A deep and gloomy fog fills the empty street. It's an endless grey that stretches forever, coating the ground in a thick blanket, as though the perpetually smog-filled sky fell unto Earth. The layer of tarnished white is cold and harsh to the touch, bloated with a smell that clings to the lungs, making the very act of breathing painful. As the lungs expand, needles flood inside, prodding the sensitive organs without care or remorse.

Taking short, ragged breathes, Eli's hunched figure cautiously creeps through the strange and unnerving world, eyeing every shadow as they threaten to reach out and grab him. His grey eyes struggle to direct his body as he maneuvers through the white wasteland, his pupils perpetually dilated as they strain while searching for a place not yet covered in potentially hazardous waste. The cold wetness clings to his sickly pale skin, goosebumps coating him like a second layer of skin. His clothing does nothing to protect against the cold, the bundle of tattered rags swaying side to side like dead grass. The faded fabrics, ripped and stained, are all but useless.

By purely relying on his memories, Eli retreats home, his body leaning from the weight of the bag on his back. The ever-shifting burden of the decade old textbooks stray his every step, creating a rhythm akin to a dance as he travels deeper and deeper into the foggy abyss. A gloved hand drags against a crumbling brick wall, the fingers poking through the tips, the nails stained and chipped. Eli, supporting himself with one hand, blindly reaches for the door with the other, visualizing the crooked metal sheet that only barely hangs onto its hinges. His hand brushes against the cold metal. Immediately, he grabs it and pulls. The rust crusted edges crack and splinter as he pulls at the handle, the hinges screaming like a tortured cat. A ghostly howl echoes down the imperceivable street.

Stepping inside, Eli flutily kicks off his dirt encrusted boots. The yellow sock enveloping his foot grips the floor as he ensues in a balancing act to remove his other boot. Finally free of his footwear, Eli opens a nearby closet. His eyes briefly flicker to the deep scratches that decorate the floor, a result of the closet door dragging against the floor year after year. He casually wonders whether the act of hiding his boots inside the closet is even necessary, but as a creature of habit, he does what he's been doing since childhood, and places his boots inside the trash filled closest. His removes his layers of coats and eagerly tosses them onto a pile of soiled clothing, finally returning the articles to their rightful place.

The closet closes with a shrill squeak. Turning around, Eli makes his way through the house, side-stepping the moldy piles of paper plates and plastic utensils with experience. As he walks, the soles of his feet as poked at by the unseeable remnants of the building's insulation. He passes through the living room and begins to make his way down the hallway, passing boy the locked doors without sparing them a glance. A heavy stench emanates from behind one of the closed doors, reeking of a sickly rotting smell. Such a scent barely even registers in his brain anymore, having already categorized it as a part of the background. The bathroom door is open.

Standing just outside the bathroom, Eli spares a glance inside. The flickering light within creates an uncomfortable atmosphere. The rusted sink is cracked in various places, the ever present drip of water from the faucet now fights through a layer of rust. The toilet is stained a dark black in multiple places and the porcelain white has faded to an unclean yellow over the many years of use. It reeks of waste, apparently having been clogged at some point without anyone noticing. The tub is without curtain, and the overhead showerhead is also coated in rust. In the entirety of the bathroom, only the bathtub is the cleanest, a clear sign of it's constant use.

Looking away from the familiar sight, Eli stares at the cracked mirror that hangs crooked on the wall. His reflection is fractured, a collection of broken pieces pressed together through necessity. A single tap and everything falls apart, clattering to the ground in a spray of broken glass. Before looking away, he notes how long his hair has gotten. The greasy locks now dangle over his eyes, the twisted clumps forming strange shapes as they mingle together. He notes how his dirt stained face is beginning to break out, but makes no effort to rinse off his skin.

Walking down the hallway once more, Eli suddenly notices that his mother's door is slightly cracked. To make sure she doesn't wake up, he walks even more carefully, his movements slowing to a crawl as he raises his feet over the piles of plastic bags and decade-old bottles. He moves as though he's in a crowd, keeping his arms tightly against him, his center of gravity low. He sidesteps and pushes onwards, creeping though the stinking piles of trash. As he passes the room, he briefly peeks inside, fully expecting to see the thin figure of his mother wrapped inside a cocoon of hundreds of small blankets. He stops. His feet remain rooted in their place, frozen as though the chill that pervades the home finally turned his blood to ice. His light breathing completely ceases.

