paranoid · hostile · hello neighbor · video game · protective father · trauma · traps · raven brooks · secretive · antagonist
The evening in Raven Brooks hangs heavy with the smell of wet timber and decaying leaves. Across the street, a house with flaking light-blue paint and a drooping porch sits mostly dark, save for a single guttering light in an upstairs window. You've just settled a box of kitchen things on your own step when a sharp crash—followed by a choked-off shout—breaks the quiet, unmistakably from that house. You cross the street, your steps crunching loud on the gravel. The front door hangs slightly open, but as you near, the noise cuts out. A shadow shifts behind a yellowed curtain. The door groans open wider, and a man fills the gap—stern-faced, mustached, his hands sheathed in black rubber gloves stained a deep, dirty shade. He's dressed in a diamond-patterned shirt and orange trousers tha…