The Achelous Chapter 1: I, a hills have eyes fanfic

Author's Note: Yeah, so I've been writing this story for about three months and was kind of iffy about posting it on the site. It's sort of written in the same style as 'Always Watching' except it's mostly just character development for the character of Big Mama – her motivations for her actions, and what she was doing before, during, and after Doug went all kick-ass :D

Constructive criticism would be extremely helpful and appreciated, seeing as how three months ago I wrote the beginning, wrote the end and then spent the said three months filling in the holes, agonizing over chapter structure, and losing interest in it altogether, which is what I do for practically every story I write. So! With that said, I hope you enjoy my story!

Oh: Also, I've taken some liberties in this story. The way I imagine the relationships of the Hill People is that Big Mama and Papa Jupiter are the matriarch and patriarch of the clan and are the parents of Ruby and the two children in the village (I've gone with the rumours that the girl is named Venus and the boy is named Mercury).

Dedication: To TonicPeppermint, because she suggested the title, and because she's been bugging me to post this story. And I finally did. Sorry if it's lowered your expectations of my writing any!

Disclaimer: I don't own The Hills Have Eyes (2006 remake) or its characters. They belong to Wes Craven/Alexandre Aja.

This is where the ghosts hide,

Now it's gone,

This is where the truth lies,

Move along,

This is where the dirt flies,

Is it wrong?

Up against the mud skies,

Now it's gone…

Big Mama started losing her hair when she was around twenty years old.

It used to be yellow, like the sun reflecting off sand or the wheat fields on television she would never see. At first the hair loss was unnoticeable – a few strands lifted away by the hair brush, or stuck on the inside rim of her sun hat – but it was only when she discovered clumps of hair on her pillow in the mornings did she really begin to accept her hair was falling out. Soon she took to cutting the rest of her hair off, loathing the lady in the mirror with the patches of white scalp peeking out like some well-used Barbie doll. What she was left with was a smooth white dome.

Jupiter had made her feel better by declaring he had never seen a prettier head in his life (Big Mama always said that Papa Jupiter could charm the venom out of a scorpion). If he were in a particularly good mood, he would call her "Angel Skull" for the fact that her head stayed impressively white, even in the blistering heat of the desert sun.

When Big Mama and Papa Jupiter lay in bed together, teetering on the edge of sleep, she would feel his large, calloused hand rubbing gently over the contours of her skull, following the depression behind her ear down and around to her spine before tip-toeing back up to her crown. Big Mama would fall asleep to the sensation of those fingers on nights when sleep was hard to come by.

Big Mama had a real name. It was Caroline. It was such an old-fashioned name – it made her think of butter-churners and squeaky-clean girls with plaits and apple cheeks in patterned pinafores. It made her think of how the town was before the testing and the bombs and the ugly memories of tunnels collapsing and loved ones screaming.

Big Mama had a middle name too, she supposed. Far as she could remember, it started with an 'A'…

She had watched a program on TV about the human mind once. The scientist hosting the show had talked about how the mind could block out certain memories following a traumatic event.

(Boom)

Big Mama could remember most of that, though (the day when her world fell apart). It was the little details – her surname, her parent's faces, where she hid her doll when the soldiers came – that escaped her.

It was Papa Jupiter who got her first wig for her. He spoiled her too much, she always told him and like always he would merely grin and kiss the top of her smooth, white head.

He and Lizard had already managed to get a small black-and-white television up and running, when Big Mama was several months pregnant with Ruby and could not go far on swollen feet (Big Mama wasn't sure how they managed to set it all up – all she knew was that it involved a lot of ruckus and cussing, mostly on Lizard's part). There were only three channels (three and a half, on clear days), but Big Mama was ecstatic. When she watched the TV, with its game shows and pretty blonde assistants, Big Mama wished for hair.

One day Jupiter came back from the mines with a package wrapped in newspaper, delivered by Fred. Nestled inside the package was a wig, a short bob of dirty blonde hair. It was made of synthetic fibres of course, from the cheapest shop possible but Big Mama didn't care. Jupiter promised her one day that he would get her a wig made of real human hair, (she kissed him and thanked him and told him it wouldn't be necessary).

Big Mama didn't wear it often (it irritated her scalp liked nobody's business), but she brushed it, styled it, and when nobody was around she slipped it on, stood in front of the mirror, and tried to remember her name.

When Ruby was born, she went three days without a name.

Jupiter suggested naming her after Big Mama's mother, but Big Mama was too ashamed to let him know she didn't remember, so she disagreed sharply with him until he stopped persisting. Meanwhile, the newborn Ruby (screaming and fussing from the heat, dust, and general discomfort) was placed in the nursery in a swaddle of assorted rags. At first she was carefully watched every second of the day by Big Mama, but when she got an infection after the pregnancy, Ruby was watched by either an unwilling Lizard (who made it clear after scaring Ruby into hysterics with his perpetual leer that babysitting was not his forte) or the usually silent Goggle.