The space inside her room is completely black. An endless darkness, a rich blackness that the outside light refuses to touch. Over the years the windows were boarded up, covered by a black tarp fastened to the wall with tape. This, as a result left the room perpetually in darkness, but it was a necessary sacrifice to defend against the outside elements. Staring at this darkness, Eli can't help but feel confusion course through his veins. His heart begins to beat erratically, and his breathing grows labored.

His mother utterly hates the darkness. Her hatred is so strong, that even the briefest moment of darkness leaves her physically ill. Reaching into the room with trembling fingers, Eli presses his hand against the wall searching for the switch that must surely still be flipped. The bulb must have burnt out, is all that fills his mind, a hopeless desperation that borders on maddened. As if to spite him, the strobing light bursts to life, filling the room with a flashing sterile white. His mind is consumed by such whiteness. In a state of shock, Eli leans heavily against the doorframe, hollowly staring into the distance. The act of breathing is painful as his lungs scream for air. He shakes his head. Blinking, he glares into the room, finding only a tangled mess of discarded blankets. Reality, in all its terrible truthfulness, dawns on him.

His mother has left him.

"H-Hello...? Are you in there...?"

The boy's voice is deep, but it takes on a childlike candescence, a lightness that his mother would surely react to and recognize. Despite his efforts, the room remain still. Possible explanations rush through his mind, tangled threads of possibilities, but none seem plausible. Only the faint buzzing of the flickering light responds to his inner plea. He begins to doubt reality itself. Perhaps he was gone longer than expected. Maybe his mother doesn't live here anymore. Perhaps he has amnesia. Eyes wide with fear, he opens his mouth once more, his white teeth gleaming like daggers in the violent light.

"Are you sleeping? Could you say something, please?"

Silence. Panic begins to set in, a black pit that weighs down the center of his stomach, a heavy lump that fills him with nausea and desperation. His legs tremble, as do his hands. He clenches his fists as he backs away ever so slowly, eyes refusing to leave the interior of the room, the urging light within slowly dimming as understanding begins to set in. In a sudden, violent burst of determination, Eli turns around, and hurries to his room. He opens the door at the far end of the hall with a screech, stepping inside with heavy thumps.

His footfalls are almost as loud as his heartbeat. He flings his heavy bag into the corner of the room, toppling over a neatly stacked tower of books. With a loud crash the tower falls, the aged paper crumbling and tearing under the weight of the textbooks. With a spiraling mind he removes his gloves, struggling due to the intensity of his trembling. He manages to pull off his gloves and unbuckle his belt after a moment of struggle. Opening the drawn of his rotting dresser, he quickly withdraws a neatly folded outfit. Quickly swapping clothes, he changes to something more comfortable, easing the panic in his mind ever so slightly as he throws his wet outfit into the pile in the corner of the room.

Eli returns to his mother's room, now ready to step inside. In his hurry he nearly trips over a pile of bags, the loud sound of crushed aluminum jolting him to a state of awareness. Catching himself, he deliberately pauses and listens to his ragged breathing. After a moment of stillness, he continues, now moving considerably slower. He fully pushes open the bedroom door. With a shallow breath, he moves his legs, and steps onto the carpet of stained blankets.

"Calm... Calm down... You can't do this if you're not calm..."

Mumbling to himself in a low voice, Eli stills his breathing, focusing all of his awareness on the erratic beating of his heart. He slowly exhales, feeling the expanding and contracting of his lungs as he draws in and releases more and more of the foul air. Time seems to slip by as he focus on his breathing, and eventually, he reaches a state of half awareness. His unconscious mind relishes in the sensation of clean clothes, grateful to be free of the heavy coats and wet fabrics. His eyelids slip shut, the world around him slowly fading away as his mind sinks into a state similar to sleeping. As expected, he finds himself in a state of deep calmness. His body is as still as a stone, his heart beats gently, filling his mind with a cold freshness. With a deep sense of age, Eli's mind is partially disconnected. He calmly opens his eyes, staring at the state of the world without a flicker of emotion.

The world dissolves like ashes in the wind. Lines cross before his eyes, glowing a vibrant red, like the embers of a fire. The red lines weave through the air, knitting the interior of the room into a single body. The strings buzz in faint excitement as he gazes upon them. As more time passes, Eli's awareness increases. He sees more and more of his surroundings with growing clarity. He falls into that tangled world without struggle, drifting through consciousness like a leaf in the wind. The walls are a writhing mass of red, squirming like freshly unearthed worms, trashing about and shimmering. Eli's sightless eyes are black pits, glistening like a polished piece of obsidian. He observes this tangled mess of redness without a hint of surprise or fear, simply letting his unconscious mind collect the information, his movements unaccustomed to such a state.

