Behind her, June gently pushed the door shut and turned the lock, just like the orphanage rules said to do. He barely noticed the act. The voice in his head, the message about the dungeon had already slipped from his mind like water through a cracked cup. Even if something in him had changed, even if his thoughts were a little sharper than they used to be, the old habits still held on tight. He was still June. And June didn’t have the kind of life that made room for impossible things.
A slow breath left his chest as he saw Sister Margaret, exactly where she was supposed to be. Her dark habit, the silver cross around her neck, her quiet, focused movements, it was all real. Familiar. Safe. The relief hit him like a warm blanket, and before he could stop himself, he ran across the room and threw his arms around her from behind.
“Sister Margaret!” he said, voice light, cheerful, maybe even a little shaky under it.
“You finally come home,” She chuckled, surprised but not startled, and gently set the knife down on the counter. She turned, wiping her hands on her apron, and looked down at him with a calm smile. “What’s got my little hero so happy, hmm?”
“Nothing,” June said quickly. He rocked a little on his heels. “I just had a bad dream, that’s all.”
“Oh?” Her hand came down to ruffle his hair. “You’re not scared, are you?”
“Why would I be?” June tried to act like a tough kid. “They’re just dreams. They’re not real. Nothing to be scared of.”
“Mmm, someone suddenly got brave,” Sister Margaret teased, her smile growing.
June lifted his hand and tapped his chest with. “Of course I’m brave.”
She laughed under her breath. “My brave boy.”
Then she shooed him gently away with a wave of her hand. “Go on, wash up. I’ll finish here and call everybody when dinner’s ready.”
June took the stairs with a spring in his step, a small grin tugging at the corners of his mouth, so unlike his usual quiet, shadowed self. For once, something in him felt light. Whole. The lingering fear and confusion had thinned, pushed out by a warmth he didn’t fully understand. He didn’t question it. He just let it carry him upward. Somewhere along the way, without realizing it, he started to run, not out of fear, but because he wanted to. His world felt bigger, brighter. His thoughts were shifting, moving in colors instead of dull greys. He didn’t know what that meant, only that he could feel it.
But as he reached the door to his room, something pulled him back down. The joy ebbed a little. He slowed, caught his breath, and pushed the door open carefully.
The room was cramped, six beds lined up in two rows. Three were already taken and the rest were empty.
The girl on the first bed sat hunched forward, maybe twelve or thirteen, her shoulders rigid, her head low. She was May. June’s eyes caught the glint of metal in her hands. He froze for a second too long. A small blade; she was slicing her arm, slow and quiet. He tore his gaze away, guilt burning in his chest. He’d heard whispers. Something about her brother, how he’d murdered their entire family, and she was the only one who lived. June remembered someone saying she’d been left with a wound near her ribs, deep enough to see bone. She was different. Not like him. Not slow. Her mind moved fast. He didn’t know how to explain it.
Then he waved awkwardly to a boy around his own age, sitting cross-legged on a bed, bent over his homework. The boy barely looked up.
June’s brief warmth faded entirely as he remembered his school bag. Those bullies had taken it, tossed it somewhere before cornering him behind the dumpsters. He hadn't even tried to look for it afterward. This wasn’t the first time. And now, tomorrow, the teachers would beat him again for showing up empty-handed. They always did. Even Sister Margaret wouldn’t give him money for a new notebook. She’d just shake her head and tell him to be more careful.
His feet dragged now as he reached his own bed, top bunk. The lower bunk was taken by one of the older boys, Keven. He was seventeen maybe, always quiet, never said much. But his presence alone was enough to make June shrink in on himself a little. He avoided the boy’s eyes, edged past him quickly, and moved to the shared closet to grab his towel.
He was halfway to the bathroom when something flew toward him. Reflex kicked in and he caught it somehow. His hands clenched instinctively around it.
He looked down, it was a knife.
His chest tightened. He nearly dropped it, but something in his hands locked up. Fear kept his fingers curled tight. The older boy didn’t say anything more, just looked at him with unreadable eyes, then turned back toward the wall. June swallowed hard. He said nothing.
Clutching the knife, he stepped into the bathroom and closed the door behind him.
…
"What do we say before we eat?" Sister Lily looked sternly at half a dozen children gathered around the dining table.
The few teenagers had already lifted their spoons dropped them with barely concealed impatience.
June always remembered such things, so he had already grabbed the hands of the children seated beside him and closed his eyes in prayer before the meal. "Thank you, Lord, for this food before us. Bless those who prepared it and those who are sharing it with us. May it nourish our bodies and bring us together in gratitude and love. Amen."
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As soon as he said it, the others also echoed with a half-hearted "Amen," and everyone started eating. No talking allowed during dinner. That was one of the strict rules, and no one dared break it.
Tonight's meal consisted of mashed potatoes, chicken, and boiled vegetables arranged in neat portions.
June had only taken one bite of the chicken when his appetite instantly vanished. Something was profoundly wrong with the meat. It looked normal enough, golden-brown and steaming, but the taste was... off. Wrong. Like chicken that had been left in the sun for days, then sprayed with perfume to mask the decay. He wanted to vomit but caught Sister Margaret smiling at him from across the table.
"Everything good, June?"
He forced a smile and nodded. Didn’t trust himself to speak. He moved on to the mashed potatoes, hoping they’d go down easier, but they were somehow worse. Sticky, sour, weirdly grainy. The vegetables tasted like nothing. Boiled into mush. Usually, the food at the orphanage wasn’t anything to brag about, but it was edible. This wasn’t. This was like someone pretending to make food without knowing what it was supposed to be. He gave up trying to eat and drank as much water as he could to quiet the hunger in his stomach.
