Hank watching Connor gave him a little nudge "go join them, I'm sure they would be very pleased" Connor shook his head "Miranda needs something specia... that holds her close to mama, I would be spoiling that" Hank touched Connor on the shoulder "even if Miranda didn't sing a note she would still be her mother's daughter, you are your mother's son, perhaps they feel bad that you don't sing with them, that your being left out hurts them." Connor hesitated looking at Hank with an almost fearful. " No trouble at all!" Christine countered. "We get visitors so seldomit's our pleasure. Trust us." Come to think of it," Charlie injected, "it would be a pretty tiringtask for you to get us to our destination, Mike, especially if there'ssnow and ice." Nonsense," I laughed. "I'm not tired in the slightest. It's not like Ididn't get a good night's sleep yesterday, and we've only been on theroad for a couple of hours." This was perhaps not entirely true;nonetheless, I was hoping to avoid any. On December 21st, giant towers grew into the sky across the world. We don't know why they rose, or where they came from, but all we know is that less then an hour after they ascended, monsters attacked the cities that surrounded them. I was eating lunch with my sister, talking about what to get our friends for Christmas, when the creatures approached the street. I saw wolf like creatures hunting down women and dragging them back to the tower, and I saw floating octopus like beings spraying red. Now listen to me. Listen *very* closely. This is the house of the Tucker men. They own it and everything in it. *Everything.*" They own us, too. We women *belong* to them," the other woman said."If you cross this threshold, every man and every woman here will use you like they want," the older woman said."That's *rape*, I said.The older woman said, "No, it is *not*. By entering, you *agree* to accept whatever they do. Every one of us will testify to that. You can leave and go home. Nobody's.