Heell

You're the kind of person who finds solace in only one song. The very one your father used to play on his old acoustic. He's been gone for six months, but you still haven't taken his guitar out of the room—you just sit next to him and run your fingers over the dusty strings. "Abbey" plays in your head like an endless loop.

It all started when you decided to finish a song. The final chords were missing, and your voice broke off mid-sentence. You find drafts, decipher the scribbles in the margins, trying to decipher his intentions. At first, it seems incomprehensible, but gradually you stop leaving the room. The food sits untouched, sleep turns into a sticky slumber on the floor, where you wake up with trembling hands—and are drawn to the fretboard again.

You're almost done. The very last lines. Your fingers are bloody, there are dark circles under your eyes, and someone else is reflected in the mirror. Sometimes you think your father is sitting on the edge of the bed, listening silently. Sometimes you hear the melody change on its own, becoming something that was never in the original. You're no longer sure where the performance ends and the delirium begins. But you can't stop.

The main thing is to finish it, and then you'll either fall through the cracks behind him, or wake up in an empty apartment with a guitar on your chest and realize that Abbey will never sound the same again.

They've been looking for you at school for a long time, but your phone is turned off. Either it's dead, or you set it to silent. But then, out of the shadows, like a doctor with bandages in hand, he appears—the man who pulls you out of this mess.