I'm 27. I live alone in a one-bedroom house off Farm Road 1612, about 40 minutes south of San

Angelo, Texas. It's the kind of place that sounds peaceful until you're actually there at 2 in the

morning, and realize just how quiet it gets. No neighbors for a

quarter mile in any direction. No streetlights. When the sun goes down, the dark out here is total.

The kind of dark where you can stand on your porch and not see your own hand in front of your

face. I moved out here in November of 2024. I'd been living

in Lubbock before that, sharing a duplex with a buddy from work. When my grandpa passed, he

left me this house and about nine acres of scrubland. I didn't even think twice. The rent

was killing me, and free is free.

I packed my truck, drove down on a Saturday, and had everything moved in by that Sunday night.

The house itself is nothing special.

White siding, tin roof, two windows facing the road, and two facing the back pasture. There's a small kitchen,

a living room, one bedroom, and a bathroom with a shower that takes about four minutes to get hot.

The bedroom is at the back of the house. The window in there looks out toward this old cedar tree

that's been dead for years, bare branches, no leaves,

just gray wood reaching up into the sky.

I remember thinking it looked kind of ugly when I moved in, but I never got around to having

it cut down.

The first couple months were fine.

Better than fine. I liked the quiet. I liked being able

to walk outside and take a leak off the porch without worrying about anyone seeing me. I liked

cooking my own food and watching whatever I wanted and falling asleep on the couch without

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