Lizard quickly realized that babies, like magpies, liked shiny things and took to dangling a key chain set with a red birthstone (stolen from a 'wayward traveller') above Ruby's crib. This was usually enough to transfix the baby and bring her piercing shrieks to soft gurgles. They named her Ruby after the stone in the key chain. It was two months after that when Big Mama remembered her middle name, which also happened to be her mother's name.

She would have made a good Anne, Big Mama thought to herself as she watched little Ruby stir, her disfigured face angelic in sleep.

Big Mama had two stillborns in between Ruby and the twins Venus and Mercury. The first one she had been planning to name Anne until she saw Jupiter's tired look and the baby's still chest.

Big Brain had informed her early on of the dangers of having babies after the radiation – of the mutations and the diseases and the underdeveloped body parts. Her first still born, Anne, had little, barely-developed lungs that did her no good. Her second still born had water on the brain (hydrocephalus, Big Brain told her with a look of understanding), and its head had grown so massive that it collapsed in on itself while she was giving birth to it.

She didn't even bother thinking of a name this time when, cradling the child's corpse, she felt its skull give way under her fingers.

Losing two children was like a coating of dust in her mouth – a dry, empty feeling she could never quite shake, even when she tried to wash it away. Big Mama spent sleepless nights remembering Anne's little head (already dusted with a fine dark hair) as Papa Jupiter overturned a shovel full of dirt into her grave.

As Ruby got older, she rarely stayed put. She was always up in the hills, or visiting Fred at the gas station. It was only quite a while after that when Big Mama finally realized that Ruby was ashamed. Ashamed of her family and the life they were forced to live. Ashamed of the dead bodies in their storehouse and the abandoned cars in the crater.

Once Big Mama confronted Ruby about it, and it was the first time she had raised her voice to her daughter.

"I don't like killing!" Ruby cried, her lisp becoming prominent as she became more upset.

"We have no choice!" Big Mama replied, feeling the anger collecting in the back of her skull like a storm cloud. "You know we can't live any other way!"

"There must be other way!" Ruby declared stubbornly, folding her arms and glaring at her with those big doe eyes.

"There is no other way," Big Mama countered. "You think Lizard can live with other people? You think Pluto can? You think you can? People will fear us!"

Ruby averted her eyes, tears gathering on the tips of her eyelashes. "People not fear us," she insisted. "Will help us."

"People will not help us," Big Mama hissed. "People hate us! People did this to us!" She grabbed her daughter's face and tilted it towards the mirror hanging on the wall. The fading afternoon light had caught the odd angles of Ruby's face and had created a fearsome image in the mirror.

Ruby had broken into tears at that moment and even now Big Mama felt the sharp sting of guilt that had pricked in her stomach as she watched her baby girl flee the house and disappear into the hills.

Big Mama was not a hateful individual. She was not like Big Brain, who preached about the horrors of American politics and nation in general to her children continually (though she had told him several times to stop). She was not like Lizard, who had become so violent and filled with rage that sometimes she feared him. But there was always that feeling, that small feeling that something had been stolen from her every time she woke up in her empty Test House with her bald head and her deformed children, living each day in insecurity and forced to murder to stay alive.

Jupiter had brought Ruby back several hours later that night, exhausted and sweat-soaked. He had talked quietly to them for a while, until both mother and daughter muttered the appropriate apologies and embraced.

Their relationship was never the same after that. Big Mama often wondered if she had handled the confrontation differently, if Ruby would still be alive today.

Venus and Mercury were born six years before that man in the glasses came with his baby. Big Mama had been dreading their arrival, not sure if she could face the pain of another stillborn, but when the first twin (Venus, born a couple of minutes before her brother) came out, she was a squealing mass of life, her eyes screwed shut and her face red. Ruby had come to coo over her new siblings and had drawn the newborn close, whispering hurried words under her breath. Venus had turned the deformed side of her face to touch her sister's and the two girls stayed like that until Mercury was born, his grey skin slick with bodily fluids.

When he was young, Mercury was very, very sick but as he got older he ran around in the desert like a jackrabbit – until his feet turned raw and his skin blistered and Big Mama kept him inside. Venus, from an early age, was overly conscious of the tumour on her cheek that dragged one side of her mouth down to her chin so she drooled heavily if she was excited or exercising. She preferred to stay indoors with her beloved Lincoln Logs, (salvaged from the trunk of one of their victims) and the click, click of the logs snapping together resounded through Big Mama's house at all hours of the day.

At first Venus didn't like her brother – Big Mama would enter the room to see Venus sprawled out on the carpet with her Logs and Mercury in the corner, forlornly playing with his little plastic soldier. When Big Mama forced them to play together, Venus would sulk and turn her face away from Mercury.

Eventually, they became a little older and Venus learned that her family was all she had in her life. Grudgingly, she warmed to her brother and allowed him to touch her Lincoln Logs.

This was how Big Mama's earlier years were spent – with her children, in her house, with her television. The desert was big but her world felt very small. She existed only for her family, and that was how she thought she would always stay.