Maddison Beth Nixon had about as average a life a any girl living in Moncton, Newbrunswic, Canada could live. Her mother was a veterinarian at an animal shelter and her father was a history teacher at one of the local high schools. She had a little brother who was fiver years younger than herself and a pet cat called mittens.
The slow days of school, family dinners, weekend vacations and trips to the zoo were shattered the year Maddison turned sixteen. One day everything was fine, then Mom got sick. They first thought it was a bout of bad flu, but turned out to be breast cancer. Sorry, we caught it too late. No, there were no options... not even a month later Mom was gone.
Maddison probably would have broken if it weren't for her younger brother. Chase was only eight at the time and Maddison found her self playing Big Sister and Mother. Between Chase and Dad she didn't have a lot of time to be overly sad.
Even after Mom died Gregory – or Greg as he preferred to be called- kept his job as a history teacher, but he was awoken to the mortality of life. He took up a passion he had long since put on hold: writing. He wrote those science-fiction novels where robots were gonna take over everything and the world was ending. Maddison didn't like them to be honest, but they were popular enough that Greg had won several awards and got nearly as much money from them as his day job.
It was around that time that Maddison met Kalie. Kalie was a short girl with a soft spoken attitude when they first met. She kept her hair short always, and changed the color as often as she could. She also had a wide and varying number of strange earrings that she loved to wear and changed as often as she did her hair. This was all the stranger because she only ever wore one earing at a time.
They met at school when Kalie transferred mid-way through grade seven and they had been inseparable ever since. They would do any number of things to pass the time. Things as simple as reading at the library, to people watching at the park, guessing weather or not the people that passed were human or other.
Yes, the Others. Or Other-Worlders as was the official term. About 25 years ago the world at large learned of the existence of all things supernatural. Suddenly the things that went bump in the night were real and could very well have been your next door neighbor. Wars broke out. Magical genocides and werewolf cullings. Witch burnings made a come back. Maddison's toddler years were spent in a world where safety was still up in the air.
Things settled down by the time she was ten, and had returned to relative normality by the time she'd met Kalie. Other-Worlders were required to register with their respective governments, but not forced to out themselves to the public. Persecution of Others was seen as a hate crime and punished like one. However that didn't mean it didn't still happen.
Maddison had no ill will toward the Others. They were the same people they were before the world knew about them as far as she was concerned. Chase was obsessed with them and her brother was a fantasy groupie if ever there was one. If you wanted to know the facts about werewolf transformations or fairy reproduction, he could tell you.
Now that Maddison was 21 and looking for a place of her own; juggling Kalie's constant boy troubles, and the semi-fame from her father's new book, life was a little more hectic.
Today was like most others, however. Maddison got up early and went for a run around the block, when she got back she made breakfast while her father put on a pot of coffee. She woke Chase on her way to the shower and ate her lukewarm food as Greg took the half asleep teen to school.
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She was planning to go apartment hunting again today. It was her routine on days she didn't have to go into work at the animal shelter; the same shelter her mother worked when she was alive. For some reason she was having a hard time settling on a place...
Today Kalie had agreed to join her, but Maddison wasn't holding her breath. Since Kalie started going out with her new boyfriend, and spending time with his friends, she didn't keep her appointments much.
Maddison didn't like Wayne and his pals. Greg would describe them as a bad crowd and she agreed. None of them could keep a job and all of them were not exactly on the right side of the law. Maddison never understood why Kalie insisted on dating men like Wayne. Kalie was awesome, and deserved someone gust as amazing as she was! Not that she believed Maddison whenever she told Kalie that.
And so Maddison waited an hour and wasn't too surprised when Kalie didn't show. She stuffed her feet into her tennis shoes, grabbed her autumn jacket and pulled the brown fabric over her green t-shirt. After checking that her keys were in the pocket of her jacket, she locked the door and made her way to the bus stop.
Greg had been trying to get Maddison to learn to drive, but she didn't see the need. Anywhere in town she wanted to go was a short bus ride away. It helped that Greg's house was right in the center of town. When he and Mom baught the place it was a great neighborhood, almost 25 years later, not so much.
But Moncton being what it was, even the bad neighborhoods weren't really all that bad. Maddison certainly didn't have any reservations about walking the streets alone.
As per the norm, she was the only person waiting at the bus stop. She was, however, surprised to see that there were a lot more people on the the bus itself then she was used to.
As old habits died hard, Maddison found herself playing 'Human or Other' all on her own. Bald guy with too many tattoos? Human. Young blonde lady with the too pretty face? Other. Little old lady? Hard to tell.
Between breakfast and lunch Maddison saw three apartments and had been on five different buses, and still didn't find what she was looking for. Sure, the place on High Street was big, and the apartment on Oak had a great kitchen. Then the place on King was brand new... What was wrong with her?
She had lunch at KFC. Maddison always felt weird eating at restaurants on her own, but her next appointment was in less than an hour and the KFC was near by.
By 3pm she had seen all the apartments she had appointments for, and decided she had better head home. Chase would be back from school soon and it was her turn to make supper. Should she just make spaghetti like she had originally planed, or pick up something on the way home? She didn't have to actually make dinner on her day, so long as she was the one paying for the take-out...
She had decided on Swiss Chalets when she saw the little red sign stuck up in an upstairs window of a large blue house that said "apartment for rent". She stoped and stared a moment. Well it wouldn't hurt to knock on the door and ask...
Decision made, Maddison made her way up the concrete walkway and rapped her knuckles on the solid wood door. As she waited for someone to answer she inspected the house and lawn. The grass was cut and a large maple grew out front, just tall enough not to block the view from the bay window. Some of the paint on the house was peeling, but the bay window looked brand new. Had it been damaged, or did the owners just feel it was time to get a new one?
Her attention snaped back to the door when she heard a lock shift. She expected a man that looked a lot like her sandy blonde, book worm father, or perhaps an older woman with a couple cats.
What Maddison wasn't expecting was a twenty-something male model with crazy green eyes, a slightly off center nose and messy black hair. She absolutely did not expect said man to come to the door topless, showing off an outrageous six-pack and shoulders that could carry three of her. Oddly enough, he seemed to be holding a shirt in his hands and she couldn't help but feel just a little grateful that he hadn't thought to put it on before answering the door.