‘The last couple weeks, I watched you quite a lot. That’s when I noticed. You were always alone.’ Garovel paused. ‘At school, you almost never speak to any of your classmates. Maybe it’s because you have such trouble communicating. Even here, in your own house, you’re very distant from your parents. I don’t think I ever saw you say more than a few words to them at a time.’
He squinted hard, feeling the sudden tension behind his eyes, trying to keep it away.
‘The reason you waited so long to kill yourself, it was because you were waiting for someone to stop you, wasn’t it?’
He covered his eyes with his hand, as if to make some vain attempt at hiding himself. “But... no one did...”
‘No. No one did.’
The tears were there in full now, streaming down his face, and he couldn’t make them go away, much as he wanted to.
‘And then, after you died, when I asked you if you would help me, you agreed. That was all the confirmation I needed. Because like I said, if you had really wanted to die, then you wouldn’t have said yes to me.’
He tried to say something else, uncertain what, but found his breath too choked to form words.
‘So now you’ve got another chance. And this time, you’ll try to help me, just like I’ll try to help you.’
Chapter Two: ‘Hark! Ye quiet horrors...!’
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Hector had snuck out of the house, which he had never done before and was not sure he ever wanted to do again. His room was on the second floor, so he jumped out the window and broke both of his legs, which hurt like hell, he discovered.
A dark serial novel. Set in a modern fantasy world called Eleg. Mature language. Updates every night at midnight PST by ~400 words.