The first family assigned after the fire lived in a house that always felt too cold, no matter how warm the weather outside became. It was a large two-story home with beige siding and white shutters, perfectly maintained but utterly lifeless. The Willards' lawn was always trimmed with precision, and the flower beds looked too neat to be real. Inside, the air carried the faint scent of humidity, and the walls were painted the same dull beige in every room. The furniture looked as though it had been chosen from a life magazine rather than for comfort. The floors creaked too loudly, light came in through spotless windows, but never seemed to warm anything. It was as though the house itself understood that nothing good would happen here.
They were polite, at first, too polite. Mr and Mrs Willard smiled with their mouths and frowned with their eyes. They showed the boy to a room with stiff white walls and no posters, just a bed and a desk that smelled faintly of lemon cleaner. They offered meals he didn't ask for, and asked questions he had no will to answer. One morning, Mrs. Willard placed a hand on his back and said, "We're here for you, Michael," using a tone that sounded more like reassurance for herself than comfort.
That night, after lights out, Michael heard a quiet click as the door closed, followed by the sound of a lock sliding into place.
The door was locked, not in a subtle way. The sound of the bolt sliding home was deliberate, meant to be heard.
To a child who had just lost everything, it wasn't security, it was a sentence. The air turned heavier, the shadows deeper. The walls pressed inward with invisible weight, and the ceiling seemed to hang too low. The room became a quiet prison disguised as 'protection'. While no bars were visible, every corner screamed captivity.
And the silence inside it swallowed any hope of protest.
Michael didn't blink or move. He remained in bed, unmoving, his mind dancing with the echoes of the previous night. His parents' laughter, once vibrant, had now become distorted and warped, until it no longer resembled anything human. At some point, he stood, without realizing how the door had unlocked again. One moment, the bed held him, and next, he was standing in the hallway, the air cold on his skin, and no memory of the click that should have freed him.
Time passed in this manner, with him unaware of when he would be released. Eat, shower, hear the door lock, and then scream was his daily life, with no sign of him doing any better.
The dreams returned with a vengeance, more twisted and sharper than before.
Some nights, screaming tore from his throat before waking up in a stupor. Other nights, his body would wake up before his mind did, standing in dark hallways, lost in a fog.
The clocks in the Willards' home act erratically. Their ticking paused without warning, then accelerated. Mrs. Willard repeated a gesture twice, identically.
She reached for a glass, paused mid-air, and then reached again in the same rhythm, as if time itself was mocking him, but no one else seemed to notice.
The world had begun to crack at its edges.
Signs layered themselves like a silent warning. Time looped in his dreams, and people seemed displaced, like puppets acting out scenes.
On one night darker than the rest, Michael stared at the old grandfather clock in the hall. Its pendulum dragged through the air, slow as molasses. The second hand halted. Blink. Five minutes had passed.
"I saw you," he whispered to the clock.
And in that breath of silence, something answered—though no words were spoken.
The world wasn't right. Or it never had been, but after seeing the old grandfather clock stop and blink, the time came back to normal with less fluctuation.
Weeks later, the Willards relinquished custody.
In court, their excuse was simple: "Unable to provide proper care."
But on the transcript: "Unsettling. Watches the clocks as if waiting for them to break. Quiet. Still. As though listening to something we cannot hear."
The judge, a gaunt man with gray hair and sunken eyes, looked over the Willards with a quiet, exhausted contempt.
His expression did not change as he reviewed the file, but his silence weighed on the Willards. He had seen families like this before, smiling on the outside but unprepared beneath it.
He tapped a pen against his clipboard, exhaled slowly through his nose, and finally said, "Michael will be placed in a home more suitable for trauma recovery." His tone was measured, but the judgment beneath it was clear.
That was when Officer Graves stepped forward.
He waited until the courtroom had mainly cleared, then approached the bench, quiet but steady. There was something different in his posture now, less formality with more urgency. He asked the judge if there was any way he could take responsibility for the boy. He just wanted to help.
The judge looked at him for a long time before responding. His expression cracked as he looked at the officer.
Breaking the silence, the judge finally said, "I don't doubt your intentions, but the system has rules. And your record…" He trailed off, tapping a finger against the folder. "People with unresolved baggage are treated the same as those with previous addictive behaviors. Whether that's fair or not, I can't let him leave with you."
Graves became silent for a few seconds, standing there, jaw tight, his eyes flicking toward Michael across the room. The conversation continued in low voices, a back-and-forth that Michael couldn't hear.
In the end, Graves relented, not out of agreement, but resignation.
He walked over to Michael, crouched to meet his eyes, and held out a simple card.
"My number's on this," he said. "If you ever need anything—anything at all, you call me. Doesn't matter the time."
Michael did not take the card right away, but eventually, he reached for it. Their fingers touched for a moment, brief but steady. For the first time since the fire, Michael looked up and held someone's gaze.
Graves nodded once. "You'll be fine, kiddo" Then he stood and walked away.