The silence in the room was deafening. He learned that quickly. And since he wasn't aware of how noises actually worked yet, he was growing used to the silence and how it functioned. When things were silent, he could hear everything. The sound of his shoes against the tiles. The sound of his breath against his ears everytime he inhaled and exhaled. The sound of the footsteps over his head in different rooms that was unknown to him. But that was okay. Unknown meant room for understanding new things.

He was learning how to write.

He wasn't sure how he was supposed to start, but it was going… Okay? His hands were sloppy- he'd never picked up a pencil or pen before, yet he knew what they were called. That confused him again. Quickly he learned that confusion was a normal part of life, and that the confusion helped him learn. It was a strange concept, but he was getting used to it.

The sounds overhead didn't bother him much anymore, and his vision was clearing back to normal. Well, as normal as he could remember it being before he woke. Before he woke, he was just a rotting heap of nothing, seamless and lifeless. And now he was something…

He wrote down an "a" in the middle of the paper. It was big and sloppy and unorganized, but it sort of looked like an "a". Next he tried writing a "b". It looked better than all his previous attempts, much more rounded out and less like childish scribbles.

"C" was hard. He couldn't get "c" right.

Somehow he knew what all these letters were, and from what he knew, he didn't have any previous memories of writing and learning these letters. Numbers he knew too, but he felt like he wasn't ready enough to write those yet.

Something made a sound overhead. He shrank quickly into the corner, knees curled up to his chest, hair overshadowing his brown eyes. These sounds were strange, unknown and unrecognizable. He knew they came from something loud and heavy, but trying to figure out what that was seemed troubling. He was still new.

He waited, paper and writing and anything in the past forgotten.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

He heard voices after a while.

"You smell like trash!" said one voice.

"At least I don't smell like vomit!" screeched another one.

"Ladies, ladies, let's not fight," commented a third.

"Nah, let them fight. They need to settle their differences somehow," chimed in the fourth and final voice.

He inhaled.

"It's insulting how much you gorge yourself on trash and garbage. What are you, an animal?"

"That would be such a compliment if you weren't such a narcissist!"

The first voice was low, femine, dark and broadening. She sounded secure, like a person who couldn't be hurt by anything or anyone. Someone who didn't have a lack of self confidence. The second one's voice was much more high pitched than the first, sounding more screech-y and higher in frequency. He almost winced at the sound of her voice. She sounded like she was insulted easily, hurt in pride, but also not afraid to speak her mind.

Ironically enough, both of the female voices sounded familiar, almost like he'd heard them before. Which was almost impossible- he'd never walked out of this room! Maybe in some place and time in the before he heard them, but it didn't make sense to him. It confused him.

Quietly he exhaled.

The footsteps frooze.

"Freddy," said the dark female voice, "Freddy, I see something."

"Where Roxy?"

"There. Down there. In the walls."

He moved closer in his crawl space, shivering. He felt afraid. He felt spotted.

He waited for what felt like a long time before the footsteps transitioned somewhere else.

"Maybe your sensors are broken," said the lowest voice that wasn't Freddy.

"Maybe your sensors are broken! Mine are working beautifully! I am the best after all."

"Yeah, sure, keep telling yourself that Roxanne."

Then they walked off.

He slowly crawled out of his hiding spot, the shadows spitting him out. He looked around, scared. At the same time, he was full of wonder. Other people were out there. He'd heard them before, but now he understood that they were actually there, not just a figment of his newly formed imagination. Or a system error.

More and more he was waking up. Becoming more and more human. He didn't understand how he wasn't human. He breathed. He ate… Sort of. He didn't dispose of bodily waste… Perhaps he wasn't entirely human. But that was okay. He was mostly human. Breathing air was something that humans did.

He realized very quickly that he needed to find a way out of this room.

He was waking up. Waking up was weird. He could see things that other people couldn't.

He shook his head, moving back to the stack of paper he was practicing on. Slowly he grabbed the pencil, and drew "fun fun fun" three times. He wondered what it would be like to have fun, so he just imagined it.

Cake. A birthday party. His birthday party with streamers and balloons and presents. So many presents. Beautiful tapestries colored the tables, confetti printed tablecloths and party hats organized flawlessly. Then there were the characters, many made of rainbow colors.

Then he tasted blood.

He stumbled back, doing a double take. Blood. He bled. He bled and that was a human thing to do.

He was waking up, and it was not a comfortable feeling. But for now, it was okay. It was better than doing nothing. Because the images were so vivid that he could see, smell, hear, taste, and feel every little thing. The air conditioner on his skin. The taste of sugar on his tongue. The scent of cake and old machinery.

He looked at his own skin…