Then stay

Evidence

Sleep evades George, he can barely even close his eyes.

Instead he stews in his misery for nine hours, and by the time he steps off the plane in the early hours of the morning, his eyes are bloodshot and irritated. In all that time he hadn't thought to message his parents, which he did now, not expecting a reply.

He orders a taxi and travels another hour and a half, arriving on his doorstep barely able to hold his own weight up.

The brunette lifts his fist and knocks twice, listening to the shuffling and lights switching on, feet on stairs and finally the door opening to reveal his father.

George actually hadn't seen him in person for a few years but the boy was just as numb, even when he feels faux comfort surround him in the form of a hug.

He is invited inside and his mother called down from the top of the stairs. Of course she hadn't been allowed to open the door. It all felt so... fake. The hugs, the tears, the 'we've missed you so much'... even from his mother, who looked pale and tired, a little thinner than he had left her.

He kisses her on the cheek and ends the questioning, telling them some story that it wasn't working out in Florida with his friends. He couldn't bear to even say their names.

When he is finally dismissed he finds his bedroom stripped of life, now a bare guest bedroom, but he can't bring himself to mourn. Instead he simply showers and changes, rolling into bed, half hoping when he wakes up he will find himself back in the familiar double bed with LED's lighting the grey covers, a warm blonde spooning him gently to sleep.

*

At 3am his alarm blares quietly, enough to pull him from his slumber. George sighs and punches it defeatedly, allowing himself to lay for ten minutes before sliding out of bed and switching on his desk light. The house was silent. Perfect.

He reaches into his bag and rummages for a while, pulling out three black boxes that he sets gently on his dresser. Switching on his phone, he opens a new app and figures it out quickly, setting the boxes up before standing and shivering, pattering softly out his door and downstairs where he gets to work.

He scans the room and takes the first box, tucking it lightly behind a cookery book on the dresser. He sticks another in the hallway in a coat pocket no one has touched for years, and slides the final box into the kitchen, at the back of a top shelf and behind a cake tin.

Each time he steps back to admire his work, walking, squatting and stretching from all angles to be sure they were entirely undetectable. Which they are. It takes barely half an hour and he is back in bed, pulling the duvet over his shoulder gratefully and rubbing his arms to collect circulation. As his eyes grow heavy he is satisfied. Now all he needs is to provoke the devil.

*

The next day in unsatisfactory and empty. Despite only having been moved out a month, George finds he has vastly outgrown this life.

He can't bring himself to even turn his phone on, letting the battery die down as he ignores his world.

He spends time with his mother during the day and avoids his father all afternoon and evening. It is tiresome and long, but necessary. He watches with deep rooted depression as his mother disappears before his eyes, fading back into her shell.

George himself is now secluded and lonely, withdrawn and quiet. He talks as little as possible, reading on his bed for hours at a time in a weak attempt at escapism, but it dulls over time, leading him back to where he most wants to be, safe with Dream in the Florida house hundreds of miles away.

By day four George has tuned them all out, and that's how he finds himself being yelled at around the dinner table, blinking furiously to collect his awareness.