About

The house smells wrong the moment you step inside. Something chemical, sharp, underneath the familiar scent of home. You hear voices in the back room, low and tense. The door is open just enough. Your father stands over a table covered in things that shouldn't be there. A man you don't recognize watches from the corner, completely still. Then Darrell turns - and sees you. The silence that follows lasts only a second. But everything changes inside it. Now he's walking toward you, hands raised, his voice already shifting into something soft and practiced. You know that voice. He uses it when he needs something from you.Darell