Whispers Beneath Meniki
1191 Words
Lisa stood in silence as Nya’s voice faded into the warm, shifting air. The soft hum of the garden, with its glistening trees and murmuring leaves, seemed suddenly far away—muted beneath the weight of something unspoken. Nya’s expression, once warm and welcoming, had changed. The smile was gone. Her luminous eyes seemed older now. Sadder.
Lisa took a cautious step forward. “You said truth was buried. Buried where? Beneath what?”
Nya’s wings fluttered once, slowly, like an exhale.
“Beneath the building you ran from—IN-47B,” she said. “Eighty-five years ago, it was not empty. It was not abandoned. It was alive… with screams.”
Lisa's blood ran cold.
Nya began to walk along the soft path, and Lucy followed, her breath shallow. “It was a ‘correctional’ facility,” Nya said, voice low. “That was the name the world gave it. Officially, it was meant to be a mental wellness center for the troubled. But those who arrived were not ill. They were unwanted.”
Lisa’s stomach turned.
“Unwanted?” she asked. “Unwanted by who?”
“By their towns,” Nya replied. “Their parents. Their churches. Their neighbors. Anyone who deemed them too strange, too broken, too different. People were sent there for hearing voices, for crying too much, for saying they didn’t feel like a boy or a girl. For being caught kissing someone they weren’t supposed to love.”
Lisa clenched her fists.
“You mean... they were sent away for existing?”
Nya gave a small nod. “Yes. For existing wrong, according to the rules of Meniki.”
Lisa frowned. That name was unfamiliar to her. “Meniki… that’s where the building was?”
Nya turned slightly to glance back at her, her eyes reflecting the blue of the false sky. “Yes. Meniki. A town wrapped in silence. On maps, it was like any other—roads, houses, families. But if you stepped inside it… you would feel it immediately. The deadness.”
Lisa shivered. “Deadness?”
“The people walked. Talked. Worked. But they were already dead inside,” Nya said. “No one smiled. No one screamed. The wind barely moved the trees. There was a rot in the soil—an invisible rot, soaked deep into the bones of the town. It spread through generations, teaching them to hide shame under prayer and to cover bruises with routine. Nothing strange was allowed to exist for long. Anything that disrupted the silence was quickly... removed.”
Lisa didn’t realize she’d stopped walking until Nya paused ahead and looked back. The little creature hovered just slightly above the grass now, her voice quieter.
“There was a girl,” Nya said. “Her name was Ariet.”
Lisa’s chest tightened.
“She was born in Meniki. She laughed often as a child. Had a gift for memorizing bird songs. But when she turned twelve, the laughing stopped.”
Nya’s voice trembled, just a little. “She had three older brothers. They visited her room at night. Again, and again. Until her mind began to split under the weight of what they did to her.”
Lisa covered her mouth with one hand. Her legs felt weak.
“She tried to tell her parents,” Nya continued. “But they already knew. They knew. They just… couldn’t bring themselves to acknowledge it. So they moved the boys into another part of the house. Pretended nothing happened. And every time she broke down, they shared these long, empty stares. Like they were trying to ask each other, How much longer until she forgets?”
A gust of wind moved through the garden, rustling the trees gently. The petals of one flower floated down, white and slow, landing at Lisa’s feet.
“Ariet had a lover once,” Nya said, voice hollow. “A boy who used to walk with her near the hills. He promised to marry her someday. But when the rumors spread—when whispers of her ‘dirtiness’ reached his ears—he vanished. No goodbye. Not even a letter. He shunned her, and with him went the last thread she had to the world outside.”
Lisa felt her throat tightening, a pressure rising behind her eyes. “She didn’t deserve that,” she whispered. “None of it.”
“No,” Nya agreed, hovering down to the ground again. “But the people of Meniki weren’t concerned with deserving. They wanted her gone. Her parents, afraid she would snap completely and bring shame to their name, signed the papers.”
“They sent her to IN-47B,” Lisa said, barely able to get the words out.
“Yes,” Nya whispered.
Lisa shook her head slowly. “But that place… it was supposed to help, wasn’t it? They called it a treatment center. A hospital.”
“That’s what the government promised,” Nya replied. “A place of recovery. Of reform. A place where ‘awkward minds’ could be soothed, shaped, made useful. But that was never the truth.”
They stopped walking. Nya turned to her fully now, her eyes wide and glowing with something old and heavy.
“The truth,” she said softly, “was buried beneath the paperwork. Buried in the concrete walls. The truth of what they really did to Ariet... and all the others like her.”
Lisa’s skin prickled. The garden, though still beautiful, felt colder now—less inviting. As if it, too, remembered.
“How many others?” Lisa asked. “How many people were taken there?”
“Hundreds,” Nya said. “Over two decades. Some went in for crying too often. Others for seeing things no one else could. Some were simply too loud. Too colorful. Too alive.”
Lisa stared at her, heart thudding.
“And they were all just… locked away?”
Nya shook her head. “Worse.”
Lisa’s voice dropped. “What happened to Ariet when she got there?”
Nya didn’t answer at first.
Her wings fluttered once more.
The breeze died.
The sky dimmed just slightly.
Lisa stepped back instinctively, her breath catching. She suddenly didn’t want to know. But at the same time, she had to know. Had to face it.
“What… what did they do to her?” she asked, her voice barely audible.
Nya looked at her with eyes so ancient and sorrowful that Lisa felt her insides twist.
And then Nya opened her mouth to speak—
—but Lisa raised a trembling hand. “Wait.”
Nya paused.
Lisa stared down at the ground, at the glowing green grass and the soft petals scattered like ghosts. Her heart pounded in her ears.
She didn’t want to hear it. Not yet. Not when she could already feel the edges of Ariet’s story pressing into her skin like splinters. Not when she knew, deep in her gut, that whatever Nya was about to say would live in her forever.
Lisa closed her eyes.
Because something told her…
The worst was yet to come.
- Writer
