'My' House

At a first glance, this room seemed identical to Kejedon's room, but as he looked around, he began to notice slight differences: his wardrobe, normally pressed right next to his desk, had been moved ever so slightly further away; his white desk had now taken the colour grey; and most noticeably, his single bed has now become considerably bigger than a king-size bed!

"What the hell.. is this?" Kejedon muttered his voice slowly escalating, "this can't possibly be because of the toast?! That would be taking things too far, do you hear me, whoever did this to me?!! Put me back!"

"..."

Nothing happened. 'Of course nobody did this, I must be losing my mind, let's focus!' Kejedon thought to himself as he shook his face. Kejedon kept looking around the room: surely there'd be a reason that it's like this - maybe it's just a dream! He took a closer look at his desk, but instead of his computer, there were about 10 faded brown headbands with monkey ears. The ears looked eerily realistic - as if they were ripped off a real monkey's head, so Kejedon rubbed his eyes and looked again, hoping that he was just hallucinating, but they stayed there.

Kejedon slapped himself and thought, 'maybe I'm still just tired - let's go wash off my face...'

* * *

As he started to make his way to the bathroom, he'd accidentally bumped into a wall next to a door? Normally, Kejedon would've been able to navigate around his house blindfolded, so why did he miss the door?

He took a few steps back and saw that the door to the bathroom seemed to have been shifted to the right by no more than 30 centimetres. Just that small offset had messed up his navigation? He couldn't believe it...

'How was I so stupid to have missed the door that was barely offset? But more importantly, HOW did the door move like that?' Kejedon thought it must've just been a dream... right?

After noticing his mistake, Kejedon tried to properly open the bathroom door, but it was... locked? He could still hear the lady downstairs so... how?!

'Maybe my 'mum' has just brought somebody with her, I'll just wait out here until they've done...'

Within 2 minutes, the person in the bathroom left. Kejedon let out a sigh of relief as he heard the door clicking open, and started to make his way to the bathroom, not only because he needed to wash his face and use the toilet, but also because he was curious as to who his uninvited guest was. He hesitated a little as he headed to the bathroom, but then he remembered that this must just be a dream, after all, his mother had died anyway - he may as well enjoy the opportunity to see her again, even if it wasn't real.

Kejedon continued to walk towards the bathroom, shaking away all his bad thoughts. The person who he saw exiting the room was... a little child? They were about 4 feet tall, with very small, rounded features. Normally, you'd think that is cute but... this child... it looked grotesque? They had not been born with a deformity, but they were made to look like that by their environment. This not nature... but nurture.

The child looked plump and well-fed in places, yet malnourished in others. Their face looked like the face of an elderly man, yet it also looked like the face of a young girl. They had bruises all over their face, and presumably all over the rest of their body. Their ulna seemed to protrude outside of their skin, and their toenails were so long and sharp they could be compared to knives.

Upon their head, they wore a headband. It had a faded brown-grey colour and had realistic-looking monkey ears attached to it - the same type that was on Kejedon's desk. The headband seemed well worn, and there seemed to be a chunk cut out of the monkey ears, with dried blood upon it. The headband looked like it could crumble at any time and dissolve into the child's sickly grey hair and pale face.

Kejedon inhaled sharply and could feel his head throbbing as he saw this. The child looked afraid, Kejedon wanted to help, yet his body just couldn't move towards the child at all: instead, he found his body slowly backing away from the child.

The child started incoherently mumbling, the only occasional words Kejedon managed to make out being, 'monkey', 'headband', 'danger', and 'afraid'. Kejedon couldn't imagine what sort of life this child had lived, and even though he knew this was a dream, he couldn't help but feel immeasurable pity for the child.

The child's voice grew only louder, and their mumbling was no longer sentences, but one word: 'Monkey.'

"monkey."

"Monkey!"

"MONKEY! MONKEY! MONKEY" The child looked terrified - as if it'd seen a monster.

Kejedon panicked and tried to calm them down but to no avail. The child kept screaming at the top of their lungs, that is until they looked below them: towards the stairs. He almost instantly stopped yelling, and looked more terror-stricken than before. Kejedon quickly turned his head to see what the child had seen for them to stop screaming, but there was nothing there.

'Could they have had so much trauma that they're imagining things..?' Kejedon wondered. He wanted to reach out and hug the child, tell them it'd all be okay, but his body still seemed to reject the thought of approaching them. Kejedon let out an exasperated sigh and punched his leg for not listening to his instructions.

He could feel the tears welling up in his eyes on the behalf of this child. "... I'm sorry." Kejedon eventually said after a silence that felt like an eternity.

'It's just a dream anyway, I want to see my mum once more. But...' Kejedon thought, standing up and turning around to go down the stairs, 'why do I still feel so bad?'

Kejedon looked behind him once again, full of pity for the child. He sighed one last time and started to go down the stairs.