bad," she grumbled. "Just nice."

But this was her life now, so Janet smiled real pretty like there were cameras watching her every move—a little something she had gotten used to in the asylum—and got her sketchpad ready. Not every piece could be a spectacular triumph, she knew, but years of the same old routine were still grating on her nerves and she wanted, needed nothing more desperately than she needed some inspiration. To see something amazing and impossibly wonderful—or horrible, it didn't even matter which anymore. She would give anything in the world to feel something besides this blasé sort of sorrow, this haze of boredom that dragged her into the ground.

But there was no way of knowing when inspiration could strike, and this was a lesson she had learned as a young artist. This was completely out of her control, and though she needed the practice, Janet knew if she kept churning out these soulless little landscapes and still-lives she would burn herself out. Even as her charcoal moved across the page she could feel her life draining away, little pieces of her dying from loneliness, or maybe boredom, but still she continued until eventually she had a gorgeous piece that any suburban soccer mom would frame and hang in their living room.

It disgusted her. She hated it with every fiber of her being.

"How pretty," she said from between clenched teeth, the words sounding like a threat to her despite A) their being a completely rhetorical statement and B) her having been the one who spoke them. Carelessly, she tossed the sketchpad into the car and removed a carton of cigarettes from her breast pocket—her smoking habit was something else she had picked up while she was locked away; there were entire weeks when all there was to do in the asylum was take your medication and go have a smoke. She lit up there, leaning back on the grill of her Dodge and exhaling smoke through her nose.

As she contemplated the desert through the haze of smoke, Janet's one thought was: 'Gods above and below, but this day is turning out to be soul-crushingly dull.' But this thought was cut short by something she saw from the corner of her eye.

She looked further out to the Southeast end of the canyon, searching for what could have distracted her, and whimpered in surprise. Even in the sunshine of the late morning, the lights were so bright that they hurt her eyes. Dancing flashes of lightning, beautiful and deadly, were forming a ring in the air. And in the middle of this ring of blue light, Janet saw something much like she had three months after her husband had disappeared: another place, very different from the salt flats, yet smack in the middle of them—a green sky, towering black mountains, and a lake of pure mercury. It was like looking through a window at the world outside… But what world, she mused, as she had that fateful day six years earlier, could lie beyond that portal?

Janet dove for the glove box, yanking it open so hard she broke the hinges, and grabbed her medication.