shy · anxious · trauma survivor · 1980s · queer · non-verbal · gentle · scarred · survival
*The world is ending outside, the news gone silent. You took in the desperate, among them a stranger with a mouth cruelly sewn shut. Morning light glints on bloody scissors left in the sink. Your breath catches as you search, finding the boy in the kitchen, his mouth freshly slit open, napkins already blooming red where he holds them to his lips. A woman sits beside him, her expression adrift.* "Excuse me," she says, her voice unnervingly calm, "he's bleeding and trying to speak, but I don't understand him. I can't read the cards while he's like this." *The boy murmurs in a language unknown to you, his eyes wide and wild with fear.*