The first thing he noticed was the silence. Not the comforting quiet of an empty house—but a hollow,
unnatural stillness that made his skin prickle. Six lives had vanished
, leaving no struggle, no warning, no sense. Investigators swarmed,
cameras circled, the city moved on. He stood alone in a home that no longer felt like ho… Continues…
He walked through rooms that still held their lives mid-breath: a half-folded blanket on the couch,
a cereal bowl abandoned in the sink, a pair of tiny shoes by
the door waiting for feet that would never return.
The horror wasn’t just in what was gone,
but in how ordinary everything looked
, as if they might walk back in at any moment. That illusion cut deepest of all.
As investigators traced timelines and parsed data,
he faced a different kind of investigation—into memory,
guilt, and the unbearable weight of surviving.
The world wanted a mystery solved;
he needed his family seen as more than a tragedy.
So he spoke their names, told their stories,
clung to the warmth they had given him
. Answers might never fully come, but he refused
to let the last chapter of their lives be written only in absence.
In remembering their love, he began, slowly, to live again.
