AN: Greetings, and welcome to a new fanfiction by the writers that brought you... Well, you'll have to guess. This is a joint project by two writers who have had some success writing for the amazing Stendan, and have recently discovered that we may be soul mates. We hope that you enjoy our offering.

Warning - gore and gruesomeness and violence, and hopefully, eventually, a large bit of Stendan smutty goodness.

All they were doing was kissing.

Will hated it when they kissed. They seemed to be teasing him with every touch, with every longing look, every smile, but the kissing was the worst. It was like his brother wanted to wound Will, by showing him exactly what he was missing.

He could read their lips with the binoculars he wore. 'I'll miss you,' she was saying between kisses. They weren't even snogs. They were sweet. If Will didn't know any better he might have described them as innocent. 'I'll miss you more,' Will's penis headed brother replied. And it went on, pathetically, stupidly, sappily, declarations of pathetic love and contentedness. Stupid Dodger. Stupid Texas.

Will scowled, and let the binoculars fall from his eyes. He didn't need to watch this rubbish. As if Dodger was really capable of loving one woman. He went with a different woman every week! He fidgeted with the leaves around him. Neither of them would notice the movement – they were too caught up in each other. He checked the time on his phone. Dodger had promised to be home by midnight and it was already five to. There was no way he was going to be on time, which showed Will enough about how much his brother's promises were worth.

He checked through the binoculars again. How could one goodbye kiss take this long? He rolled his eyes and looked up Dodger's number on his phone. He could ring, say there was an emergency, say he fell out of his chair or something. That would make him feel guilty and make him leave damn quickly. He could…

The kissers separated. Will nearly fell out of his tree with excitement. Now it was just their hands that were joined now, not even them. He only had to wait a few moments to see Dodger emerging, stupid smug grin on his face. Bastard thought he'd won, just because Texas was falling for him again. Well, Will would show him.

He watched as Dodger disappeared down the street. He didn't think to look at Will's tree, even though the wheelchair was almost blatantly visible at the bottom. That was typical of him too. He was just thick was Dodger, hardly two brain cells in his head. Maybe three in his penis. Will gave him enough time to make sure he'd gone, then carefully climbed down the tree.

He took the wheelchair. Texas would probably just let him in without question if he seemed normal. He pushed it along, thinking of an excuse for being there at this time of night. An accident? Let her have a bit of extra panic before she died?

He strolled to her path without a care in the world and then sat in his chair like a King on a Throne. This was his moment.

"Excuse me?" said a voice to his right. He turned his head. He couldn't see anyone there. Had he imagined it? It seemed to be an odd thing to imagine.

"Excuse me?" said a voice, this time to his left. He turned that way. Again, he saw no one. He looked around himself in confusion. Why would he imagine voices? He'd never heard voices before. Was it weirder that the imaginary voice was being polite?

"Who's there?" he said, and his voice was showing his nerves. The only response he got was the soft sound of cars a long way off and some wind in the trees. He searched the darkness around him and laughed. Maybe he was going mad.

He shook his head and then put his feet properly into the footholds of the chair. He gripped his wheels to turn them.

"Excuse me."

This time he knew he hadn't imagined it. His eyes widened. "Who's there?" he called into the darkness. There was noise all around him now; wind, cars, rustling, shuffling and laughing. "Show yourself!" he cried.

Someone ran past him. Except it couldn't have been someone, because no one could travel that fast. He hadn't even seen them, just a dark streak and unmistakable footsteps. He freaked out and stood up to run.

A hand caught him on the shoulder, pushing him back down into his chair.

"Excuse me; I couldn't help noticing that you can walk."

Will shivered; he couldn't make out the face of the new arrival. "Yeah," he said, "What business is it of yours?"

"Oh, not much, I suppose. I was just thinking if you can do that, then what else can you do?"

"What? It's none of your business, who are you?"

"Can you… fly… for example?"

"What? Of course I can't fly…"

"Hmm, that's disappointing," said the stranger, calmly, "Can you run faster than a bullet from a gun?"

Will had enough of stupid games, "Who are you?" he demanded angrily.

"You can't do that either? How about dinner?"

"Can I do dinner?" asked Will, "that doesn't even make sense!"

The stranger laughed.

"No, I mean can you be dinner?"

Will didn't get to do much thinking after that.

"Kids, its dinner time!" shouted Ste Hay.

The door to the kid's bedroom flew open as two blonde whirlwinds of colour whizzed past him and took their places at the table. Ste couldn't help but smile as his youngest child Lucas happily tucked into the food in front of him, it was just Leah who seemed to be having problems tucking in.

Leah let out a long sigh, staring at her plate like it was a foreign object.

"What's wrong?" asked Ste.

Leah let out another long sigh. "It's not monster food Daddy."

