Dirt and Daylight
Joel Gibbons had never been anywhere. Hadn't finished school. Hadn't met his father. Hadn't done much except show up for his mum and hope that counted for something. A passport application changed everything—a name on a birth certificate, a coincidence that put him in the wrong place, and a death he didn't see coming. Joel should have stayed dead. Instead, he woke in glowing water—claimed before he even drew breath—gasping back to life with three words branded somewhere deeper than skin. You are mine.
Joel Gibbons had never been anywhere. Left school at sixteen to help his mum make rent. Spent his days driving deliveries through Hobart and his nights trying not to think too hard about what came next. The Bali trip was supposed to be different—a dream he'd scraped together with mates, proof that life could be more than just getting by.
He needed a passport. The passport needed a birth certificate. And the birth certificate had a name on it—a father, real and findable, after nineteen years of nothing.
Joel wasn't looking for trouble. But coincidence doesn't care what you're looking for. Two deliveries to the same address. A driveway. A blade. And then the water—glowing, warm, and occupied. Something vast stirred beneath the surface. Something that filled his lungs with air he hadn't earned and branded three words into places he didn't know he had.
Now Joel's a long way from home with a body that won't obey and a father who was torn away before Joel could memorise his face. But it's the quiet moments that terrify him—when the dark settles in, and that voice rises through him like a tide.
You are mine, Joel Gibbons.
