An Infestation.

Control.

His nose was turning red and his body began to shake, his skin paled and he let out a sneeze. Then again, and again, and again--

"Aw, you kitten sneezed!" Depression cheered as she pour the water into the mug and put a tea bag in. She sat it down in front of Anxiety and began to moved around the kitchen, looking through the cupboard. "So what do you want to eat? Soup with crackers or macaroni?"

Anxiety sneezed again, "Food."

She chuckled and pushed the doors of the cupboard closed. "Soup it is, then." Depression walked to the stove and pulled the door of the oven open to pull out a pot to set on the stove. She filled it with the water from the sink and turned the stove on.

Anxiety noticed this and found it interesting that she puts the pots and pans in the oven. He had seen this before but at Thomas' friend's house, Valerie. So he spoke up about it, "Why do you store the pots in there?"

Depression froze from pouring herbs and vegetables into the pot, she turned her head to face him and couldn't help but give him a crooked smile. "I don't know," she wiped her hands on a towel. "I just...remember? I can't say that, that's the word I want to use-- but it just feels so right, as if I've done it before." She then turned around and pulled a wooden spoon from a jar and began to stir the soup around the pot. But she then whispered something under her breath that sounds a lot like 'Maybe because I do remember doing this.'

Anxiety sat in silence, letting it nibble on his nerves but when he looked to see a painting that hung on a wall in the living room he felt realization hit him on the face like freezing water that slowly seemed to drip drip to his feet as he began to shake more violently. "Depression, are you based off someone in Thomas' life?"

There was a long silence that it seemed to make the atmosphere heavy and hot; and the heat coming from the stove didn't help at all. She froze so quickly that when she snapped to freeze, the spoon stopped with her and made soup splash out of the pot. Anxiety didn't hear her breathing or even saw her move, as she just had been frozen or have been turned by a statue by Medusa herself.

"Were," she finally said but didn't move an inch. He turned to see the painting again; it was black and white with a hit of gray, it was a woman with no face wearing a black dress and a long coat like the one she wore the other day, the woman was holding a black umbrella over her head in a halo-ish manner as she stood in the middle of a street while the rain seemed to pour down on her with gray skies over her head. "I was based off of someone in Thomas' life many years ago-- before you were born."

Heat seemed to now bother Anxiety as his palms began to sweat and holding the mug became a difficult task. He held his breath and his mind began to scream from both the tension and the hellish heat he was in. Anxiety began to panic as the heat began to get to him harder and harder; he began to feel the flames from hell licking his feet and slowly making his clothes be on fire and began to crawl up to his face as he began to breath in and out quickly and the mug slipped from his hands and shattered on the floor. His vision began to get blurred and statical, Anxiety tried to stand up from the stool but he fell onto the cool tiles of the kitchen floor. He felt Depression's hand on his cheeks and he could see her mouthing words that he could not understand, when he tried to say something he felt a hand around his throat, choking him with heat.

Anxiety couldn't see a thing as his eyes began to roll into the back of his head. But the last breath he had left in his lungs escaped out of his mouth and due to the lack of oxygen going to his brain, he began to lose consciousness. But before he fell into the dark abyss that will haunt him in his sleep, Anxiety swore that he felt long fingernails with the hands he felt around his neck and that the outline of Depression wasn't panicking but grinning wickedly down on him.