Rain slashed against the windows of Nathaniel Grey's apartment, carving trails down the glass like the scars he couldn't see on his own skin. The apartment was nearly empty, save for a desk, a bed, and stacks of papers lying in scattered piles like fallen leaves, pages thick with his handwriting. Nathaniel lived alone, and he'd perfected the art of retreat: each hour was carved out to push anyone who cared about him further away.
It had been nearly a year since he'd last published anything, but it wasn't for lack of trying. He'd sit for hours, pen poised over paper or fingers resting on the keys, staring blankly into an emptiness that never failed to stare back. Each time he tried, memories clawed at his mind, surfacing as twisted, dark shadows that tangled his words until they felt like echoes of old wounds he was afraid to reopen.
That night, the storm outside mirrored his own turmoil. He sat hunched over his desk, hands trembling. His latest draft, only a few paragraphs long, lay beneath his fingers, but as he looked at it, the words seemed foreign—like they'd been written by someone else.
In those words, he recognized fragments of his own life, patched into the story of a young boy lost in a strange, oppressive land where memories hung like fog, thick and hard to breathe through. Every line bled with isolation, with rage and fear disguised as bravery. And as Nathaniel read over the boy's journey, he knew exactly what he was doing, even if he couldn't admit it: he was writing his own pain into someone else's story.
"Another failed attempt," he muttered, voice low and rough from too many sleepless nights. He dragged his hand across his face, half-hoping the pain from his memories would dull, but it only sharpened. Nathaniel leaned back, staring at the ceiling, his mind slipping away to the years before—before the wreck, before the shattered dreams and the slow, quiet collapse of everything he'd built.
But then, the words he'd written echoed in his mind, and he felt something shift. The story wasn't a failure. If anything, it was a message—a way out, an invitation to dig through the rubble he'd left buried in his own mind. He felt a flicker of life beneath the weight of his sorrow, a reason to keep going, at least for another night.
He took a deep breath and pulled the draft closer, his pen steadying in his hand. If he had to bleed out his memories onto paper to finally make sense of them, he'd do it. He'd give himself a new beginning, even if it meant living through the past again, one word at a time.
And so, as the storm raged outside, Nathaniel Grey began the first chapter of his story.