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"Mom… Mom… Mom! Ma!… Maaa!…MAAA!!!"

"One second! I'm a little busy right now!!"

"Okay." Melody turned back to the show she was watching with her little brother.

"Come on." He whined, "I hate this show, can we please watch something else?" Melody held the remote in her hands and waved it around tauntingly.

"I've got the remote, so we watch what I wanna watch and I wanna watch this, so stop being a big baby and take it like a man!" She said. Louis made a grab for the remote, but Melody swiped it away, sticking her tongue out in the process. In their house, there was only one TV. It was a twelve-inch screen, and the button to change the channels was broken, so only the remote could change the channels on it. So the rule was 'whoever has the remote, controls what you watch.' It was a pain sometimes, but not always, in Louis' case at the moment it was a pain, mostly because the show 'Dirty Jobs' on the Discovery channel made him sick to his stomach.

"Come on, Mels!" He whined reaching for the remote Melody was holding away from him at arm's length with a smirk on her face. This happened a lot with her seven-year-old brother, "No fair! You're bigger than me! MAMA!!!!"

"Not now! Figure it out yourselves!" Their mother called.

"Well, let's see. From what I can figure," Melody said playfully, "I'm bigger than you, older than you, and I've got the remote. So that automatically puts me in a higher position than you, so suck it up, Mama's boy!" He reached to get it again, but Melody moved it away from his grasp.

"No fair! No fair! No fair!" He whined, "I hate this show!"

"Tough." Melody said, Louis gave a groaning noise and sat down, arms crossed and pouting. "Ah, stop being such a baby! I've seen this episode, it's not so bad! All he does is get a zombie makeover. It's not that gross."

"Zombie?" Louis asked.

"Yeah, zombies. You know, the living dead? That's a zombie." Melody said. Louis made an audible sound that sounded like 'blegh!' and got up to go to his room. "I'll holler for ya when I'm done, 'kay squirt?" Louis didn't respond; he just shut his bedroom door. About two hours later, Mel switched off the TV.

"Hey, Lou! I'm done!" Louis came running out, snatched the remote from her hands, and sat in the recliner chair she had sat in previously. He flipped it to his favorite cartoons, and Melody let out an audible sigh, seeing as it was one of the newest cartoons. This one was called 'Chowder' and it was on the Cartoon Network channel. "Really? 'Chowder?' That's an awful cartoon!" She said. Louis looked at her, acting as if they didn't go through this conversation every time he laughed at one of the latest cartoons.

"What's wrong with it?" He asked. Melody put a hand to her head in exasperation.

"There's nothing wrong with it, it's just stupid. I mean, what happened to good, old-fashioned slapstick cartoons? Like the Looney Toons, or Tom and Jerry?" She said. Louis looked at her funny.

"They have those cartoons, though." He said, she sighed again.

"No, not the new ones, I mean the classics! The cartoons that came right after the three stooges in the comedy line up on television!" She said. Louis tilted his head.

"Who're the three stooges?" He asked, Melody gaped at him.

"Who're the--! Ah, you know what, screw it. You'll never get it no matter how many times I tell you." She walked off to her room.

"Mom! Melody said a bad word!!" He yelled, Melody rolled her eyes and shut her door. She slunk into her bed; she wondered if arguing with her little brother was all she was able to do. She wanted to go out and do something to get out of the house, but she wasn't a fan of parties, she didn't have many friends, she only liked being alone when she was in her room, and she wasn't exactly skilled at anything other than drawing pictures. She wished she could do more than just that, she wished she could dance, she wished she could sing, she wished she could be spontaneous. Instead, she was just plain old Melody; someone who wasn't exactly worth throwing a parade for.

"Melody!" Her mother was calling her, "Time to take you and Louis to practice!" She sighed.

"Coming Mom!" She yelled back. She wasn't a fan of violin practice, but she still liked the ability to play some songs on the violin. Louis was learning how to play the saxophone, much to her distaste.

She picked up her dad's old pocket watch, he had left it to her when he died and she treasured it dearly. It was silver, and it had a picture of a rose on the front. On the inside, other than the ticking hands, was a picture of her deceased father, her younger brother and herself. Both of them smiling and her dad hugging her tight. She hooked it to her belt and put it in her pocket, where it belonged.

She grabbed her old black jacket and headed for the door, when she opened it she didn't see her hallway, she saw a hallway covered in strange drawings and circles. She got scared and tried to get back in her room, but found no door. She soon felt something jerking on her, and she toppled back and fell through a hole, screaming the whole way.