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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/gore-and-grit on 2024-11-15 11:21:36+00:00.
Growing up, I used to hate seeing them everywhere. In my town, you couldn’t walk five steps without running into them. They were on every wall, like some kind of creepy wallpaper. The worst part was the classroom. I used to just think it was annoying, which it was. I hated how crowded the walls were—not just with normal stuff like vocabulary words or pictures of presidents. Sure, those were there too, but they were shoved in between the real stuff. The stuff that made my skin crawl.
You know, the Town Rules.
There’s the usual stuff you'd find in any school—the Golden Rule poster about "Treating others the way you want to be treated," and that one with "THINK" in bold letters, where each letter stands for something like "Thoughtful" and "Helpful." But all of that just fades into the background next to the rules. The ones that actually matter. The ones everyone knows. The ones you don’t question.
They're everywhere, you can't miss them, no matter where you sit. And they can't miss you. Above the chalkboard, behind the teacher’s desk, even taped to the bathroom doors. But they're not just there. Above the water fountains, they hang on the walls next to the weekly newsletter, and they're printed on the side of the gymnasium where we have assemblies.
I’m not sure how long they’ve been around, the rules. I think it’s forever. I don’t really remember learning them. It’s like…they’ve always been there, like the sun rising or the lunch bell ringing. Nobody remembers a time before them. I mean, my great-great-great-granddad knew them, and I guess his great-great-great-granddad did too, so who knows.
It’s hard to imagine a world where kids don’t know the rules before they can even write their own names. Miss Talia said kids used to start with the alphabet or numbers, but here, we learn the rules first. She told us that way back on the first day of kindergarten, when we could barely tie our shoes, but somehow, we all knew Rule Seven: Don’t go out during the fog. We all said it together, perfectly. That’s because even before we could read, we were taught to recognize the shapes of the words.
I know the rules so well, I could say them backwards. Most of us could. We’ve been drilled on them since we were little—so little that “mama,” “dada,” and “don’t look” were some of our first words. I’m sure I could even rattle them off in my sleep, and probably do. Sometimes I even catch myself whispering them under my breath when I'm nervous like they're a lullaby or a prayer. But they’re not. Not really.
Every day when we walk into the classroom, they're the first thing we see. And every day we recite them right alongside the pledge. Our pledge isn't like the one I hear in movies. Ours is shorter, that's why I like it more. We all stand, push our chairs back with a screech that echos off the walls, and place our right hand over our hearts. And instead of talking about liberty or justice or any of that, we say, Stray from the path, and you'll be lost. Stay with the pack no matter the cost. Follow the rules, and you'll be fed. Stray from the pack, and you'll be dead.
That's it, real simple. And then, Rule One: Don’t look outside the windows when they call at night. No matter who knocks or how much they beg.
I don’t know who “they” are exactly, but my sister says they’re really good at pretending to be people. People you miss. People you shouldn’t miss.
Miss Haverford, our current teacher, watches us while we recite. Her eyes sweep the room like she’s looking for someone who’s not taking it seriously enough. Sometimes, if she catches you zoning out or mumbling, she makes you stay after school and write out all the rules ten times by hand. My sister had to do it once. She said her hand was cramped for days.
I always say to the kids who are even younger than me that the rules are like cheat codes in a game. You have to remember them, or else you lose. And in this game, when you lose, you don’t get a respawn.
We don’t talk about the rules much outside of those daily recitations. It’s like some kind of unspoken agreement—learn them, follow them, but don’t dwell on them. No one wants to be the kid who asks too many questions. That’s how you end up noticed.
But every once in a while, someone breaks a rule, and then it’s all anyone can talk about.
Like with Nathan Inco. He’s the boy who let his dead brother in—or almost did.
Nathan’s in my sister’s grade, a quiet kid who didn’t stand out much until the night he broke Rule One. I wasn’t there when it happened, but I’ve heard the story enough times that it feels like I was. People said he thought he heard his brother knocking at the window, begging to be let in. His brother had been dead for a month at that point, killed in a car accident that everyone agreed was impossible. The road he crashed on was dead straight. No curves. No reason for the car to flip the way it did, but it had. Crushed like a tin can. Nathan never said why he opened the window. Maybe he thought his brother had come back, just for him. Maybe he just wanted to believe. I like my sister, whenever she isn’t being such a gross girl. I think I’d probably be pretty sad if that happened to her. So…I guess I kinda get it. Maybe Nathan did too.
