Bill lived in regular city, complete with a regular skyline, behind which a regular suburbs squatted on the outskirts. His neighborhood was normal in most respects, which is why he chose to live there on the corner of St. Augustine and Rye streets. The houses were lined up rather unspectacularly, block after block, street after street as far as the eye could see. People parked their cars in the garages, walked their dogs at dusk, watered their lawns at night and went to sleep in their little beds right after Conan O'Brien.

On the weekends they invited each other over for barbecue, did their yardwork or went to the movies. There was nothing that seemed out of the ordinary about any of their lives, which was exactly why Bill moved in to the house on the corner of St. Augustine and Rye. He had only been living there for a few months when everything began to change.

Bill took great pride in his yard and spent most weekends fertilizing or mowing or trimming or mulching so his lawn would always look its best. Sometimes he even declined invitations to barbecues in order to finish pruning or raking or whatever other yardwork he had chosen for himself. One Monday morning after a weekend of yard chores he woke up and started to go about getting ready for work and noticed that it seemed unusually dark in the house,so he went to the bedroom window to look out. Pulling back the curtains a puzzling look pinched up his forehead. Something dark green and grassy was against the outside of the window reaching nearly all the way to the frame.

"Huh?" he said aloud. " What in suburbia is that?"

He looked across the room to the other window and went over and pulled the curtains back. Again, there was something on the outside blocking his view into the yard. Something dark and grassy-looking.

"Something is not right." he said quickly dressing. He muttered to himself while he was washing his face and brushing his teeth. He stared into the bathroom mirror quizically as if trying to find the answer there, all the while wondering what could possibly be in front of his windows. When he was completely dressed and washed and brushed he went directly to the front door, turned back the deadbolt and pulled it opened. Bill stood still in complete disbelief as he looked out into the yard, his mouth hanging open, eyes wide. The grass in the entire front yard was towering at least 4 feet above his head, waving lightly in the morning breeze. It reached halfway up the side of the house, laying against the windows, swallowed up the sidewalk completely and spilled up onto the porch. The shrubs which used to frame the edges of the house nicely as they marched in a low perfect line from porch to corner had grown to three times their size and produced a thick bramble that tangled with the freshly grown grasses of the yard.

" Amazing..." he said slowly, "What have I been feeding these things?"