Dan's POV

Once Nate and I stopped hugging, we made our way to the dorm Phil and Jason had walked into. We entered to find Phil and Jason tearing through drawers and throwing clothes everywhere. "What are you doing?" Nate asked.

"According to Phil, none of these clothes are his or Dan's 'style'." He directed his attention back to Phil. "How are you this picky when you're both covered in blood?"

Phil didn't answer, he simply shrugged as he continued digging through a drawer.

"Are you giving us a silent treatment?" Nate asked with a tilted head.

"Not you," was all Phil responded with.

I facepalmed. "Pease tell me you aren't giving me a silent treatment."

Phil didn't reply, he just threw another shirt on the floor.

"Why're all these clothes the same?" Nate asked, clearly trying to change the subject.

I hadn't noticed it before, but Nate was right. Every one of the shirts was the exact same. White with light blue horizontal stripes and a pocket.

"What's in the closet?" I asked Jason upon realizing the door was shut.

"Don't know, the door's locked."

Nate's eyes widened and he ran toward the closet door. He tried the doorknob, and sure enough, it was locked. He then pulled the key around his neck over his head.

"I forgot you had that," Jason stated in disbelief.

"I told you it'd come in handy!" Nate cheered.

He smashed the key into the keyhole, but it didn't fit. "Damn it, I really thought that was going to work," Nate mumbled.

He put the key back around his neck and let out a sigh.

"Maybe we could break it in like we did with Phil's door," Jason suggested.

At this, Phil looked up. "You guys broke into my room?"

"Oh yeah," Nate started, "I guess we never explained what happened."

Phil stopped going through the clothes and gave Nate his full attention. "What happened?"

"Well, Mark had your key, but him, Cry, Felix, and Reagan all just disappeared. Dan got so frustrated that we couldn't get to you that he smashed the flashlight into the doorknob. The doorknob fell off and we opened the door," Nate explained.

"This all happened after Nate lost his memory, too," Jason put in.

"Dang, I missed a lot, huh," Phil mumbled with a small smile. I couldn't help but think he enjoyed Nate and Jason talking to him.

"Yeah," I began, "and we need to keep looking for them, so if you would please find shirts while I try to find the key to the closet–"

"What if cooler shirts are in the closet?" Phil asked.

"Why–"

"I'm going with you to look for a key. Also, did you guys say that Mark had a key to my door?"

"Yup. I think he still has it, unless someone stole it from him," Nate answered.

"That's not right," Phil commented.

"I agree! It was pretty freaking rude to kidnap someone, let alone steal from them!" Jason replied.

"Okay, yes that's rude and mean, but it's also not what I was talking about. Mark can't have a key to my room. The point was that there were no keys for the door, so you guys would just have to listen to the speaker insulting you in my voice. There was supposed to be no way to stop it–"

"What's your point?" I asked.

Phil looked at me. "Dan, there was no key to that door. Do you know what that means?"

"That I was smart for smashing it in instead of waiting for Mark?"

"Well, yeah, but Mark has the key to something else! So does Nate! You guys found keys to two different doors!" Phil cheered, grabbing my shoulders and shaking me back and forth.

"Maybe one of the keys is for wherever Reagan is!" Nate yelled.

"Exactly!" Phil shouted, smiling at Nate.

I sighed, "Sorry for being a dick earlier."

Phil giggled lightly, "Yeah, me too. I guess everything just changed so fast, ya know?"

"Or you were just being ignorant asses," Nate added.

I rolled my eyes. "Whatever, genius."

"What are we doing, Dan?" Jason asked me, smiling.

"Phil, find shirts that fit us," I began instructing. "Nate and I will go look for a key and Jason–"

"Can I find out who the crying person is or can I try to figure out who the person with green eyes is?" Jason asked.

My eyes widened slightly as I remembered the crying person. "Okay, new plan. Jason and Phil find shirts while Nate and I search for the key to that closet. In twenty minutes, if we haven't found the key, we'll meet back here and you'll either help us look or we'll go find out who the crying person is. Deal?"

"Sounds good," Jason decided.

With that, Nate and I left the dorm with Kyle in my belt loop and began our search for the key. "Alright," Nate started, "the key probably won't be in an ordinary place, so we should check places you wouldn't normally find a key."

"Example?"

"Under floorboards, behind pictures, that type of thing."

I looked down the hallway and for the first time, saw it in detail. The pictures on the walls were all creepy, the kind you would expect to see in horror movies. Some were black, but with monsters barely visible in the background. Others were portraits of depressed-looking people who looked like they might jump off the canvas and strangle me at any given second.

Nate was practically glued to my side, gripping my arm tighter every time we passed a painting. "You okay?" I asked.

He nodded his head before saying, "This is the part when someone dies."

"What?"

"In horror movies and stuff! Someone always dies when they're walking around the halls by themselves."

I chuckled, "Nate, if someone was going to kill us, they would've done it already. How many days have we been here? How many chances has whatever's behind this had to kill us?"

Nate's grip on my arm tightened as he mumbled, "So something could kill us at anytime?"

"Uh, well," I paused for a moment, "ya know what? If anything attacks us, I'll kill it with Kyle. Kyle will protect us."

His grip loosened a bit. "Alright."

I walked up to one of the pictures, with Nate beside me, and lifted it off the wall. There was nothing behind it, but I didn't feel like putting it back on the wall, so I placed it against the wall on the ground. "Nate, if you're still scared you can kick the picture. It'd be training for soccer that I wasn't kidding about signing you up for."

Nate blushed bright red. "I'm not scared! Not of that picture!"

"So you're scared of the one down there?" I joked, pointing down the hall at another painting.

"Stop! I'm not scared!" Nate yelled as he swung his leg at the painting. His foot broke through the canvas and the picture got stuck on his leg.

He let out a loud shriek, "DAN! GET A FUCKING EXORCIST! THIS PAINTING'S POSSESSED!"

I erupted into a fit of laughter, barely able to choke out, "And you say you aren't scared!"

Nate blushed harder as he tore the painting off his foot. He swung the picture at me, but I dodged it last second. "Maybe you should play baseball," I muttered.

"Can we just go back to Jason and Phil?" Nate practically begged.

"Sure," I decided once I finished laughing.

We began walking back to the dorm Jason and Phil were in. On the way back, one of the paintings on the wall caught my eye. I swerved away from the middle of the hallway toward the painting with Nate attached to my arm.

The painting had a black figure that looked identical to the one that morphed into a human-sized figure on the right side. On the left side, people were crying. The monster was in a cage and the people were outside. The beast was roaring as the people were crying. There was a key engraved on the top of the frame.

"Dan?"

"What's up?"

Nate pointed to the artist's name on the bottom right-hand corner.

John B. Higgins
1742

"Is that the John we know?" I asked.

"I'm a bit more worried that his last name is Higgins. Was he Mrs. Higgins' husband? She never talked about him," Nate responded.

"But the year says 1742," I mumbled.

"This is some weird shit," Nate commented.

I looked away from the name and back toward the key at the top. I stared at it for a second before realizing that it wasn't engraved into the frame. I touched the key and pulled it off of the frame.

"Okay, what the actual–"

"Come on," I instructed, "we have to go back to Jason and Phil and figure this out."

A/N

Have you guys ever wondered why bad words are a thing?

Like, who decided "you can't say these words. They're 'bad words' or 'cursing'"

Did some rebellious teenager just decide that they wanted to have a vocabulary that they would only use in certain situations?

How did other people even learn about them?

This was a random af thought that came to my mind the other day...

Anyways, BUH-BYE BROTATOES!