Episode 1: The Room Where Truth Bleeds

A single bulb buzzes overhead, casting an anemic glow over the interrogation room. The air hangs heavy—cheap coffee, sweat, and a metallic tang that stirs something familiar and unsettling, like a memory waiting to resurface. The walls are bare, lifeless. No clock. No windows. Just four walls that seem to inch closer with every breath.

The chair beneath me is unforgiving, the kind designed to make you shift uncomfortably, making you blatantly aware of your place in the room. My back aches, but I don’t adjust. Showing discomfort is a sign of weakness. And weakness gets you eaten alive.

Across from me sits a man in a wrinkled white shirt and a navy tie loosened just enough to suggest he’s been here longer than he planned. Detective Monroe—mid-forties, sharp eyes, a face that’s been around long enough to know better. There’s something in his stare—calculating, predatory. His stare lingers a second too long, like he’s waiting for me to stumble.

A silver recorder sits between us, its red light glowing like a tiny eye, unblinking. Watching. Judging.

Monroe leans forward, resting his elbows on the table. “We’re not charging you with anything.”

That should be a relief. It isn’t. My stomach knots, a slow, relentless twisting, turning every breath into a quiet battle.

“We just need your statement,” he continues, flipping open a worn-out notebook. His fingers tap against the pages, an erratic rhythm that grates on my nerves. “This is about—” he pauses, tilting his head slightly, like he’s letting the weight of it settle. “Elijah Lane.”

The name lands like a gunshot in a silent room.

A cold sweat trickles down my spine. My throat tightens. My fingers twitch against the steel table—a small betrayal of the stillness I struggle to maintain.

I keep my expression neutral, a skill I’ve spent years perfecting. “Elijah Lane,” I repeat, forcing the words out evenly, like I’m reading them off a page. “Yeah. I knew him.”

“Knew.” Monroe’s voice is quiet, but there’s an edge to it, sharp as a scalpel. “Past tense.”

I swallow hard. “I heard what happened.”

He doesn’t react. Just flips a page. The silence—suffocating.

“That’s all?”

“What else do you want me to say?” My voice stays steady, but I find myself slipping.

A slow exhale from Monroe, the kind that carves through the silence, heavy with unspoken intent. “He killed himself.”

The room tilts for a fraction of a second. My hands clenched into fists beneath the table. I knew this already, but hearing it again, in this room, spoken so plainly, so blatantly devoid of emotion, feels different. Feels heavier.

Monroe lets the silence linger, his eyes fixed on me, searching for a reaction—guilt, shock, anything.

I give him nothing.

Monroe leans back, his chair creaking under the weight of everything unspoken. His gaze is steady, carving its way into me like a scalpel prying flesh apart. “You were his classmate.”

“Yeah.”

“You were also his friend?”

That word tastes like rust. Friend. “Not really.”

Monroe reaches into a manila folder and pulls out a photo. He slides it across the table. I don’t look right away, but it's there—hovering at the edge of my peripheral vision: a school hallway. Lockers lined up in perfect rows. And Elijah—shoulders hunched, eyes wide like a deer caught in headlights.

“Remember this?” Monroe asks.

I pick up the photo, pretend to study it like it’s something new. But I know it. I know the exact moment it was taken. I know what happened after. My fingers tighten around the edges. The sharp edge of the photo bites into my skin, but I don’t let go.

My pulse quickens.

“I don’t see how this is relevant.”

Monroe doesn’t answer right away. Instead, he pulls out another photo. My stomach churns. A body. Sheets pulled up, hospital white. But the face—

“Elijah’s parents found him in his room,”

Monroe says. His voice has shifted. No longer probing, just… steady.

“He left a note.”

My skin prickles, a slow wave of ice crawling up my spine. “Okay.”

Monroe watches me, measuring every breath. “You wanna know what

it said?”

I shake my head, but it doesn’t matter. He reads anyway.

“I tried. I really did. But it never stopped. And they never cared.

No one ever cared. They’ll pretend they did, now that I’m gone.

But it’s a lie. They knew. They all knew.”

A slow chill spreads through my body. My skin feels tight, like a corset cinching me in. The words slither into my ears and coil around my heart.

“Why are you telling me this?”

Monroe pulls out another paper. This one isn’t a photo. It’s a list. Names. Handwritten.

My name is on it.

A dull ringing starts in my ears, like alarm bells going off.

“This—” I shake my head. My voice is thinner now, unraveling at the seams. “This doesn’t mean anything.”

Monroe places the paper down like it’s made of glass. “He wrote this the night he died.”

I stare at it. At my name. At the others. My mind races, flipping through years of forgotten moments, casual words hurled like stones, laughter that was never meant to be cruel. Just stupid, meaningless high school bullshit.

Monroe’s gaze is relentless, cutting through every flimsy excuse I want to make. “You were part of it.”

My throat tightens. “No. I mean—I don’t know. I never… I never touched him.”

“I didn’t say you did.”

My breath is unsteady now. The walls feel closer. “You think this is my fault?”

Monroe doesn’t answer immediately. He doesn’t need to. The weight of the silence says enough.

“This was years ago. We were just kids.”

“Kids who made his life a living hell.”

The words land like a punch to the gut. The past has a peculiar way of revealing itself, of clawing its way back into your life, no matter how fast you try to run from it. They say the truth doesn’t change but the past has a way of reshaping it.

But for the first time, I didn’t know what the truth was anymore.