Black Within

February rain washed slowly over the streets of Maitland—a small Australian town where everyone was used to feeling safe. Heavy, swollen clouds hung over the low buildings, drowning the town in a massive shadow.

A youth with eyes as black as a raven’s feather studied the natural patterns on the brick walls. He stopped in front of an elegant red-brick house, number “34.” A sharp gust of wind ruffled his ashen-black hair, nudging him inside like a silent command.

“Come in, Alfred.”

A sharp, almost icy voice made him flinch. He gave a short nod and, shivering from the draft, stepped inside. While Monica—a mature woman with a piercing gaze—tossed logs into the fireplace, the boy scanned the room intensely, as if seeing it for the first time. The scent of baking, worn furniture, and wallpaper peeling in spots created that “grandmotherly comfort” one longs to dissolve in. Но inside Alfred, a fire raged that no domestic warmth could extinguish.

“What is troubling you?”

Alfred tore his eyes away from the paintings on the wall. Monica’s gray eyes, cold as lake ice, instantly chilled his fervor. He felt uneasy; his fingers involuntarily clenched into fists.

“I... I don’t know.”

Silence filled the room. He stole a glance at the woman; the itch on his wrist beneath his sleeve grew sharper.

“You aren’t here for the first time, yet today you seem especially anxious. Will you sit?”

She smiled kindly, gesturing toward an empty armchair.

Alfred hesitated for only a second.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t come here anymore. I don’t see the point.”

“He never really said goodbye to you properly, did he?”

Alfred’s throat tightened as if constricted by barbed wire. The words stuck inside, but Monica continued for him:

“I understand. It’s hard to survive a parents’ divorce at your age. Но do not despair, this isn’t the end. You can still talk, can’t you?”

Alfred looked away, his eyes heavy with sorrow. A headache began to throb. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to focus on anything else, but tears blurred his vision, turning the world into a smear. Monica simply watched. Her cold gaze held the interest of a researcher, yet she made no move to comfort him.

Alfred bolted from his seat. The phrase “He never said goodbye?” thundered in his skull. He burst out of the house and headed for the only place where loneliness was his only true friend. He felt Monica’s stare boring into his back, but he didn’t have the courage to look back.

His legs felt like lead, but the path was familiar. An abandoned building, once intended for offices, had become a sanctuary for Maitland’s teenagers. For Alfred, it signified both the end and the beginning. The rain intensified. The youth climbed to the roof, seeking either meaning or hope, but his face remained frozen in a painful mixture of exhaustion and rage.

He walked to the very edge. The concrete crumbled under his soles with a dry crack, a warning of danger he chose to ignore. Ahead was the abyss. Death. For a moment, he dipped into warm memories, but the fear of the future made his lips tremble. Cold drops stung his skin. Air became a luxury he could no longer afford.

In the pocket of his black jeans lay the thing that made him leave this place as a loser every single time. “It” decided his fate. He didn’t want the responsibility of his own life, preferring to entrust it to God.

He pulled out a coin.

“Heads—yes. Tails—no,” he growled, challenging fate. This ritual was his only tether to reality: either a higher power would pull him out of this black pit, or leave him to rot in it forever.The coin clinked as it bounced, the echo ringing through the empty floors. Alfred reached out to catch it, as he always did, but suddenly a child’s voice, thin with terror, shattered the silence:

“Alfred!”

The boy jumped, losing his balance. The concrete vanished from under his feet. The scream trapped in his throat finally tore free. A layer of old cement crumbled, but at the last moment, Alfred fell backward onto the hard floor. The coin, however, vanished into the darkness of the shaft.

His heart hammered against his ribs. Who was that? Alfred turned, rubbing his bruised leg. Standing before him was a boy of about six. A perfect, miniature copy of himself. The child, dressed in pajamas, clutched that very same coin. Thick white foam leaked from his mouth, choking his breath. But there was no fear in the child’s eyes.

Alfred winced from the pain in his temples.

When he opened his eyes, there were only wet stairs and crimson railings. Rain continued to soak his clothes. The boy was gone. Alfred scrambled up, looking around—no one. But looking at the spot where the child had stood, he froze: on the wet concrete, small, perfectly dry footprints were visible. Rain fell everywhere, but not on those tracks.

Alfred gently ran his fingertips over the dry footprints, and his mind finally began to fracture.

“This can’t be...” he whispered.

His hands shook; nausea rose in his throat. His consciousness feverishly processed what he had seen, and then, a thought pierced him like a flash:

“The coin!” he gasped in horror. His father’s gift, his talisman, was gone. The thing that for years had entrusted his fate to chance had vanished along with his main support.

“It was a gift from him! No... no, no, no!”

Forgetting the ghost, Alfred pressed himself to the shaky concrete edge, where the phantom scent of living flesh still lingered. He peered into the abyss, but it ignored him, not even offering an echo in return. Clawing at the wet concrete, painful against his fingernails, he took a heavy breath:

“I have to find it.”

He quickly gathered his things and, almost purging the horror of the last few minutes from his memory, left the roof. As he walked away, he cast a short glance back, as if trying to imprint what he so desperately wanted to forget. But the footprints on the concrete remained dry.

The rain had nearly stopped. Out on the street, Alfred lifted his face to the sky, wet strands of hair stinging his eyes. The fresh scent of ozone after the storm brought him back to his senses, reminding him of his goal. Suddenly, a voice called out:

“Alfred? What are you doing here? We’ve been looking for you!”

Standing beside a short, spirited girl was a tall blonde guy with a cold, almost destructive gaze. These were his friends—the ones who were always there when things got dark. Oliver continued to hold a pink umbrella over Chris, which looked completely absurd against his stern face. Alfred winced at a sudden jolt of internal anger.

“I wanted to be alone,” he snapped.

Chris looked at him doubtfully but didn’t dare ask the question burning inside her. She began to fidget with the hem of her skirt, trying to find words of support. Alfred turned a furious glare toward his friend:

“What do you want?”

He noticed a soaked patch on Oliver’s T-shirt. Meanwhile, Chris was bone dry. This injustice, for some reason, stung him. Oliver raised an eyebrow in disapproval and gave a meaningful nod toward the girl.

“She was worried”—that’s what the gesture meant.

Alfred knew the nature of that interest all too well, and it only made him feel more bitter.

“I’m here now. Is it urgent?”

Chris gave Oliver an intriguing look, and he was already grinning.

“Alfred, we know things are rough at home, so we have a proposal. How about a party at a senior’s house? What do you say?”

Alfred looked at Chris questioningly: was she really agreeing to this? She hated noisy crowds. But Chris only smiled, looking at Oliver. It seemed the choice had been made for him. The coin was gone—now he would have to make the decisions himself. Turning back toward the building, Al was certain: the concrete crumbled again, as if someone were still standing in that very spot.

Preparation for the evening went by quickly. At home, Alfred felt the void in his jeans pocket again—the absence of his usual anchor of calm threw him off balance. He looked into the mirror, leaning on the sink, and let out a lazy yawn. He began to groom himself: styling his ashen-black hair and shaving the barely visible teenage fuzz from his cheeks.

The blissful rasp of the blade against his skin sent shivers down his spine. He froze, the razor stopping at his Adam’s apple. The black eyes in the reflection seemed to pull him inward. He swallowed—and the blade bit painfully into his skin.

“Alfred!” a sharp shout rang out.

The youth jumped, and the blade involuntarily went deeper, leaving a short but deep gash. Blood flowed slowly down his neck, staining his collar.

“Fuck...” he hissed.

While he tried to hide the marks of the cut, Linda climbed the stairs heavily, her footsteps thumping. Those steps pressed down on him, sparking a desire to simply vanish.

“Where do you think you’re going?” she snapped, staring at his reflection.

“Out with friends.”

She glanced at the clock.

“It’s late already.”

Alfred remained silent, washing away the blood. He knew she would let him go. Once the bandage was on, Linda spoke again:

“I look at you and wonder: who did you get your loser genes from...”

Alfred was genuinely surprised. Had she forgotten how genetics worked?

“What are you talking about?”

“Never mind. Just go. But come back quietly, don’t wake me up.”

When her footsteps faded, Alfred pulled a black suit from the dresser—it perfectly emphasized his lean frame and broad shoulders. Finally, he swiped a bottle of alcohol from the cellar, hoping his mother wouldn’t look down there for a long while.

His friends were already waiting by the house. Chris wore a short burgundy dress which, in Alfred’s opinion, didn’t suit her at all, yet his teenage gaze involuntarily lingered on her exposed skin.

“Whoa, Alfred, are you blushing?” Oliver chuckled. “You like her outfit!”

“That’s bullshit, it doesn’t suit her at all,” Al muttered, looking away. Chris nervously adjusted her hem.

At the villa belonging to Stace—the daughter of successful lawyers—music was already blaring. Oliver immediately mixed vodka with an energy drink and handed it to his friends:

“To you, Alfred. May things look up!”

Chris winced at the first sip and turned red instantly—she didn’t know how to drink. Oliver quickly disappeared into the crowd. Alfred was left with Chris. She stood there awkwardly hugging herself, her eyeliner uneven and her lips painted bright red. Alfred couldn’t help but admire her clumsy grace, but he instantly brushed the thoughts aside, whispering under his breath:

“Dead rats... dead rats...”

The night swept them into a frenzy. Half an hour later, Oliver was dead drunk. Stace, the hostess, approached Alfred.

“Alfred, glad to see you. Have a drink with me?”

She flirtatiously twirled a lock of hair around her finger, but Al looked only into her eyes, trying not to notice the plunging neckline. Behind the girl’s back, Oliver was making lewd faces. Alfred rolled his eyes and agreed.

The alcohol did its job: the anxiety receded, and the tactile memory grew numb. He danced, losing himself among the silhouettes of teenagers, feeling a long-awaited relief. But suddenly, his hand accidentally brushed against his empty pocket.

It hit him. Anxiety struck his gut like he’d seen death itself. The lights became unbearably bright; his head exploded with pain. He bolted for the exit, ignoring the snickers of the seniors on the porch. The fresh air didn’t help. The boy clutched his own chest so hard that purple welts appeared through the fabric of his jeans.

“I have to... find it...”

The world went dark, then flashed with color. Alfred knew: if he didn’t find the coin now, his world would collapse. His heart would simply stop. His legs wouldn’t obey, but he stubbornly crawled toward that same high-rise. Struggling to turn on his phone’s flashlight, he began to dig through the thorny bushes.

Something about his state felt strange, not typical for an ordinary drunk teenager. However, his grasp on common sense was very blurred. A foul taste of alcohol lingered on his tongue.

“Found i—AAAH!”

His cry was drowned out by another—a sharp, blood-curdling scream of agony. As if someone were being butchered alive. Alfred jumped, the world before his eyes finally blurred out, and he plummeted into darkness.

Alfred snapped his eyes open to a familiar ceiling. His breath was ragged. He scanned the room: a discarded backpack, dried mud on the floor, scattered clothes. His head throbbed. Monday. A school day.

His phone was flooded with messages from Oliver: “Where are you? Are you lost?“. From Chris—nothing.

“Oliver must have dragged me home...”

The walk to school took ten minutes. Oliver was already standing at the gates. Chris was nowhere to be seen.

“Where is she?” Alfred asked anxiously.

“Inside already, I think. Man, you look like hell...”

“Hilarious. By the way, wasn’t it you yesterday who...”

They were interrupted by a policeman stepping out of a patrol car.

“Hey, you two, get inside, move it! There’s going to be an announcement.”

The boys traded glances and hurried into the school.

Inside the classroom, a thick, stifling silence hung in the air. A stout policeman glared sternly at the students.

“For the latecomers, I’ll repeat: Jessica Miller went missing at the party last night.”

Alfred and Oliver froze, their textbooks nearly slipping from their hands. The silence became almost unbearable. The policeman was scanning the crowd for a “rat” when the door opened again. A senior lieutenant entered. His icy gaze swept the rows and stopped on the two friends, as if sensing that one of them was exactly who he was looking for.

“Which one of you is Alfred Morris?” he asked.

The entire class turned to look at their classmate, and the policeman smirked with satisfaction.

“Come with me. You’re giving a statement.”