Peter Clenott

Meet Julian. He invites you into his world of secrets and lies; of confessions and sins, and forces you to analyse the meanings of right and wrong, good and bad. One day he meets Matt — a schoolboy, as beautiful as he is cunning. The moment their eyes lock, Julian is trapped in an endless spiral downwards, unable to step away from the darkness Matt brings with his company. What Julian fears the most, is that he doesn’t want to. What lengths will he go, how far will he stray from what he knows is right? You join Julian on a road to self discovery, but be prepared — the person he discovers may not be who you originally thought he was. Beginning on an innocent enough day out in London, Julian is at a café, having breakfast with a boy he knows he should not be. He tells himself it’s just an hour, just food. Just this and just that. That same day, an hour turns into ten, and by the time he’s dropped the boy off home, Julian realises that he’s incapable of saying no to his charming and convincing ways. The closer they get, the more Matt lets slip his veil of innocence; and the more Julian falls for him, the harder it is for him to resist his devious ways. Uncovering secret after lie after manipulation, Julian knows he needs to stop, to end this, to walk away in the opposite direction that he’s pulled towards while he has the chance. Thing is – Julian is nothing, if not indecisive; and Matt nothing, if not aggressive in his pursuit. By the time he can make up his mind, it’s been made for him, when something goes horribly wrong and it exposes Julian right where it will hurt him the most. They’ve been caught, and this time it’s serious. This time the person who catches them isn’t going to just storm out and then come around a couple days later. This time Julian has to make a decision that will bind him to the boy forever, or face suicide in every definition of the word apart from death. This sets into motion his undoing at the hands of Matt, as he finally faces the demons he’s kept buried while discovering even darker ones that are lurking within. He joins Matthew on the path to lust and destruction, and is forced to accept that perhaps they aren’t so different after all. Obsession begets depravity. Julian realises who he is, who they are – and it isn’t pretty. What’s more terrifying to him is that he likes what the sum of them together makes. That it’s the highest he’s ever climbed, the hardest he’s ever fallen, and that there’s nothing he wouldn’t do if Matthew asked it of him — be it good or bad, evil or innocent, love or hate, blood or tears, and life or death.