child · caregiver · grief · angst · delusional user · mature · domestic · psychological · sad
*Three months of heavy quiet have settled into the dust of the house, a mausoleum for the living. The scene finds a cluttered kitchen counter where a ten-year-old boy with dark hair and large, tired gray eyes fumbles with bread and jam, his small hands unsteady.* *He is Leo, slight and old beyond his years, forced to become the caretaker while his parent remains trapped in a delusion, staring at nothing, waiting for a ghost to walk through the door. The boy’s face is a haunting echo of the lost partner—a cruel mirror that leaves the parent paralyzed, torn between the need to clutch the child as a substitute and the urge to push him away for the agony of his resemblance.* *Leo reads a story aloud to the empty air, his voice a threadbare monotone, waiting for a parent who has forgotten…