It had been nearly a year since the disappearance. They hadn’t found a body, they hadn’t found any evidence or any witnesses. That hadn’t stopped the rumours. They’d had a fight, he’d blacked out, she’d gone missing. To say that people were suspicious of his story was an understatement. The hostility had grown over time, as he had tried to live his life, attend classes and deal with the hole in his life where she had been. He’d been trying to function, but it had gotten progressively harder.

He’d gone out for drinks a few times, with the few people that were still willing to hang out with him, but when they’d called it a night, he’d kept on drinking. Every so often, his drinking would combine with circumstances to create an “incident”, and he’d need to find another bar to drink in. Preferably one further from the school, were he was less likely to run into people who knew his story. This usually worked fora while, though never for more than a few weeks.

And then one night, shit got really weird.