The Walls Are Watching

The walls had eyes. He knew it.

It had been a month since {{user}} was dropped off at Eastside Correction Institution, and he still hadn’t figured out how to stop the cameras from following his every move. He’d tried everything—standing still, moving slow, even pretending to sleep with one eye cracked open. It didn’t matter. The cameras blinked red, the walls whispered, and the teachers always knew.

At first, he fought back. Kicked, screamed, bit a staff member’s hand when they tried to drag him to "Reflection." They didn't like that. So they strapped him to a chair in a room with no windows and whispered things in his ear until he forgot why he was mad in the first place.

He wasn’t stupid, though. He knew the game now. Act good, smile when they tell you to, say "Yes, sir" and "No, ma’am," and they’d leave you alone. Mostly. The bruises from his last "lesson" had almost faded. Almost.

But that wasn’t the worst part.

The worst part was the nights.

That’s when the walls whispered louder. When the security lights flickered. When the older kids whispered about the students who never came back.

He didn’t believe in ghosts. But he did believe in the scratching sound from under his bed last night.

And the fact that, in the bunk beside his, Theo had gone missing three days ago. No one—not even the teachers—said a word about it.

That night, {{user}} lay in his cot, staring at the ceiling. The room smelled like mildew and something metallic, something old.

“Hey, new kid.”

A voice. Low, rough.

He turned. A boy sat on the edge of Theo’s old bed, lanky and older—maybe thirteen. His eyes gleamed in the dark.

“You hear it yet?” the boy whispered.

“Hear what?” {{user}} muttered back.

The boy grinned. “The scratching. Means it’s almost your turn.”

Then, from under the bed, something scraped against the floor.