Maybe Jennifer was supposed to be a pea that he kidnapped, but we all know that Jennifer is timid and by the time Thursday came and she wasn’t kicking and screaming he decided to let her stay. She may have even been sickly because of the accident reminding Gregory of Joshua. In his mind Jennifer is Joshua. She probably was meant to be a pea because she is bought to the basement, not Joshua’s room. Im not really certain.

Like you I am reluctant to think Jennifer would be so reluctant to leave the cellar while the body of a dead child is rotting on the bed. I also think that Gregory may have boarded up Joshua’s room(assuming that it is Joshua’s room and not the room beside it) before Jennifer’s arrival. Therefore it would be difficult impossible to take that child’s bed out from his room unless for some reason he moved the bed out before boarding up the room, which I have trouble accepting. Since I believe she is dreaming, and many things in these dreams are so distorted, I believe that bed was always in Joshua’s room. I think that it’s possible there was another bed in the cellar, but it’s also possible that she was never given a bed to sleep on.
My theory is that Jennifer obviously went into Joshua’s room through the window at some point and she saw the bed with Joshua’s body in it. Because this is such a strong memory to her, and so is staying in the cellar for so long, it’s understandable that she would dream that the bed is in the cellar with her.

I also think it’s possible that those are clothing he made her wear. I’m not sure why the clothes would be laid out in such a way. Maybe it’s her remembering laying down in the bed, as there doesn’t seem to be much to do in the cellar. I don’t like this theory as much as my first though.

xCrimsonButterflyx wrote:

The only problem is that the clothes during the boss battle definitely seem like blocked corpses in her memory, which would be inconsistent with my above thinking. Perhaps, instead of seeing these clothes as blocked out bodies, maybe it would be symbolic of “devouring the children”, which is consistent with the storybook? I’m not suggesting that has to be a “real” memory, or that Greggory actually “devoured” the orphans, since the events taking place in that chapter are dubious at best, but in Jennifer’s scared mind, the fairytale thinking may have taken over and it is a product of her wild imagination? Imagining the worst, but not really knowing, since it’s fair to say she was not outside with the children when they were killed.

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It had been, for a long time, my favored hypothesis that the clothes seen during the Stray Dog boss battle were Jennifer’s self-”censored” memories of the corpses of the orphans. But I have more recently come to favor a hypothesis that is essentially what you yourself describe.

I came to this change by considering something found on the official Rule of Rose site. There is a statement there:

A mysterious story is spreading among the children in one town. “The park is dangerous after dark. You’ll be eaten by stray dogs. People who are eaten are confined to a zeppelin in the sky and can never leave.”

This is never mentioned in the actual story, so I—for a long time—refused to give serious thought to it. I tended to dismiss it as just a somewhat misleading piece of advertising.

Later, however, I started to wonder if there was indeed related idea that could be used to explain some things. Perhaps the empty clothes of the Stray Dog boss battle reflected Jennifer’s fantasy that the other orphans had been eaten by Stray Dog. Perhaps, the earlier part of the game, set on the airship, reflected an idea in Jennifer’s mind that the airship was a place where the dead went to, and that is why she needed, in her dream, to travel to the airship via a coffin.

Perhaps Jennifer once wore those clothes and the mental image of herself lying in bed as “Joshua” is the one being blocked. It would make sense if now she only remembers Greggory as “Stray Dog the killer” and not as the sad, lonely man she wrote about long ago. Of course at the time of finding the clothes she isn’t fully aware of the massacre, but I think her subconcious could be protecting her? Not to mention that it would be confusing for her to acknowledge her time as Joshua, while at the same time seeing a cruel young boy in the same clothes who’s name is Joshua (really Wendy), taunting her. The pain in her chest could refer to remembering her time her as Joshua on some level and the sadness she felt for Greggory.

The only problem is that the clothes during the boss battle definitely seem like blocked corpses in her memory, which would be inconsistent with my above thinking. Perhaps, instead of seeing these clothes as blocked out bodies, maybe it would be symbolic of “devouring the children”, which is consistent with the storybook? I’m not suggesting that has to be a “real” memory, or that Greggory actually “devoured” the orphans, since the events taking place in that chapter are dubious at best, but in Jennifer’s scared mind, the fairytale thinking may have taken over and it is a product of her wild imagination? Imagining the worst, but not really knowing, since it’s fair to say she was not outside with the children when they were killed.

Did Jennifer even go out and see all the bodies? If the police came and retrieved her fairly soon after the killings, she might never have even stepped outside. If she was hiding in the orphanage afraid to come out, presumably the poilce would’ve covered up or removed the bodies, leaving her to wonder how they were killed. Devoured? Strangled? Broken Necks? Perhaps he shot some of them, seeing as there was only one bullet left in the gun. In her final confrontation with her skewed memories, maybe the clothes are lain on the ground to represent unknowns? She doesn’t know how they were killed, so the missing bodies represent her not knowing what they all looked like dead.

I’m not good at explaining things like this, but… perhaps the clothes are there because Jennifer knows that something bad happened to Joshua. Jennifer knew he was dead in her time there, but probably didn’t know the details. So when she’s trying to remember her past, perhaps in her “dream” world she simply places his body – or rather, the clothing that represents his body – in the bed which belonged to him. Even if he died there a long time before, Jennifer is in a confused state and not quite remembering things correctly. With her memories twisted, the thought “Joshua is dead” or “Joshua died here” could quite easily be represented by that. It wouldn’t be the first time a straightforward memory would be represented by a seemingly abstract occurence.

The bit that tips me towards that theory the most is the part about her feeling pain in her chest, which – assuming she doesn’t have a heart condition – could mean that she knows deep down that this is a sad thing but doesn’t quite remember why.

Oh, here’s a thought: what if the letters never actually existed? If they were just transposed into Jennifer’s memories as a way of processing their conversations? There are letters exchanged between the two when Jen is at the orphan, regarding Brown, that can be found in the OUAT chapter. If they were there together, would it make sense for the two of them to take the time to write out letters when they could just pull the other off to the side to chat?

Then again, it may be that they still did this for nostalgic purposes, regarding it as a sort of playful remembrance of when they first got to know eachother. Dunno, just throwing it out there.

If this is true, there are a million places Jen could hide letters to Wendy. Joshua’s Room, The mailbox outside, the window ledge to the basement. The places Wendy could have been in in the house are numerous.