She learned not to stare at the messages, or they'd take her away. It had happened before, and to people she knew, so that was no damn lie spread by the TC people. Although she didn't really know who the TC people were. Could be anyone, really.
And she didn't know why they played games, but what she did understand was that they weren't safe. And they weren't trustworthy.
That's how the whiteboards got started. People figured it would be much easier to set up whiteboards then anything else. So now, they were everywhere. On every wall, on every side of every house. There was words on everything, now.
So that they could read.
The TC people still came round, pinning their notices to the doors and screening in the great market.
Everyone made sure that their house was wiped clean on the day the TC people came round.
'It's for the kids to draw on,' they'd say. And the TC people would go away, because they figured them people were dumb and couldn't read or write anyway.
But them people weren't dumb and those that didn't know, they learned.
They learned how to communicate, without the TC people knowing. They all understood that if the TC people got wind of what was going on, they'd tear all the houses down and it'd be life under the bridge for them.
Or worse.
So they were very careful, whenever they wrote a message. They did it in the dead of night. Some even paid the children to write the words they dictated. Nobody would suspect a child.
I know you went round the place the other day and I figured you were curious about the houses.
I did wonder about the walls. What happened to her?
Her?
You said there was a her...
There was. I suppose she wised up.
The wipe-clean houses (freewrite)
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