Haloseville

𝑺𝒍𝒖𝒈𝒈𝒊𝒔𝒉 𝑳𝒖𝒏𝒄𝒉

At one or so, a person entered the room in which, Gideon and Harley were at. They worked in a different room from the boys.

"Hello, I have come to collect you for lunch. Please follow me." The voice was a man's voice. It was soft but also hoarse at the same time. He was quite short and looked up at the two girls towering over him.

Harley and Gideon nodded and followed him to the room where the boys worked at.

The boys worked in a large, empty room and chopped oak wood in half. They were chopping with a heavy metal axe in their gloved hands.

Lee felt exhausted and too hot. He had lost track of time. The doll mask wasn't allowing the beads of sweat that were seeping through his skin to evaporate. The boiler suit he wore stopped himself from feeling cool. To add on, the room's door was shut and there was no windows. It was suffocating. As he had just began slashing the next chunk of wood, the door opened.

"Hello, I have come to collect you for lunch. Please come with me." The tiny man said. The girls were behind him, quietly beckoning them to come.

The boys stopped and Jase threw his axe onto the floor. The five stood in a tidy line in silence and followed the man like hypnotized ducklings.

——

The lunch room, or what the workers called it 'Herania', was full of people. There were many beautifully carved dark brown oak wood tables standing in perfect and orderly rows. The floor was shiny black, as if glossed with hair gel and there was only three windows to get lunch. A lengthy line stretched to almost half the room. Everyone stood in an uniform line.

"Why is everything so quiet?" Gideon whispered to Rocky standing in the line.

"I'm not sure...I just wanna know why the lunch room has a special name." He whispered back, creasing his eyebrows as he glared at the amount of people in front of him.

Lee stood at the back and tapped Harley in front of him.

"What?" Harley asked, in her most quiet voice.

"Do you find it weird how this place is literally in silence and that no one is talking at all?" Lee replied. Harley shrugged.

"We shouldn't ask questions guys. Let's just get our lunch and then chat again. We may need to figure some things out because this is not right." Jase whispered at the two behind him.

They nodded in unison.

——

"Finally, I'm next in line." Gideon mumbled to herself. She peeked between the person's shoulder in front of her to see what was for lunch.
She saw a red colored soup and some greasy looking jack-potatoes.

Gideon looked at the lunch lady through her doll mask as the lady scooped up a huge portion of soup and only one potato. The lady dumped the plate in front of Gideon and didn't say anything. Gideon took the plate and carefully went to find an empty seat.

After everyone has gotten their lunch, they went to sit with Gideon.

"This looks...disgusting." Jase whispered, glancing at the soup. It was bubbling up by itself and the bubbles would pop.

"It looks like blood and that's gross," Rocky replied, shuddering as he took a spoonful of the soup and smelling it. "Oh god, what is this smell?"

Harley smelt the soup and nearly jumped out of her seat, "This smells putrid, how are we supposed to eat this? I think I'm just going to throw it."

Lee pointed to an enormous sign at the north side of the Herania.

It read:

𝕱𝖔𝖔𝖉 𝖒𝖚𝖘𝖙 𝖇𝖊 𝖋𝖎𝖓𝖎𝖘𝖍𝖊𝖉 𝖔𝖗 𝖞𝖔𝖚 𝖜𝖎𝖑𝖑 𝖇𝖊 𝖙𝖆𝖐𝖊𝖓 𝖙𝖔 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖑𝖎𝖖𝖚𝖎𝖉𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓 𝖗𝖔𝖔𝖒 𝖎𝖒𝖒𝖊𝖉𝖎𝖆𝖙𝖊𝖑𝖞.

Harley gasped at the sign and tried to take a mouthful of soup but instead, regurgitated it out back into the bowl on the plate.

Then Jase uttered, "Guys, I think there is something very wrong with this place but I don't know what."

"Why does everyone wear doll masks here and why is everything exactly identical?"