House in the Woods

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Chapter 1, titled "House in the Woods", is the first chapter in The Cat Lady.

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Synopsis[]

Susan finds herself outdoors, standing in a wheat field at dusk. She finds a shack but the door is locked. The countryside landscape suddenly transitions to an urban street, where she finds an ambulance with her body on a stretcher. She retrieves a key from the body. The key opens the door to the shack, but she cannot operate the strange machine inside the shack.

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Susan follows a deer into a nearby forest and explores the area. She obtains a key that allows her to unlock a gate with a pig's head and a deer's head mounted on the bars. Inside, she finds an old woman sitting on the porch of a mansion. The old woman appears to know a lot about Susan's life and claims to have been always present in it, but Susan has never seen her before. The old woman says that they are in her kingdom, and the mansion is her castle. She invites Susan into her house as a "special" guest of honor and calls herself the Queen of Maggots.

The Queen of Maggots offers Susan a chance to end her sadness in exchange for returning to the human world and killing five Parasites, cruel-intentioned people who will try to deceive Susan and kill her. If she doesn't stop them, they will hurt innocent people as well. Susan refuses at first, saying that she just wants to die forever. But the Queen of Maggots says that Susan will become her hunter, serving punishment for the sins the Parasites committed.

The Queen of Maggots also explains that death solves nothing and Susan's suffering will never stop. She says the place serves as the passage between the world of the living and the world of the dead- if Susan enters one of the corridors, she will never come back.

Susan is given immortality by the Queen, even though it's the last thing she wants.

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The Queen takes her to the wheat field, where they encounter Susan's crucified body. Susan takes a crowbar from the body. She tells the Queen she will carry out the mission. Back in the mansion, the Queen says she must make a sacrifice of soul and a sacrifice of blood in order to return to the human world. Susan blows a candle out and watches a vision of a man hanging himself, performing the first sacrifice. The Queen instructs her to go to the shack in the field. Susan uses the crowbar to operate the machine. She reaches deep inside a bloody hole to press a button, and a blade suddenly severs her arm.

Bleeding profusely, she runs to the door and it opens with the sacrifice of blood. The credits play as she runs down an open corridor, and the screen goes black when a gunshot is heard.