Listen to the author reading this story:
If Heather falls, someone should be awake.
Her legs click on the kitchen tile — metal under skin.
She doesn’t talk about it.
The flame of her lighter wavers against the window.
The son hums into the phone light.
Hollow-boned, awake when he shouldn’t be.
Coffee smell from the room next door.
doboy227: need Runescape gold
doboy227: anyone selling
Monitor light stripes the wall.
Outside, a deer in frost, perfectly still.
The air holds its breath.
doboy227: you can make 10k an hour flipping mats — yule logs, rune bars, giant bones.
People buy time. Sell it back.
He works before school and after midnight, flipping mats, chasing margins.
The game hums like a night shift — quiet, endless, costing nothing but time.
The Runescape bank window open — rows of items, neat and useless.
The sister drives him home after work.
The heat’s broken again.
She keeps the window cracked anyway, drifting between the lane markers.
Their mother working a graveyard shift.
Heather’s door stays closed now.
The lights under it go on and off at hours that don’t belong.
When it’s on, he listens.
gabby428: omg amor remember when doboy brought that rose at the dance
amorvincitomnia: omg stop
ratboy39: lmao
doboy227: it wasn’t like that
amorvincitomnia: typing…
amorvincitomnia: nm
The house hums — fridge, computer, heater.
Each machine taking its turn to breathe.
But underneath, a window slides open down the hall.
The cold air moves.
The floor chills the bottom of his feet.
He smells it before he sees it — smoke, sweet and wrong.
doboy227: hello? anyone awake
He watches the cursor blink, then deletes the line.
Down the hall, her lighter clicks, sputters.
His jaw tightens. The cursor blinks.
Kitchen light still on.
Dog shifting in sleep.
Somewhere, a door that never fully shuts.
He waits for the screen to glow again.
Outside, the first bird starts.
A sound too small to mean anything —
a branch cracking in the cold.
Doboy looks back at the screen.
Morning coming.
In the next room, a sound — small —
nothing.
Kellan Jansen writes from the American Southwest.
Find him @MarryMeMachine on X.