After dinner, everybody had to study for one hour according to the rules. June sat in his bunk bed, but could only stare outside through the small window, its glass cracked and allowing a gentle breeze to slip in. He tried to find stars, but there weren't any in the sky. Even the usual white glow of the moon was missing.
Though in the quietness of his mind, June finally had time to contemplate what was happening to him. He realized he wasn't having problems focusing on things anymore, nor did his thoughts wander off track mid-sentence as they always had before. The strangest change of all was how words and concepts that had previously never made sense suddenly clicked into place in his head, their meanings crystallizing with perfect clarity. What's happening to me? he wondered, the question itself forming more coherently than his thoughts ever had before. He recalled how he'd always struggled to read the simplest sentences, the letters swimming and rearranging themselves before his eyes. Now when he glanced at Leo’s open textbook across the room, he could read the title perfectly: “Principles of Chemistry.”
June wondered if this change had something to do with the voice in his head. Or perhaps he was still in the dream. He glanced around, but nothing seemed amiss. Then maybe it was connected to the living doorknob he'd smashed. Neither explanation made logical sense, but his improved reasoning abilities suggested that if he'd truly seen these impossible things, then something fundamental had changed about him.
Unknowingly, at some point, his eyelids began to feel heavy and he was pulled into sleep.
June was running down the school hallway. Behind him were the students from the day who had beaten him following. They crashed jokes back and forth as they chased after him, their movements unnaturally quick and jerky.
"Look at the fool running!" one called out.
"He thinks he can get away!" another cackled.
June's lungs burned as he sprinted down corridors that twisted and morphed. The walls seemed to breathe around him, expanding and contracting as he passed. With each turn, more students joined the hunt. Teachers appeared among the bullies, their faces stretched into wide smiles. Sister Agnes materialized beside them, her ruler transformed into a long, thin blade that whistled as she swung it through the air. Even children from the orphanage joined in.
"We've always hated you," Eliza whispered.
Out of breath, June burst through double doors into the school cafeteria, slamming them shut behind him. Without thinking, he dragged a heavy table across the floor, its legs screeching against the linoleum, and jammed it against the doors just as the first bodies slammed against them from the other side. The barricade wouldn't hold long. June chest heaved. His eyes darted across the room, searching frantically for another exit. He spotted the swinging doors that led to the kitchen. He dashed toward them, hearing the table begin to scrape across the floor as the mob pushed against the doors with collective force.
The kitchen seemed empty and normal enough, gleaming metal surfaces and industrial equipment sitting silently in the dark. June ducked behind a counter, trying to control his panicked breathing. For a moment, silence descended, broken only by the distant pounding at the cafeteria doors.
One-two-three-four-five…
He frantically counted in while rubbing his eyes to wake up from the strange dream, but instead, one by one, appliances whirred to life around him. The industrial mixer's beaters began to spin. The oven doors creaked open, revealing blazing interiors that cast hellish red light across the kitchen. The refrigerator's door opened and growled like an animal. Knives rose from their blocks and hovered midair, sharp end pointing at him.
A cleaver detached itself from the wall and slashed at him. June ducked, feeling the air part above his head. The blender's blades spun with a high-pitched whine as it launched itself from the counter toward him.
"Stop!" June screamed, but the kitchen had become a whirlwind of animated objects, all converging on him.
He scrambled away on hands and knees, dodging between the legs of prep tables. A ladle smacked him across the face, leaving a welt. A meat tenderizer crashed down inches from his fingers. He crawled faster, heading for a small space he spotted between the walk-in freezer and wall. His foot slipped in something wet… cooking oil spreading across the floor. He went down hard, sliding toward the deep fryer that bubbled ominously, its oil popping and spitting. The smell of hot grease filled his nostrils. The cafeteria doors finally burst open. The mob poured in just as June struggled to his feet, rapidly getting cornered between the advancing crowd and the super-heated oil. Their faces had changed, no longer his classmates and teachers, but something else wearing their skins poorly. Their features shifted and ran like melting wax.
"We've been waiting for you to ripen," said someone who resembled Kevin.
They surrounded him, hands reaching to grab his limbs. June felt himself being lifted, his body suspended over the boiling oil of the fryer. He struggled, but there were too many hands holding him.
"One," they began to count in unison.
"Two..."
“Thr—”
Before the chanting mob reached three, June experienced a piercing, cold sensation spreading through his abdomen. A knife had impaled him. Yet, it brought not weakness but rather a peculiar mental clarity that cut through the nightmare's fog.
His bed jolted violently, June's eyes flew open with a strangled gasp as dream and reality briefly merged, only to find May hovering above him with cold metal pressed against his throat, her cropped hair hanging like dark tendrils that concealed everything save for that bone-white smile gleaming in the darkness.
In desperate panic, June screamed and flailed his legs, somehow connecting with enough force to knock her off him and onto the floor. His heart hammered violently against his ribs as he clutched at his chest, finding no knife wound but feeling phantom pain where the blade had entered.
He scrambled to his feet, back pressed against the wall. His scream had woken nearly everyone in the room.
In the darkness, their shadowed eyes reflected the dim light from the hallway, overlapping eerily with the faces from his nightmare: hungry, watching, waiting.
[VOICE IN HEAD]
[Echo: Memory Fragments]
*You have encountered residual imprints left behind by previous owners. These echoes are fragments of memory—reflections of their source, mimicking thought and behavior, but without true awareness.