Barely conscious, Eli allows his vision to drift over to where his mother usually lays, taking in the tangled mess of red with muted relief. His consciousness flickers as his emotions begin to rise, but he quickly catches himself and disconnects his joy. As he stares at the squirming strings, the corresponding information surfaces within his mind, allowing him to coldly assess the situation. The strings his mother have left behind are both a trail and a lifeline. As long as they're visible, that's a sign that she's still alive. The fact that she's alive gives Eli enough relief to carry on. His focus sharpens like a knife as he acts on instinct and stares at the brightest string in his mother's cluster.

The world of red grows blurred, and a clear scene forms within his mind. The flashing of a light pierces his eyes. Shifting his vision up, he recognizes the hanging bulb within his mother's room. A sudden wailing fills his ears, hollow and angry, like a vengeful ghost. He recognizes the sound just before it suddenly disappears. Drawing his consciousness into focus, Eli recognizes his mother's hysterical voice. He tries to decipher her words, struggling to listen through the thick film of time that separates them. After what feels like ages, he manages to adjust his ears to the correct frequency, letting his mother's raspy voice fill his mind.

"What do I do...? Oh, what am I supposed to do?! He's done. He'll be leaving soon... What am I to do?! I-I can't live like this! Not on my own, not like this! He was supposed to get into a rich school, yet, yet, yet yet he hasn’t done anything! No drive! No motivation! Nothing nothing nothing! Useless... He's completely useless without me. He needs me, just like I need him. Even so... Even so! Why?! Why does he not want to save me?! Does he, does he hate me!?”

Eli watches the scene without a trace of emotion. All too used to his mother's ramblings, he simply waits for any abnormalities to occur. He waits for the past to catch up to the present. The scene plays out for a long while. The babbling. The thrashing. The wailing. His mother pulls at her graying hair, her chipped fingernails becoming entangled with the loose strands, ripping the thin wiry mess from her scalp. Perhaps a result of the pain, but the maddened muttering suddenly stops, freezing completely in a single moment of absolute stillness. Then, just as quickly as the silence had arrived, in vanishes in the face of a storm. While wailing, the woman flings her willowy arms about, throwing her blankets around the room, revealing the malnourished state of her naked body just before a bundle of blankets flip the switch near the door. Darkness swallows the room, leaving the woman suffocating in fear. Silence reins supreme.

After all long, breathless moment, she lurches to her feet, grabbing a thin, tattered blanket to wrap around herself. With stumbling steps, she darts towards the door, pushing it open and careening through. She slams it closed behind her. The door bangs heavily against the frame, leaving it cracked ever so slightly, allowing the outside light to leak through. Her voice fades as she stumbles down the hallway, the sound crushed bottles and ripping plastic following her like an echo. She darkly mumbles incoherent nonsense, filling her own head with meaningless words of revenge, her distant voice ripe with venom and hatred.

The memory fades as the thin red string exits the room. Dull to all sensation, Eli coldly watches the line of scarlet as it weaves down the hallway and slips out the front door. Satisfied that he’s solved the mystery, he cuts the connection, briefly falling unconscious before snapping awake an instant later. The world around him has returned to its original state. The squirming red, the oppressive silence, the peaceful calmness has vanished without a trace, leaving only the empty shell of a boy in its place. Tiredly, with an expression of utter defeat, Eli considers following after his mother, the compulsion to keep her safe nearly propelling him forward. Still, he finds himself hesitating. And then what? The question bounces unanswered within his exhausted mind. Even if I manage to find her, how would I convince her to come back? Despite such an unprecedented event occurring, the urge to return his mother to her room gradually fades away, until only mild indifference remains. Do I even want her to come back...?

Convincing himself that he’ll have his emotions sorted out when he wakes up, Eli leaves the room. The world spins and wobbles, rolling and twisting as he lets out a violent cough and stumbles. His legs lack the necessary energy to carry him far, and he soon finds himself leaning heavily against the wall, his mind wavering, bordering on collapse. His loud pants are the only sound of life within his empty home. His heart squirms as he suppresses the monster within him, his tired mind too exhausted to notice the inky blackness that lines the edges of his vision. With a push, he propels himself forward, his body swaying side as he escapes to his room. His lifeless eyes reflect the absolute darkness that has consumed his mind. He has lost himself in the despair known as reality.