It wasn’t supposed to rain.

Summer had arrived, or, at least, would be arriving rather soon, taking natural delays into account, and every report available had called for clear skies and gentle warmth befitting the transitional period between the seasons. And true, not a single cloud had visited the sky that entire day, yet the nightfall brought with it rainfall, and the rainfall brought with it a smell.

At first the smell was mild, rather standard of a litter-ridden, trash-filled street, but gradually the smell grew into an odor, and then into a stench, one so pervasive and foul that the entire block reeked of rot and prompted its sickened denizens to issue a slew of complaints to the authorities.

The supposed source was a daycare that had stood boarded for months, so one car arrived, expecting perhaps a gas leak from neglected pipes, but upon opening the door found neglect of a far more repugnant kind.

So one car turned to ten, and one gasp turned to twenty as one by one the bodies were brought onto the street. There was a mix of ages and races, both children and adults, anywhere from six to sixty, in various states of undress. Many of the children matched the milk carton portraits of the suddenly vanished, albeit in a far more mangled state than previously seen. There were lesions on their wrists and ankles, some shallow, some deep, some mild, some infected, as well as various other physical traumas in various other parts. Certainly the mental traumas were just as severe, undoubtedly worse in most cases, but no direct accounts could be taken from unmoving mouths.

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Though they couldn’t move, the mouths were a point of interest, not just on the children but the adults as well, for all of them showed similar kinds of internal corrosion, as if they’d swished acid like mouthwash and forgotten to spit. Notice was also taken of lacerations about the neck and eyes of most of the adults and a few of the children. Some were even more mangled than that, so much that their facial features were barely recognizable as human; seemingly they’d been dead for much longer than the others.

As the bodies were loaded onto the trucks to be taken for autopsy, a team of investigators prowled the innards of the daycare, searching for answers, and to their horrified relief they’d found one. There was a rotten door that fell off the hinges immediately after being touched, and this revealed a little side room with dirty mattresses and torn sheets lining the floor. Upon these mattresses were even more bodies and their spilled fluids, but seated on one there was a boy, no more than thirteen, his legs curled to his chest, his chin resting on his knees, humming a soft tune as he gazed listlessly at nothing in particular.

With trepidation the investigators approached, and with delayed reaction the boy raised his head to turn that listless stare their way. They explained themselves, that he could trust them, that they were here to take him away from this awful, awful place. He gave no response, nothing beyond slow, heavy blinks, as if fighting off sleep.

But he was alive, and he was the closest they’d get to an immediate answer, and so, repeating their assurances as if they were memorized hymns, they guided him to his feet and led him out of the room. Despite the severe delay in his reactions, the boy did not struggle, and he trudged with the investigators through the foul sludge coating the floor, still humming the tune.