Dominus Apis remembered the days before he had come into the house. Yes, an enormous two weeks previously, he had been the indestructible, infallible, evil villain Dominus Apis.

Yep, he was still using the same name. Shut up.

He had been the perfect supervillain, all his plans succeeding with flying colours.

Until he came along.

The also indestructible, also infallible, good hero Always High Guy.

He was the perfect superhero, who overthrew every single villain he came across without fail. He did it all while he was high.

Always High Guy had, until then, stayed out of Apis' way. But they crossed paths when one of Apis' plans involved Guy's best friend Victoria.

Apis had always held a grudge against Victoria, ever since that art competition in grade two where he came second to Victoria. First prize, for a painting of a flower. Apis' pencil drawing of a mecha was much more deserving, and yet, she won.

He was salty and he was not going to forget the fact that she did him wrong. He was not going to forget ever.

Dead jumped out of bed. Today would be a good day. Sad was still alive, he was still alive, and nothing ridiculous had happened by nine o clock in the morning. Nobody would die today, that was for sure, and definitely not the not-quite-naked muscly guy he tried to kill yesterday. He was going to make sure everyone stayed alive, as a kind of repayment for trying to kill them all.

Sad was still refusing to talk to him, but that was okay. Everything was okay. And as long as Sad didn't die before they escaped the house, everything was going to be okay.

This was going to be a great day.

Dominus Apis had hated Spencer from the very beginning. Spencer looked exactly like Always High Guy, from the permanent goofy smile, to the grey-black hair, to the fact that both were literally always high.

He had tried so hard to get over it. Spencer was not Always High Guy, no matter how similar they were. Even though they looked the same, acted the same. They were twin-brothers-separated-at-birth similar. Exact-genetic-clone similar. Despite all this, Spencer was not Always High Guy.

When Apis did kill Spencer, he felt a sort of fulfilment, or perhaps revenge. He'd finally killed the man who got him tossed in here.

Even if he hadn't.

In sixth grade, he and Victoria had been in hot contest for the Dux award. They were both top of the class, friendly, civil, and great role models. But in the end, Victoria won the award. Just like everything she and Apis had to compete for.

Their history was long. At least twenty years old. Victoria was a winner, and Apis was a not-quite-winner.

But there was a point when he could not stand it. The absolute peak of his hatred for Victoria.

When she won Chasm Falls' biggest art competition.

And Apis had come second.

Lily – wait, what? Why was she coming into the story - oh, right. Backstory time. Her backstory wasn't really that interesting, why was she getting a spotlight? Oh well, who was she to question the judgement of whoever.

So, like, she had a boyfriend, right? And then one day he was like "yo, Lily, can you deliver this to a friend for me?" and Lily was like "that's a lot of tea" and he was like "yeah, he really likes tea" and so Lily was like "sure, I'll do that, I don't know why you can't do it yourself, this isn't one of your stupid pranks is it, Todd? Todd?" but he had already left so she didn't really have a choice. So Lily got in her car and put it on the front seat and drove to the guy's – abandoned cave in the middle of the forest. Okay, that was a weird place for tea to be delivered, maybe that was where he lived or something? Anyway, she'd agreed to it so she had to do it. So she was heading along the highway, driving into the forest, listening to some epic music or whatever, and then suddenly there was a cop car behind her? And like any normal person with a cop car behind them she freaked the hell out but she didn't do anything because there was a cop car behind her and she didn't want to get arrested. So she was all play it cool Lily, they don't want you and then the cop car drove next to her and she was like oh crap and her window was open and the cop leaned out his window with a loudspeaker and shouted hey stop your car because you've got drugs and Lily was confused because like??? Drugs? I don't have any of those, except she shouldn't have said that because the cops told her to pull over because that sounded suspicious and she was like yeah that's fair and she pulled over.

And so yeah it turned out that Todd's friend did not in fact like tea a lot, and instead was paying him a lot of money for hallucinogenic dried plant leaves.

The police took her to the station and she called Todd and she was like "Screw you I'm breaking up with you" and then she hung up and then she realised she'd used her phone call to break up with her boyfriend instead of telling him to come get her un-arrested.

And then there was the trial and everything and they told her that she'd go to jail, or she could go to this house with a bunch of people for thirteen days and she was like "yeah that sounds pretty good and also faster" and they were like "you might die" and she was like "yeah that sounds pretty good" except slower and less sure of herself.

And now she was here and still alive so that was a cool thing she guessed? Was that good enough? She wasn't a very good storyteller. Hey, you were the one who wanted the backstory told, not her.

Sad sat in the common room. With Ashlee dead and his boycott of Dead, who was he going to talk to? Marilyn held strange conversations at best, and he hadn't talked to Lily throughout the time they'd been in the Easy Way Out.

Lily walked into the common room, not knowing that Sad had just thought that. She slumped into the armchair opposite Sad.

For the first time, Sad realised that Lily was probably the most normal person here. And right across from him was someone who was probably feeling a similar pain to his.

"Hey-" Lily looked up- "How are you feeling?"

"Like crap, man," she sighed. "All my friends are dead."

"Yeah, I get that," Sad agreed, also sighing.

Before he came to the house, his life had been killing, death, and the occasional revival, but only after death had already happened. Honestly, he was kinda sick of it.

Sad and Dead were brothers who travelled around the country, killing whatever evil they happened upon, even if the methods they used were often slightly very illegal.

They had a pretty bad criminal record. In fact, the crimes they had committed were very much best described by a headline sometimes seen on the Internet:

"Man Arrested For Everything".

Breaking and entering, grave desecration, various kinds of fraud, stealing, you name it, they'd done it.

They had ended up in the house after finishing a particularly gritty case involving the murder of several vampires. They were drinking at a local bar, celebrating their victory, when they were suddenly surrounded by cops.

Absolutely surrounded. By so many cops.

They thought they'd escape before the trial. They always had. It was kind of in the job description, avoiding the police and if that failed, escaping the police.

But they didn't.

During the trial, they were offered two things. They had to make a choice then and there.

The rest of their lives in jail.

Or thirteen days in one house,

In the end, it wasn't really a choice. For them, there was only one way out of this mess.

And it was the Easy one.

Dead was sitting alone in the kitchen. Lonelily. Drinking a cup of coffee. Lonelily. Heard a sound from outside. Lonelily.

Wait, what even was that sound?­­ Like a low drone, or a deep buzz. The sound of flying lawnmowers attacking the house?

He didn't know.

Dead lonelily decided to go check it out. After all, there was really nothing else to do here. He opened the curtains in the laundry and saw...nothing. Something small, fast, and swarming in the thousands was blocking the window. An insect maybe?

Dead didn't know it, but he was right. An insect. A single type of insect. A very angry single type of insect.

He decided to investigate these maybe-insects.

Dead slowly opened the door...

...and unleashed the bees.