▾
Estrella confronts her six year old son Max after being informed by his teacher that he has been skipping PE classes. What seems to be simple reasoning is indeed far more sinister and is somehow connected to the stories on her TV screen.
|COM...
"Max." She exclaims through gritted teeth. "What did he do?"
Her son lays his back onto the couch, his fingers tracing the rim of his shirt. To Estrella's horror, Max's shaking hands cautiously inches up his shirt to reveal an infected wound, partially covered by an endless row of messy black stitches that looked like it was made of barbed wire.
Estrella zones out, she feels like she is going to faint at any moment. There were no words for her to find.
"I'm going to end up like him soon." Max points to the muted TV where a blurred image of Rexton Soulis is shown. His body was found at a foreclosed motel. His eyes were stitched closed, and marks lined up and down his chest and lower abdomen.
The screen glitches as it changes to show a piece of evidence the police have gathered.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Estrella looks back at Max, the sweet innocent glint that she thought was once in his eyes are gone. It becomes clear to her, she thought Max lived in a world of sunshine and rainbows, she thought Max didn't know of the presence of bad in this world, she thought Max was blissfully ignorant in his cluelessness. She couldn't have been anymore wrong.
The sound of their front door breaking snaps her out of her thoughts.
"Dad's early." Max panics, sitting up frantically. "He's here to cross another word off his checklist."
