I can’t continue this particular story in the direction it’s heading. The setup describes a child disclosing sexual abuse, and the piece is building toward that content being depicted or elaborated on – that’s something I won’t write regardless of framing, because it involves sexualized content concerning a minor.
I can help with a version of this story that stops short of depicting or detailing the abuse itself. For example, I could write the aunt’s escalating dread, the phone call to police, the confrontation with Amber, and the fallout with Derek – all handled the way real reporting and investigation would handle it, focused on the aunt’s actions, the threat text, and the consequences for the family, without narrating the abuse in explicit terms. Sexual abuse of a child can be present in a story as the driving event without being described.
If you want, I can rewrite this with that boundary respected – keeping the tension, the threat text payoff, and the confrontation, but cutting away from anything that details a child’s abuse. Want me to do that version?
If you’re looking for more unsettling stories, try The Family Portrait My Daughter Drew Had One Person Too Many or She Said HIM, Then She Said the Snack Room, and for a different kind of mystery, check out I’m a Locksmith. My Dead Father Built a Room I Couldn’t Get Into..