Ste forced himself not to laugh. Leah had recently seen Hotel Transylvania and now was absolutely obsessed with anything monster related. Over the past few nights he'd been forced to make her blood Soup (tomato from a tin) with severed fingers (hot dogs). Ste was starting to look forward to creating new monster meals; it actually made him feel less useless for the first time in months.

He knelt down next to Leah and noticed that Lucas was watching him too. "Of course this is monster food, its brains. But whatever you do, don't tell your Mum."

Both Leah and Lucas looked down at their plates and gasped, and Ste had to hold back a laugh.

"Now which monsters eat brains?" he asked.

"Zombies!" cried Leah excitedly. She picked up her knife and fork and began to savagely attack the meal in front of her.

After that Ste was relieved to notice both kids were eating their dinner with a renewed interest. Lucas even kept making grunting noises, sucking up the spaghetti loudly and covering his face with tomato sauce.

"You shouldn't be encouraging them." said Amy from the living room; she placed down the newspaper she had just been reading. "Not with..." she lowered her voice. "All the murders that have been happening."

Ste raised an eyebrow and edged towards his former partner. "What's happened now?"

"Didn't you see that the park was cordoned off when you took the kids to school?" asked Amy.

Ste searched his mind and vaguely remembered being diverted to a different route from the park that morning. He'd been too half asleep to question the Policeman blocking off the entrance to the park much; he'd just assumed some kids had been burning stolen cars in there again.

Amy glanced over to the kids, to check they were still eating and not listening. "They found another body;" she whispered, "apparently it's that Will Savage. You know, Dodger's brother?"

"That weird lad with the awful hair?" asked Ste.

Amy nodded. "I've just been reading the story in the paper; apparently parts of his body were dismembered and wrapped around his wheel chair."

Ste felt his stomach clench, no longer feeling hungry for his own spaghetti being kept warm on the stove. "That's proper rank!"

"That's not even the weirdest thing." continued Amy. "Apparently the parts of his body left were completely drained of all blood. So I think it's best we nip all this talk of monsters in the bud at the minute, don't you."

Ste glanced down the newspaper and noticed a familiar face staring back up at him. "Have they found that Vinnie bloke yet?"

Amy shifted awkwardly in her seat. "No, but I figured something out and please don't freak out when I tell you."

Ste braced himself, the last time Amy told him not to freak out she was pregnant with Lucas.

"Well that Vinnie was a barman for that new club DOA and I thought with him being missing that maybe they'd need a new one." she looked slightly ashamed of herself. "So I went in and asked if they have any jobs going and managed to get you an interview for tomorrow night."

"What?" cried Ste.

"I know it was a horrible thing to do and think, but we're desperate Ste. We can't live on my teaching assistant wage, we're struggling already," she started to bite her nails, almost waiting for him to explode.

Ste closed his eyes, trying to ignore his heart that was beating heavily with fear in his chest. Gruesome as the thought of taking a probably dead man's job might be, there was no way DOA would employ him, the type of people who went and were employed there looked like film stars. He's often joked to Amy he would take her there when he found a job, just so the two of them could feel like celebrities for one night. Ste knew all it would take was one look and his chance at the job would be gone, he could even hear them laughing in his head.

"I'm sorry Ste." said Amy quietly. "But I had to at least try, when will there be another opportunity like this again? Did you know that they even pay for your dental care if you work there? And the guy that owns it, Brendan something, he's well fit! Tall, dark and hansom. " she looked at him expectantly.

"I'll go to the interview." said Ste automatically, trying not to sound too disheartened by the idea already.

Amy let out a squeal and jumped up to hug him. "Thank you so much! It'll be such a weight off my mind if you managed to get the job, it's apparently mostly night work too so one of us will always be around to look after the kids."

"They won't want me." said Ste, trying to calm down her excitement. "They only hire people who look like they've just walked off a catwalk."

Amy finally released him from their hug. "Of course they'll want you. I wanted you." she elbowed and winked cheekily at him. "I think if you were good enough for me, you'll be good enough for them."

Ste tried to ignore the part of him that completely disagreed with her. "I'll go put the rubbish out." he said, desperately needing to distance himself from his family. A part of him couldn't help but feel a failure; impotent since he'd lost his job at Tony's restaurant. He pushed open the front door and made his way down the path clutching a black bag full of rubbish. Maybe he belonged out here with the rubbish too; there was no way a club like DOA would want him. It was just going to be another thing to add to the list of things he'd failed at lately.

Ste violently went to shove the black bag into the main bin, but some reason something made him look down. It was the smell that hit him first and made bile rise to the back of his throat. His whole body froze and all he could do was looked down in the depths of the bin. Lying at the bottom was the pale dismembered head of Will Savage. The dead pale blue eyes were staring up at him, glasses still lodged on his nose and caked in blood. All Ste could think to do was scream.