Just a beginning (:


There it was. The little town named Phobia. He’d heard the place called other things, of course. Ghost town; haunted; abandoned. And, for good reason. The place was in a state that would have put the word disarray to shame. Dust covered the asphalt of the street, hiding its once modern and discernable surface, the grass encroaching on its once straight and solid edges. Door frames were twisted askew, just a little tilt to the left, a dip to the right, windows leaning precariously against empty flower boxes, hanging on half of a hinge. To Tobias, however, the place looked much like home.
It had been a long time since he’d set foot here, needless to say, and he could imagine clearly the undertoned beating of generic trance music seeping out from beneath the doors of Rothouse, a rhythm he’d walked to many times on his way back from the corner store, paper bags in tow. Now the Rothouse, or the building that had housed it, looked as empty as the hearts of its former patrons had claimed to be.
It amazed him, how quickly the entire existence of something, some place, could be wiped from peoples’ minds, forgotten to the dust and obscurity of time. Here it stood, vigilantly, waiting for people to inhabit it again and breathe some movement into it. A dirty little town, keeping dirty little secrets. It was the secrets, though, that had made Tobias fall in love with Phobia in the first place. What he missed even more were the characters who had kept them.
They brought a smile to his lips, their kookie temperaments and quirky habits. But, they were gone, too, even if he could see them clearly there, a darkened memory, banging on the wooden doors and wandering the streets with too many things on their minds. As he wandered down those same paths, his memories flashed against their backdrops like grainy picture shows, silent and endearing.
Some of them must still be here, lurking around somewhere. Not all of them could have left this place. Tobias was sure that the elder ones, the people who seemed to have the streets and sights of Phobia etched into their faces, had roots here too deep to be pryed away; sure they would decay here with their little place of little secrets.
Dust was everywhere, but, it didn’t make the buildings fade away into the gray sky. Instead it seemed to Tobias as though it only whispered in harmony with the old stories hidden inbetween the bricks; a softness laying over the gritty underbelly of Phobia. It was that very grit and grisle he was here to find.
The run-down boat he’d commissioned to get him to this place rocked against the warf rhythmically, a soft thud choking on the dead air each time it drifted into the old wooden pillars. Lighting his cigarette and enjoying a long drag, his feet carried him into the heart of the town following the subtle beat of the rocking boat.

It's a very intriguing plot, and the images when you are describing the tea party come across quite well. I think maybe to grab the reader's attention more quickly, maybe open with Derek preparing for the tea party, and then introduce Michelle through a flashback? I feel like that would have hooked me faster, and then I would be more invested in knowing what Michelle's whole role in this awesomely gruesome story is (:

6655321 was just my feeble attempt at a literature reference But, 82458 has some flash to it, too.
Thanks for the welcomes guys!

So, I've been hanging around for awhile now and only just realized that there's actually a whole community here. Like, what! How did I miss this, haha.
Anyway.... What's up, and nice to meet you! (: