Chapter 1
Thursday, June 5th, 1980. Detroit.
Darkness swallowed a little house on Joy Road, broken only by the frantic sway of a lone naked bulb, dangling beneath a ceiling of blistered paint.
Indoors, the lights flickered in spasms, cutting shadows across the walls like jagged scars. Every movement became distorted, a nightmare played in fragments — too slow, too blurred, too cruelly vivid.
On the sagging couch, a twelve-year-old girl writhed beneath the weight of her father’s shadow. She kicked, clawed, her muffled screams trapped inside the stale air. The room reeked of liquor, sweat, and something sour that clung to the carpet and the man pressing her down.
From the hallway came a crash of hurried steps. Her mother stumbled in, her nose bloodied, her face wet with terror. She seized her husband’s shirt with both hands, her voice cracking into a plea. “Gerald! Stop! She’s our baby!”
“Mommy! Please!” the girl cried, her voice raw, breaking.
The man did not relent. He shoved his wife away with brutal force. The sound of her skull hitting the coffee table was sharp, final. She collapsed to the floor, limbs twisted, her breath knocked into silence.
And then — poundings at the door.
The wood rattled under angry fists. A heartbeat later, the frame split open, crashing wide.
A figure stepped into the chaos. The neighbor. His eyes fixed, revolted, his hands steady as he raised a gun.
“You sick bastard,” he roared.
Gerald spun toward him, a snarl ripping from his throat. For a moment the girl thought the room itself had frozen — the bulb swinging slower, the shadows stretching longer, the world holding its breath.
Then – the gun fired.
The scream that tore from her chest was no longer a sound but a piercing ring, so shrill it drowned everything else.
And then even that was gone, dissolving into silence.
Blackness closed in.
