Clay Ellerwood has been a control freak ever since he could remember. All the toys he had when he was a child were always meticulously organised by age and size. ‘This way I always know where they are when I need them!’ And, although his school marks were never necessarily top of the class, he had never missed a deadline on a project or failed to be thoroughly prepared for his exams.

On the bright side, Clay has always been an extremely reliable person who learned his job quite fast at the accounting company where he worked. He had been appointed head manager of his local office shortly before his son had asked to move in with him.

Now, don’t get Clay wrong, he loved his son more than anything else in the world and would take a bullet any given day to protect Kyle, but children were just so messy. It was already hard enough sharing a house with another adult after he and Liza got married, but adding a child to the mix was much more than he could take and it wasn’t too soon before Clay found himself living alone in a small flat. His life a mess he had never considered possible.

He saw that as an opportunity to regain full control of his life. He worked hard to provide for his son no matter what and, once his flat was organised to his taste, he started having his little boy come as often as they could.

Some months after Kyle’s eighth birthday, his ex-wife had started dating some guy she had met at work. Clay had no problems with his ex-wife dating again, but there was something about that guy that he couldn’t put his finger on. To make matters worse, Clay was certain his son also disliked the guy. Wanting his visits to be happy, though, he never directly addressed the subject, but made sure he kept an extra eye on the situation.

Clay’s life would spin out of control again two years later, when a very nervous Kyle called him with the news that Liza was to marry that guy and that he was scared, even though he refused to tell him why. Clay could sense his son was mustering the courage to ask something bold and, after reassuring him he’d do anything to keep Kyle safe, the boy had asked if he could live with him instead.

Clay couldn’t say no. But he also couldn’t blatantly say yes.

‘We’ll sort everything out as fast as possible, okay? I promise.’ That was the response he was able to give.

A few strange months followed. For starters, Clay was shocked to see how willing Liza was to sign away Kyle’s custody. It only added to his suspicion of her next husband. The hardest part was, obviously, to make sure having a child living with him twenty-four-seven didn’t disrupt the balance he had finally achieved in his home.

Clay wasn’t proud to admit that a few rows followed. There he was. A grown man reaching his forties screaming at a ten-year-old. How could he have lost control like that again?

As the years started to pass, Clay started to notice Kyle was finally learning to live the organised life that came so naturally to him. Sure, Clay still demanded all the neatness as he always had, but there was little screaming left to be done. The only thing that even he admitted to having exaggerated with was Kyle’s curfew.

More than once, Clay noticed Liza’s new husband’s car surrounding Kyle’s school. Striving to keep his son’s life as normal as possible, they had decided against changing schools, so Kyle could keep at least one sense of normalcy. Clay would see the grey car at irregular intervals and whoever was behind the wheel would always drive away at the ear-splitting sound of the school alarm, meaning that Kyle never got to see it. Clay decided to preserve the boy’s ignorance, but soon came the time when Kyle was big enough to want to go to school by himself.

For his thirteenth birthday, Clay gave his son a skateboard and a cell phone. Kyle was to answer the phone immediately whenever his father called and Clay knew exactly how long it would take his son to come and go from school. They would leave the house together every morning and Kyle’s phone would ring religiously just as he arrived at school and later at home.

There had been some extra rows whenever Kyle forgot to answer his phone, especially in the afternoon after school. Kyle still vividly remembered the day his father showed up at the flat, purple in the face, demanding to know where Kyle was. He really couldn’t see the point of all that fuzz, but he was still grounded for almost a month without TV, PC, or video game. Even his phone was taken away from him, replaced by this ancient model that could only place calls and send archaic text messages.

There had been times when Kyle had called his father trying to ask for permission to go to a friend’s house or to go grab a bite after school, but the answer had always been the same.

‘I don’t know these people and I don’t know their parents. Go home, Kyle. Don’t open the door to anyone.’

Slowly, Kyle started to notice his friends at school were making fun of his father’s ways and, even though he didn’t like them himself, he gradually walked away from those people. He’d never make fun of his friends’ parents, no matter how much he believed some of them deserved it. He didn’t appreciate to see it being done to his father.

At home, when his daily chores were done, Kyle had the only social contact he could have with the real world. He didn’t care much for social media, but he did spend a while playing online games, of which his father knew little of. Kyle was certain it was something innocuous, but he was also positive his father wouldn’t see it that way. Kyle made sure to never mention anything to anyone about his daily life, pretty much because there really wasn’t anything he would like to share.

He did keep in touch, though, with a guy from a distant country and another one from a small city not very far from where he lived. Maybe it was his dad’s paranoia passing on to him, but he was always extra careful whenever he talked with his two online friends.

Kyle barely knew any of his neighbours. He was courteous to all of them whenever they crossed paths, but he never stopped to talk to anyone. After all, they were all quite old. The only one whose age was closest to his was a guy who had moved by himself to his floor a short while ago. Kyle was home the day this guy moved in with the help of a friend. He seemed to be in his early twenties and he didn’t seem to have too much stuff. Kyle did notice a cool TV and a couple of video games coming in, though.

With time, Kyle noticed this friend was a frequent visitor. At first, he thought the two were a thing, but lots of times this said friend would arrive with his girlfriend. He could tell it was the friend’s girlfriend. The understanding of a life-long strong friendship was beyond Kyle’s experiences and, therefore, his comprehension, which only made him try and drive his mysterious neighbour away from his mind as much as he could.

A task he failed at miserably.