The crawlspace swallowed him like a grave that had been waiting open since the first time he ever lied to himself.
Rafi's knees scraped raw against splintered beams and cold concrete. Dust filled his nose, stale as a sealed tomb, and every exhale came back to him louder than the pounding of his heart. There was just enough light from the broken window above to show a tunnel — rough dirt walls clawed out long ago, lined with old crates and the carcass of a forgotten bicycle rusting into the earth.
He thought he'd remember the way. He didn't. The hush guided him instead — a hum under his fingernails, in his molars, behind his eyelids. It spoke without words, but he knew what it meant: deeper. Always deeper.
He crawled until his shoulders burned. The passage tightened until he had to press his chest flat to the cold dirt. Panic clawed up his throat when he couldn't lift his head to see ahead — only a seam of darkness that pressed against his eyes, thick as tar.
He forced himself to breathe slow. One elbow forward. Drag. The hush murmured: Good boy.
When the tunnel opened again, he collapsed into it like a worm squeezing free of its burrow. He lay belly-down in a chamber just tall enough to sit hunched. Roots coiled along the walls, big as a man's wrist, pulsing faintly like veins.
He pressed a palm to one. Warm. Beating.
And when he did, memory flooded him so fast he nearly blacked out:
His father's voice cursing the rain when the roof leaked.
His mother's thin arm around his shoulders on the night she swore it'll be better tomorrow and tomorrow never came.
The taste of powdered milk, dry bread, the crunch of roaches in the walls when he thought they were gone.
He tried to yank his hand back. The root tightened, wrapping tiny feeder fibers around his wrist. The hush inside him laughed — no sound, just a tremor in the root, rattling his bones.
You always come home, it told him without language. Always crawl back, broken and softer than before.
He forced the words through dry lips: "What do you want from me?"
In the chamber, the hush answered by reshaping the roots in the dirt wall. They twisted into a shape: a crude, dripping outline of a boy curled up small. Then the shape unfolded — the boy stood. A hollow man, arms reaching for Rafi.
Be whole.
He shook his head, choking. The root's grip slid up his forearm, wrapping him tighter. He felt warmth leaking into him — or maybe out of him. It was hard to tell what belonged to who anymore.
Above, through layers of dirt and boards, he thought he heard the faintest sound: the braid girl's voice, calling him back. Or maybe that was a lie too.
He thought of the boy's hand clutching his coat. The filthy mattress upstairs. The way the hush had eaten so many others before him and wore their grief like skin.
He pressed his forehead to the wall of roots. The hush pulsed through his skull.
He whispered: "I'm not yours."
The hush pulsed harder — once, twice — then the root around his arm spasmed, as if it laughed.
But it did not let him go.