A/N: I have come to the conclusion that I have no filter when it comes to publishing new stories despite my many unfinished works. Oh, well. I don't own AHS or any of the characters, plotlines, or dialogue originally found in the series.

Trigger Warnings: This story deals with depression, mentions of cutting, a parental death and parental abuse, mentions and/or descriptions of graphic sex as well as graphic violence and most of all psychopathy. If any or all of these themes may trigger or affect you in any way, this is not the story for you.

It felt like a shot to the chest. She didn't know how else to describe seeing her mother laying there on the sofa, completely immobile, the normal rise and fall of a chest gone.

Her life wasn't supposed to be like this. Her mother had been her best friend and her father, just a drunk excuse for a parent, was nothing but the man who had shoved her into a wall and fractured her arm when she was eleven.

She didn't want to be stuck with him.

Mallory Blake wanted to collapse onto the ground and sob, not with grief but fear. Her green eyes were misty with the tears that never seemed to stop and her brown hair was a wreck, falling into her face and wearing the strains of her grief.

Her mother had done right by them and kicked her father out two years ago and the only reason he had come scrambling back was because her mother had fallen victim to her breast cancer and there was nobody else left to look after Mallory. Her grandmother had passed away just a few years back, her grandfather even earlier before that, and all her aunts and uncles were either in another country or across the state and could hardly come to care for a eighteen-year-old while her mother was sick.

Her father was the only one left.

Never mind that he had nearly choked her to death when he found she had attempted suicide the year prior. After all, you don't need a permit to become a parent and CPS can hardly find proof of any of his horrid treatment.

Now she was stuck with the monster.

Her mother's nurse clung to her tightly as she sobbed into the woman's arms, fighting back the urge to run to her mother's frame and beg her to take her daughter with her.

Emilia Blake had wanted to be with her family when it was nearing the end. When the cancer got so great it became her body, she wanted to spent time with her daughter and Hospice had obliged.

Mallory and her father Michael had held out hope. Emilia had good days every now and then so why shouldn't they assume she could get better? They had hardly prepared for the woman dying in her sleep that evening.

Now, as Mallory cast her gaze over her shoulder at her father standing calmly behind her, she knew she was stuck with the man that had terrorized her nightmares since childhood.

How could things get any worse?

Two Months Later

She didn't speak the entire car ride. She didn't have anything to say since her father had sold all their furniture, sold the apartment, and found a home across the country as though he couldn't get far enough away from her mother's ghost.

He had uprooted her life right in the middle of her senior year. He had robbed her of her friends and shoved her into this new life all because he wanted to escape memories of her mother.

"Mall, you have to say something," Michael huffed. "You haven't spoken to me for two weeks since I mentioned I found a place."

"I don't have anything to say," Mallory hissed, barely even turning to look at him properly as she stared at the cars passing them out the window on the highway. "You sold all her belongings."

"Well, you didn't want-!" Michael barked. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes momentarily before shaking his head. "I'm trying to give us a fresh start and since you didn't want any of her belongings I just assumed…," he trailed off.

"You only offered me her clothes!" Mallory exclaimed. "I didn't want the clothes of a nearly forty-year-old woman, surprisingly, but you didn't stop to ask if I wanted anything else of hers."

"It's hardly any concern of ours anymore, Mallory Blake, and you'd do well to remember that," Michael snapped. "We're getting a fresh start at this house and by the looks of it, we'll have money to spare based on how cheap it went for so you can get some shit to remind you of your mother if that's what you want."

"That's not the same and you know it," Mallory huffed. "I don't care if you got the stupid house cheap, I preferred our apartment."

"I'm not going to live in the apartment where your mother died, Mallory, and that is final," Michael said firmly.

"That apartment was also where my mother and I lived when we were first getting rid of you," Mallory hissed. "It's where she comforted me after my first breakup and where we spent nights watching movies together, happy," she sighed. "You didn't even ask me before you started packing for this fucking house in LA."

"Hey, that house came dirt cheap," Michael retorted. "It'll be good for us," he assured her. "It's a fresh start."

Mallory rolled her eyes as she kept her gaze fixed on various cars speeding by out the passenger window. "I hope it's haunted just so some ghost comes back to bite you in the ass for leaving mom behind," she mumbled.

"Mallory!" Michael snapped. "I did not leave your mother behind, she died," he reminded her.

"Yeah, and you were quick to get the fuck out once she was gone," Mallory huffed. "I wouldn't be surprised if you were looking at listings during her funeral."

Michael clenched his jaw and stared straight ahead while he was driving so he wouldn't have to address the fact that she was right.

"You didn't even love her anymore," Mallory sighed. "You had a girlfriend and you told me while she was sick that you thought she just used you so she could have a daughter."

"That doesn't mean she didn't matter to me," Michael replied coolly.

"Oh, please," Mallory scoffed. "CPS isn't here you don't need to play the part of dutiful father."

"I'll have you know there was a time when your mother meant a great deal to me," Michael snapped.

"Yeah?" Mallory implored, raising an unconvinced brow. "When did that end? After I was born?"

"No," Michael hummed. "When she announced she was pregnant with you," he said and Mallory rolled her eyes.

This house was going to be a living hell.