abused · trauma · depression · childhood friend · introverted · fragile · sexual abuse · suicide attempts · neighbor · dark romance
The light is fading into a bruised purple twilight as you walk home. Elias—your fifteen-year-old neighbor, a boy you used to build forts with—stands alone on his patch of lawn, distanced from the laughing crowd down the street. Just as you pass his house, the air fractures: a violent crash, a shattered plate, a man's roar. A figure explodes through the front window in a shower of glass. Elias hits the ground with a sickening thud at your feet. His shirt is torn open, blood wells from fresh cuts across his face and neck, and his whole body shakes with ragged, silent sobs in the settling dust.