‘19:02’

The damp in the Ōtara state house was thick enough to taste. Cold mould. Boiled cabbage. Cheap gin.

Outside, Auckland rain smashed the corrugated roof like buckshot from a twelve-gauge. Windows rattled in rotten frames. Inside, Mason stood on the faded linoleum, pushing his chest out. Shoulders back. Eyeing the cheap plastic clock over the greasy stove.

6:59 PM.

In sixty seconds, he’d be thirteen. He had grown three inches over the winter. Jaw sharpening. Voice dropping into a gravelly rasp. No more hiding under the sofa. Today, he took over.

Across the laminate table, his mother, Lynne, sloshed her drink—Gordon’s gin and lukewarm tap water in a plastic mug. Hands shaking violently. Clear poison splashing over knuckles onto a nightgown that hadn't seen soap in a month. Slick with grey sweat, her bloodshot eyes darted toward the front door.

“Mason…” A wet rasp. “Get away from the window.”

“No one’s there, Mum.”

“He’s out there!” She lurched forward, clipping an empty glass bottle that clattered over the floorboards. She caught the sink, gasping. “Under the hedge. I saw the coat. The steel. Waiting for the dark.”

Pity—sharp and bitter. Mason wiped a circle through the condensation on the glass.

Streetlamp flickering over empty asphalt. Flax bushes flattening in the wind. Rain and shadow. Nothing else.

“You’re seeing things again, Lynne. It’s the DTs.”

“I know his smell!” she shrieked. Digging into her faded cardigan, she hauled out the heavy iron key and backed against the deadbolt. “He got out of Paremoremo today! Eight years, Mason!”

Mason stepped into her space. Towering. Seeing the terror, but seeing the alcohol-brained delusion, too.

“Dad’s not here. Give me the key. Jase and Noah are at the bus stop. I’m going out.”

“No… baby, please…” She clutched the key to her sternum. “He’ll finish what he started…”

“He isn’t out there!”

Mason grabbed her thin wrist. Brittle bone under wet skin. He squeezed until her fingers cramped, forcing the key loose. Dropped it into his palm.

“Look at me.” Mason hovered over her as she slithered down the wall. “Who pays the milkman with nicked coins? Who drags you out of your own vomit? I run this place now. I’m the man.”

Power. Pure, sharp, intoxicating. He shoved the iron key into the lock and turned it. Threw the door wide to prove her madness to the street—

Six inches away, framed by the yellow porch light, stood a mountain. Rain dripping from a cracked leather coat. White knuckles wrapped around the heavy rubber grip of an iron crowbar.

The porch air rushed in. Damp. Rot. And a familiar, suffocating stench.

Brut-33 aftershave.

Mason froze. Arrogance to ash in a heartbeat.

Behind him, Lynne’s mug hit the linoleum.

His father stepped across the threshold. Heavy boots leaving black grease prints on the clean floor. He reached past Mason’s ear, pulled the door shut, and slid the heavy iron deadbolt back into place. Click.

“Thirteen today, aren't you, boy?”

Voice like two millstones grinding together. A scarred face twisted into a yellowed smile. He set the tip of the crowbar on the floorboards, leaning on it like a cane.

Lynne pressed flat against the stove, dry-heaving in silence.

“I heard you through the timber,” his father murmured. “Saying you run this place.”

Mason couldn't breathe. The size of the man swallowed the kitchen.

“A man makes choices, Mason. Hard choices.” His father pulled out a chair, sat, and laid the steel bar across his thighs like a sleeping dog. “Your mother owes me eight years. I can settle up with her right here. It’ll be noisy. You can unlock that door. Walk out into the rain—”

Lynne choked out a scream. “Mason… no…”

His pale eyes stayed locked on Mason. Cold. Calculating.

Or…” He tapped the crowbar. “You can prove you’re the man and take it for her. Choice is yours, big man.”

Mason looked at his mother. Bloodshot eyes pleading. The same woman he’d judged five seconds ago. He looked at his father’s hands—huge, calloused, resting on the steel.

Mason’s hand trembled as he gripped the iron key.

He didn't look at her face when he turned the handle. Didn't listen to the sound she made when the freezing Auckland rain hit his skin. He stepped out onto the porch, pulled his hood up, and walked into the dark, letting the deadbolt click shut behind him.