A woman ran into a house, slammed the door, and locked it.

“Brittany, where have you been?! Didn’t you hear the news? There are- Things out there!”

The woman just walked slowly toward the frantic man.

“John, I- AAARG!“ She collapsed on the floor, as if being drug down to the fiery depths.

“Brittany!!!” Yelled John running to her side “what’s wrong?!”

“Oh, John.” Said the woman, pulling herself slowly up, but looking down the whole way. “I love you.”

At that she quickly flipped her head up, reveling her red eyes. She leaped on him, knocking him to the ground. He tried to break free, but before he could she held up her hand. Her fingernails slowly transformed into knives.

“Good bye John.” Said the creature, and she stabbed the knife directly next to his heart. He screamed in pain. She reached in and pulled out his heart. The monster breathed in, and sucked the life out of the heart. The heart turned to dust, and she dropped it on the ground.

Brittany was a victim of the Things.

The things had been invading Poppy Town for a while. It all started when Stacie Cooper, a senior in High school, made a solution to make her nails grow faster for a science project. The only problem was, when she left the mixture on the oven, it heated up too much, releasing toxins into the blend. The overheating also caused some smoke to quickly rise into the air. When the teachers saw the smoke, they immediately rushed everyone out of the building so the poison wouldn’t affect them, but for some, it was to late.

Monsters quickly filled the streets. The air was thick with the sound of screams. The FBI, the CIA, and even the president of the United States were all looking for a solution.

Three things followed Stacie as she hurriedly ran through the streets, looking for somewhere to hide to no avail. She needed somewhere to go, where she could gather up her thoughts and come up with a solution to this impossible problem. She had started it, and now she had to stop it.

What do they use as weapons? She thought to herself Knife like fingernails. What do they want? Hearts. Why do they want them? To suck the life out. There has to be an answer somewhere in there. She racked her brain looking for an answer. Stacie passed a cemetery as she ran.

“That’s it!” She yelled

Meanwhile, the CIA tried to find an answer to this problem too.

“A high school student here says she knows how to stop the apathos corpus,” said an agent

“Tell her that we have it under control” said what seemed like the head agent

“It’s the girl who started it”

“You have to listen to me! I know how to stop it!” Yelled Stacie, who had pushed her way heatedly into the room.

“Did you say you were the one who started the infection?” asked the agent.
* * *

Stacie stormed out of the agency. She ran toward the mortuary muttering under her breath “stupid CIA agents think they know everything…”

The Things followed her, slowly, limping along, and there was nothing she could do to stop them.
They followed her to the mortuary, where she pulled out a drawer containing a dead body. Things pounced on it, thinking it was live, and greedily ripped out its heart. It breathed in, and fell over backwards, dead.
“I knew it,” said Stacie under her breath. “Everyone! Help me open the drawers!”
The CIA came out from all of their hiding places and began following Stacie’s orders. Soon all the Things were gone.
“See, The things sucked the life out of hearts to extend their lives, but if they sucked out the death, then they would die!” Said Stacie, obviously proud of herself. “And next time, you’re the bait.”