His dad got to him in time to pull him away, but Nathan’s arm...well, they couldn’t save that. It’s all anyone could talk about for weeks. That and how Natalie and Jacob B. were going to kiss during recess, but mostly Nathan. Everyone called him stupid. I guess I can see why, but I don’t think it’s as simple as that. Knowing the rules is different from living them.
After that, he didn’t come to school for a while. When he finally did, he was missing half of his left arm. The rumors flew around the cafeteria like flies on old milk cartons. Some kids said they saw his bandages bleeding through during recess. Others swear his arm still twitched sometimes, like it was trying to grow back, but all wrong.
I’ve seen him in the hall sometimes, usually in the morning when my class is walking in a single-file line. He’s by himself a lot of the time, but I don’t know if that’s much different than before. Maybe that’s part of the reason he opened the window. Maybe he was lonely. Maybe his brother was his only friend. I used to see it twitch sometimes, Nathan’s arm. All jerky and erratic, like a robot running out of batteries. I’m always waiting for it to just stop, for good. But it hasn’t. Maybe it doesn’t know it’s gone.
The big kids, like my sister and her friends, just whispered about how dumb Nathan was for listening in the first place.
“Everyone knows Rule Five,” they’d say. “The dead don’t stay dead.”
So, yeah. Everyone called him stupid for falling for it, but honestly? I don’t think any of us really know what we'd do. It’s easy to talk big when it’s not your brother's voice outside, right?
I say as much to my friends one day at lunch, picking at my soggy PB&J.
“Yeah, but I still wouldn’t fall for it,” Jacob L., my best friend, says. He’s sitting across from me, mashing peas into his mashed potatoes and I just know he’s gonna try and get one of us to eat it. “I’m too smart for that.”
“Okay, but what if it was someone you really cared about?” I ask. “Like your mom? Or Layla?”
Jacob pulls a face like he smells something bad. His nose wrinkles.
“Layla?” he says it like I just told him to eat a worm. Layla’s his older sister, the one who’s always picking on him. She’s friends with my sister, but the sort of friends who say mean stuff about each other when the other isn’t around. “No way. I wouldn’t look for her, especially not her. Her donkey teeth would probably be sticking out so far, they’d hit the glass.” He mimics her bucktoothed smile. I laugh, and I don’t point out that those ‘donkey teeth’ of hers seem to run in the family. “I’d probably pass out from looking at her, like those fainting goats.”
“That’s so gross, Jake,” says Alice from beside me, wrinkling her nose as he pours his strawberry milk into his chunky mush, stirring until it looks like a light pink sludge.
“Yeah, Jake,” I agree around a mouthful of cold peanut butter, chunky grape jelly, and grainy wheat bread. “Strawberry milk is so gross.” We call him Jake because it’s way better than saying Jacob L. all the time.
Alice scoffs. “I’m not talking about the milk, I’m talking about him playing with his food like that. And stop talking with your mouth open, Robbie.” She scolds, moving her lunchbox away from us. Her mom packs her lunch so she has the good stuff. A ham and cheese sandwich on regular bread, chips, apple slices, a fruit roll-up, and a Capri-Sun. Alice is all about manners. She always reminds us to stop playing with our food and she thinks it’s stupid when I burp the entire alphabet instead of being super impressed like she should be and all that’s kinda annoying, but she’s like the fastest runner in our grade so she never gets tagged during recess. Plus, she’s always willing to trade her chips for the chocolate pudding I bring for snack time, which makes her cool enough to sit with.
Jake stops stirring his weird mash-milk mix.
“Stop doing that, Jake. Stop making fart noises with your armpit, Jake.” He makes his voice high-pitched like a girl. I’m glad he’s not a girl because he’d probably be a pretty ugly one. I don’t laugh out loud because I don’t want her to think I’m on his side, we haven’t traded any of our food yet, but I nudge his kne...
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