The Snakeheads Move In

It was the early 2000s, and John was living in a nice suburban house just outside Dayton, Ohio. He was a retired computer expert, and one could be forgiven for thinking that his life was just going to continue on as it had done, with his thick slice of Americana continuing to sustain his quaint existence - however, all this would swiftly change with the arrival of a strange family five doors down from him. His life was about to take a sharp nosedive into what one would only expect to see in David Icke's fever-dreams.

## Serpentfolk in Suburbia

The neighbourhood had always been quiet. It was mostly populated by working-class individuals living in reasonably-priced houses. Most of the houses on John's street had decently-sized front yards - and although their occupants usually kept to themselves, they would engage in neighbourly chats when they were out in their gardens or wandering around the suburb. John's front yard was '*huge*' and he felt like he had to constantly mow it just to prevent it from becoming a thick grassland. Whilst engaging in this regular jungle warfare, he would often casually speak to his next-door neighbour. They really had nothing in common - seeing as he owned a small plumbing business and he wasn't interested in John's career in computers '*at all*'. Despite this, John made sure to talk to him on a regular basis because he '*seemed to know everything about the neighbourhood*'. John thought that this was because of how nosy his wife apparently was.

'*About five houses down*' from John's own there was an empty, and seemingly derelict, ranch-house. Apparently the realtor had mentioned it to him when he had been looking for a house in the neighbourhood. The realtor said that '*it had sat empty for a good while*' and that it would be pretty cheap to buy. When John asked why, she answered that the previous occupants had been foreclosed on, and so had '*torn the inside of the house up*'. They had apparently smashed up all the fixtures and literally ripped holes in the walls. Deciding that he didn't want to '*deal with that kind of repair*', John declined to even look at the place. Almost a year after he had eventually moved into his house in the neighbourhood, John noticed that someone had moved into the destroyed ranch-house. Strangely, the new people seemed to have moved in very suddenly - seeing as no workers were seen at the house making repairs. John simply assumed that the people must plan to renovate the place themselves.

Being masters of keeping up with local gossip, John's neighbour and his wife '*had a lot to say about it*'. Apparently, said neighbour had stopped by the house and offered the new residents his card - saying that he would give them a discount on some of the house's plumbing work. The man who answered the door stood in such a way that he blocked his view of the inside, but he could still snatch small glances. He told John that '*there were just some mattresses on the floor of the living room, no furniture*'. The strange man took the business card, staring down at it for a moment before handing it back and saying that there was no work required in the house. With that, he promptly closed the door. John started to see the new people when he was out on his regular dog walks - seeing as he would '*take the dog around on a course of several blocks*', down to a park and then back up to his house. It would be about 17:30 in the evening when he was walking down their street, and he would see '*this guy*' pull up in his old beater car. It sounded like it was barely running, and the odd man usually seemed to be wearing '*pretty worn out*' clothes, and so John figured that they were probably in a rather poor financial situation. The car appeared to be literally filled with trash - it was so full that it was literally overflowing in the back seats to such a degree that it would be impossible for anyone to sit back there. John would always endeavour to greet the man, but he never responded. Eventually, he got to the point where he simply wouldn't try and say anything to him because he knew that '*he wouldn't respond*'.

One night, John ran into the man in question at their local Meijer's grocery store. He was in the meat department, and his cart was stuffed full of meat - piled high with hamburgers and steaks. '*It was all beef*' from what John could see. The strange fellow looked up and saw John looking into his shopping cart, whereupon he gave him '*a nasty look*'. John said hello, and casually remarked that '*you must be having a barbeque*'. Apparently the man suddenly looked as if John '*had slapped him*' and then opened his mouth and hissed loudly. John described it as sounding '*like the air being forced out of his teeth*'. After this, the weird man immediately turned and stormed off towards the checkout. John '*just didn't know what to make of the incident*'.

This had piqued John's curiosity, and so the next day he asked his neighbour about the strange new family on the block. Perhaps not suprisingly, the neighbour had already heard lots about them - mostly from his wife who apparently '*would not stop talking about them*'. Allegedly she had seen the woman from the family in question outside in the back yard, chasing a cat. The lady seemed to be furious when the cat managed to escape from her pursuit. However, things took an even sharper turn for the bizarre when the neighbour revealed something truly shocking. According to his wife, the lady was wearing a wig which she had seen fall off - revealing that her head was '*bald and scaled like a snake's*'. He continued that his wife had become obsessed with them, believing they were reptiles and that they were trying to take over the country. '*He was worried that his wife was really losing it*'.

John says that he is a curious guy by nature, probably to his detriment on some occasions - and so he decided to '*try a little experiment the next night*'. He started his dog-walk as usual, but took his time until he saw the man's beater car pull up in the ranch-house's driveway. He made his way to the strange man, approaching him just as he was crossing the sidewalk in order to enter his house. John loosened his dog's lead - and his dog ran forward towards the man. However, when it got close to the person in question it promptly turned around and ran back to its owner. John moved closer to the man to the point that he was '*right beside*' him, but he still wouldn't say anything - even when John pressed him, he simply averted his gaze. As he turned away, John was '*flabbergasted*' to see that he seemed to be wearing a toupee. Not only was he wearing a headpiece, he seemed to have '*very dry skin*' almost resembling scales beneath it and on his neck. John was now starting to think that his neighbour's wife might've been correct about the family.

Throwing himself down a veritable rabbit hole of morbid curiosity, John scoured the internet to uncover information and speculation about alleged reptilian shapeshifters. He talked to his neighbour's wife to try and glean the details of her odd encounter from their source. She had apparently completely convinced herself that '*reptilians were in their midst*'. She had taken to calling the weird strangers '*the snakeheads*'.

As well as what he took to be a husband and wife, there were two '*older boys*' who lived in the house. John and his neighbours assumed that these were the children of the odd couple - but they never went outside and never spoke to anyone, and so it was hard to tell. John had recently started paying a local teenage boy to cut his grass. He was a big fan of football just like John, and so the pair would '*often chat*' about that. One day, however, he asked John very seriously if he knew anything about the people living down the street. John asked him why, and the boy revealed that he had offered to cut their grass. One of the boys living in the house had opened the door and shook his head - but not before the hopeful teen caught sight of something horrifying. The family was sitting at their kitchen table, and the boy swears that '*they were eating raw meat*'.

The bizarre family lived in the house for a year and a half, before suddenly piling into the car and driving off - never to return. John saw a work truck outside the house, and stopped to see what was going on. A cleanup crew had been sent by the realty company, to whom John started talking as he walked into the house. '*The place was a total wreck*', with old mattresses on the floor with nothing but dirty sheets on them. The dining room table had clearly been haphazardly nailed together, and '*looked like it came from a dump*'. All the holes left by the previous owners were still in the walls, and there weren't even any toilets - just the holes in the floor where they had once been. '*There was fecal matter on the floors of the bathroom*'. There was trash all over the kitchen, most of it being from packages of meat. The stench in the house was overwhelming.

John likes to think of himself as a '*rational thinker*', and so spent plenty of time trying to find logical explanations for what had been happening with the family. He refused to believe the reptilian conspiracy theories that he had seen on the internet on the grounds that they were too extreme and too far outside the norm. He has been left with innumerable unanswered questions. '*Honestly, I just didn't know what to think*'.

'*The neighbourhood was not the same while those people lived there*' - everyone seemed uneasy and a lot of people had seen things that they couldn't explain. '*If they were human, they certainly weren't normal people*'. John still has a hard time bringing himself to accept that they were '*reptiles*' but he '*can't deny how weird it all was*'. He says that he's '*just glad they went away*', whatever they were.