Chapter 1(Hooked on a Feeling)

Santana walked into McKinley already on full bitch mode.

"Move out of the way Paula Deen, some of us are trying to walk through the halls." The girl was not really in Santana's way nor was she fat, but she ran away in the opposite direction tears obviously welling up in her eyes.

"Yo, Santana what's shakin' girl." Puck appeared from behind her, casually tossing his arm around her shoulders.

"Off me jock strap, before I cut you." Santana glared at him and his stupid Mohawk (today it looked especially stupid). Santana really was in no mood for stupid boys today.

Puck wisely chose to remove his vulnerable limb before he lost it. Santana was never exactly in a cheerful mood, but in Puck's opinion today seemed to be especially uncheerful.

"What crawled up you and died today?" Puck questioned, glancing her way to take in her exceptionally standoff-ish body language. It was a good thing he was looking her way to see the shift in her stance and the swing of her arm. Puck ducked out of reach of Santana's incoming fist. Now Puck was legitimately worried about his wellbeing and Santana's mental state.

"I'm just not in the mood for any bullshit today," Santana huffed out before striding away from a concerned Puck. Santana really didn't know what was up with her. Something just seemed really off today. She woke up weary and tense, as if she hadn't gotten a good night's sleep at all and she could feel something dark scratching at the bottom of her stomach. Something bad was going to happen soon, she could feel it. All she could really hope for now is that the school day passed quickly and without incident.

But by third period Santana knew that her prayers had indeed not been answered and by the time sixth period rolled around, she was sure that today was some great deity's way of punishing her for calling that one girl Paula Deen. Everyone was getting on her nerves today. She had gotten a C on her Math test (really what the hell was a logarithm anyway). In Glee Rachel Berry seemed to have the need to talk more than normal, if that could be conceived, about what solos she should get at Regionals. Coach Sylvester had of course been displeased by the Cheerios' flawless performance and made them do jumping jacks on one leg for thirty minutes straight making it one of Santana's least favorite Cheerios practice ever.

"Well that sucked man tits," Santana threw her bag onto the locker room bench before bodily flopping down beside it. Her left leg was throbbing after that practice.

"Have you ever licked a man tit? It's like super weird, but not in a bad way," Brittany supplied wistfully while rummaging through her own gym bag.

"Brittany please, I would rather not puke all over my clothes," Santana shook her head as she kicked off her shoes. "This whole day has been utter shit! I'm going to go home and play pointlessly violent video games until I pass out on the couch. You wanna come over and hang out?"

"I would San, but my mom and dad are working late tonight and need me to watch the twins and pick up Andy from daycare." Brittany gave her an apologetic shrug, "I already said I would watch them and stuff."

"Why not just make Cooper watch them? He's like 14 and probably only has lame freshman crap to do." Santana stood and smoothly unzipped and pulled down her Cheerios skirt before pulling her top over her head, "What's the point in having a little brother if not to make him do all the stuff you don't want to do?"

Brittany grinned at Santana's state of undress. "Cooper has a soccer game tonight and plus," Brittany paused to catch the towel Santana threw at her when she noticed her leering, "I like watching Andy and the twins. Andy is always really good and hardly cries, and the twins are super smart and like really chill for kids their age."

Santana snorted at Brittany's description of her twin sisters. "Yeah they always have really good feedback on the newest video games. How do they have time to play all those video games anyway?"

"I don't know. But then again, there are two of them so you know I guess it only takes half the time," Brittany shrugged. Santana chuckled and shook her head. That was probably the first time she had laughed all day.

"Yeah I guess. Well looks like I'm on my own tonight," Santana's smile dropped into something notably sadder.

"Hey we'll hang out tomorrow. I promise," Brittany beamed. Santana pull her lips back into a smile at Brittany's assertion.

"Good."

When Santana got home she decided to order a pizza instead of looking at the depressingly empty refrigerator. She had just gotten into her gaming groove when the pizza dude showed up. Left 4 Dead would have to wait until after she finished her pizza. Santana decided to turn on the news while she ate. Maybe something interesting was happening in the world somewhere.

"Tonight we have shocking reports coming in from Fredrick, Maryland about some absolutely vicious attacks by malicious mobs. The mobs have seized various people and not only physical pummel victims, but it seems they are also…eating their victims. That is correct folks; there are numerous reports of cannibalism among these wild mobs. These attacks seem to have no rhyme or reason and the perpetrators of these attacks show no remorse or even acknowledgement of their crimes. We warn that the following scenes can be disturbing."

There is footage of crowds of people in the street, many of them chasing down people before pouncing on them. People running away from the frenzied crowd in absolute panic.

"We'll have more here on Channel 5 news."

"Fucking junkies" Santana shook her head. Everyone saw how bath salts made that one guy act all crazy, yet here we have multiple people obviously taking them. She would never understand some people. She sat and watched for twenty more minutes but the more she watched, the more that dark twisty feeling in her stomach grew. Santana shook her head, as if to clear the bad feeling away. It was just a bunch of crazy people doing crazy stuff it was nothing she would have to worry about. She was sure by tomorrow all of this would be sorted out and the news would be back to normal.

Brittany's mother got home around 6 and rushed to the kitchen in a whirlwind of activity as she hurried to put to a late dinner on the table.

"Brittany, how were the twins? They didn't cause you any trouble did they?" Her mom asked from the kitchen. Brittany shook her head even though she was all the way in the living room.

"No they were fine," Brittany picked up Andy from his blanket on the floor and carried him into the kitchen to place him in his high chair.

"Good," her mom smiled at her. "Brittany I've been meaning to talk to you. Your father has one of those business conventions out in Denver this weekend. He wanted me along so he didn't have to go to the obligatory formal dinner alone," her mother gave a little shake of her head at that. Brittany had heard her mom complain of how incredibly dull her father's insurance conventions were. "It's a little too late to hire a babysitter for that amount of time so I was hoping that you wouldn't mind watching the kids this weekend? I know usually we don't ask you to babysit for so long, but this convention sort of sprung up out of nowhere." Her mom looked at her searchingly.

"You don't have to if you don't want-" her mom started after Brittany stayed silent for a while.

"No, I'll do it," Brittany nodded.

"Great, now help me with dinner will ya?" Her mom tilted her head towards the refrigerator. Brittany just smiled and nodded.

Dinner was a noisy affair as always. Cooper had scored his first goal of the season tonight. Becca was thinking of joining the debate team. The twins were about to bubble over from excitement from the prospects of spending all tomorrow afternoon playing Viking Zombies 4 ("Are you sure you can take us Britt?" "Yeah of course I can"). Andy had mastered the art of spit bubbles. Her father was rambling about what a great convention it was going to be this weekend.

"Brittany, you sure you okay holding down the fort this weekend?" Brittany's dad asked the question innocently enough, but to Brittany it sounded like her was second guessing their decision to leave the lives of her brothers and sisters in her hands for so long. Brittany felt her resolve to babysit strengthen.

"Yeah dad, I got this."

"Alright honey. We'll drop Andy off at the Jefferson's in the morning before we leave, so just pick him up when you get home from school." Her dad turned back to her mother to continue in unfortunate detail about the wonderful world of car insurance conventions.

Brittany was washing the dishes this time while her mom dried and put them away.

"Oh my goodness! Karen, did you hear about this?" her dad called from the family room his voice rising in concern. "Jesus, this is unreal! What-" her father trailed off uncertainly.

"What happened?" her mother clearly picked up on how disturbed her father was. She dropped her drying towel on the counter and hurried into the family room. Brittany followed curiously.