Chapter 1 : Creep by Radiohead

"But I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo,

What the hell am I doing here?

I don't belong here,

I don't belong here."

Tate had mistaken obsession and desperation for love. He realized that what Dr. Harmon said was true: he was incapable of loving someone. Once he accepted that, it was easy to let Violet fade and become a distant memory in the back of his fucked up mind. What he had a hard time with was quenching his thirst for affection. He didn't miss her as much as he missed having someone to talk to. It saddened him that she could never get around to understanding him the way he wanted her to. She thought he was crazy, which made her exactly like the others. In the end, she ended up being replaceable.
Being alone gave Tate a lot of time to reflect on the things he had done. After some deep thought, he realized that he wasn't attracted to the darkness, per say. Rather, he was the embodiment of darkness. It was imbedded into the very core of his being, and it was all he understood. He realized that, in order for someone to understand him, they would need to be able to handle being swallowed whole by his inner demons. Tate wasn't capable of changing who he was no matter how hard he tried, so he decided that he would need to be honest about who he truly was. It would save him a lot of heartache if he revealed early on that he was a disgusting person, capable of horrible things. Maybe then he would have some luck and find someone to ease his loneliness. After all, he was stuck in the same house with the same dreadful ghosts. He only realized how boring and lifeless his existence was after the Harmon family left. He still couldn't believe they had all managed to get out alive. He was almost disappointed, now that he thought about it. It would have been fun having Violet around. Maybe they would have been able to work things out over time. He even missed his therapy sessions with Ben. He didn't lie when he said they were helping him. It was a chance for him to safely and healthily get his problems out in the open and deal with them to the best of his abilities.
Despite that, he tried not to dwell on the past too much. The nostalgia made his chest feel painfully tight.

The house didn't stay empty forever. A year or so later, a new family moved in; a single mother and her two daughters. The youngest was the epitome of a perfect child: a sweet little princess who always had a smile on her face. Being only nine years old, she was innocent and naïve. The other daughter was a queer sociopath with daddy issues. She had been through too much in the short eighteen years she had been alive.
They came from Canada with no knowledge of the house's dark past. In desperate need of a place to live for reasons unknown, they chose their cheapest option without a second thought. Taylor, black sheep of the family, was already getting scolded. Her mother was pressuring her into not being so negative. "Don't be such a bitch," she would say, as if Taylor could press a magic button and instantly become a completely different person. More often than never, she just ignored the comments her mother threw at her. They weren't worth her time and they had ceased to bother her a long time ago. She wondered when exactly it was that she became so numb and uncaring, but no answer came to her. Cursed with a poor attention span, she would always get distracted by something else before she could figure anything out.
After seeing the house and taking a quick tour of the place, her mood lightened, much to her surprise. She felt oddly at peace in the new house. Maybe the move wouldn't be that bad, she thought. The house was nice, albeit creepy as Hell. Its eerie atmosphere added to its charm. She loved old houses that creaked under the weight of her steps. She loved the musty smell of the weathered wood. It had history within its walls, that much was obvious.

After the movers brought everything inside, she opted to go unpack right away. Taylor couldn't stand the disorganisation in her room. Boxes everywhere, blank walls, it all drove her mad. Firstly, the walls were decorated. She found perfect places for all her posters, paintings and wall hangings. She followed by making her bed just the way she liked it; two sheets, three blankets, six pillows.. Her bookshelves were stocked with various genres of books, ranging from psychology to manga, fantasy novels to books on how to conquer addiction, bedtime stories to erotica. Everything else fell into place shortly afterwards.
She hooked her TV up to a DVD player, knowing they wouldn't have WIFI for the next few days and that she would need something to do other than read and be alone with her thoughts. That never ended well. The proof was in all the scars that littered her body. She cut in different places depending on how she was feeling. When she wanted to keep her pain to herself, she would mutilate her upper leg and thigh so no one would see it, but sometimes she wanted people to know she was hurting. She dug into the veins on her wrists and arms in a futile attempt to tell the world she wanted-, no, needed help.
She still remembered the time her mother had her sent to therapy when she was younger. She found Taylor's first cuts when she was fourteen, although she had been mutilating herself long before then. She had been clumsy one day and had accidentally let her mother see the self-inflicted wounds while they were at the playground. It was warm and she made the mistake of rolling her sleeves up. When confronted, she lied and said that they were accidental, but her mother wasn't an idiot. Taylor was referred to a therapist soon after through the school psychologist, who deemed it necessary for her to see someone who could help her.
The efforts to cure the poor girl were futile. She lied her way through her therapy sessions and bullshitted her way out of it. Within a year and a half, she had the therapist convinced that her services were no longer required. After that, she made sure her mother and teachers never saw any other signs of self-mutilation, and she succeeded in staying alive long enough to reach early adulthood.

Now eighteen, she sat in her strange new house in a strange new city, lying down in her partially unpacked room watching Machete. Her choices were limited since she hadn't been able to find all her movies yet. She was half asleep when the TV suddenly turned off, much to her surprise. In the darkness, she lazily felt around her bed for the clicker, assuming she had laid on it and pressed a button by mistake. Oddly enough, it wasn't on her bed. She grabbed her cell phone and turned on her flashlight, but when she turned it towards her TV, she saw something she wasn't expecting. A boy, probably around her age, staring at her intently. Taylor hurriedly scrambled into action and turned on the bedside lamp, but when she turned back to get a better look at him, he was gone. Deciding she was just overtired and imagining things, she sighed and plopped back down onto her pillow after finally finding the clicker. Turning the TV back on, she closed her eyes and focused on the voice of Danny Trejo. She was depressed and sociopathic, not psychotic and crazy, she reassured herself. It was normal for people to be paranoid in new houses. It was obviously just her tired eyes playing tricks on her. With those thoughts in mind, she relaxed herself back into a state of fatigue, completely passed out within a few minutes. She was a lot of things, but easily frightened wasn't one of them.

When he was sure she had fallen asleep, Tate turned off the movie again before sitting in the darkest corner of her room and listening to the soft sound of her breathing. Unbeknownst to Taylor, she had caught his attention. While he knew nothing about her, he was getting really desperate. He was anxious to learn more about the Murder House's new tenants, especially Taylor.