Work Text:
Black.
Simple white words fade in:
This is a true account of Peter Parker’s story. He has given full consent for the release of the images in this film.
Darkness and silence prevail for only a moment before the unmistakably authoritative voice of a news reporter becomes audible. She’s a local newsreader wearing a cheap blue dress. In the corner is a date in the same simple white text - 16th May 2016.
“A man by the name of Tony Stark has been reported missing, last seen on the 12th of May. His wife, Virginia Potts, and the local police department urge anyone with details on his whereabouts to come forward.”
A second news broadcast replaces the first; the same channel, but this time the reporter is a thick-set man. The date reads 24th June 2017.
“Are the New York suburbs really the safe place we presume them to be? The question is debatable after Peter Parker, a twelve-year old boy, has been reported missing by the children’s home he attended - the second missing person in the local area in the past year. Are the two disappearances connected?”
The newsreaders are momentarily replaced by an image of startling contrast to the lurid colours and scrolling titles of the broadcasts: a handheld camera presents a young man, curled up on the carpet floor in the corner of an apartment, his chin hooked over the windowsill so a wash of morning light paints his face, and a steaming mug stationed by his feet.
The reporters flash back, now in their multitudes, overlapping one another, multiple images fading in and out. Small snippets of their words are audible. The names of the news stations are now widely recognisable.
11th August 2020: “A man who was recently rushed into hospital with multiple stab wounds and various lacerations…”
“Larry Miller, at first presumed to be a custodian, quickly became violent when questioned and is being held for interrogation at…”
“...confirmed to be Tony Stark, a man who has been missing from his home in suburban New York for the past five years.”
“The question I think we all want to ask is - where has he been? What has happened to him in those mysterious five years?”
“This just in: Tony Stark has awakened…”
“He named Peter Parker, still missing, claiming to have been kidnapped and held in a confined room with the boy for years…”
“The search is on for the scene of the crime, and the kid still caught up in its horrors…”
12th August: “After almost a day of searching, the NYPD believe they have found the place where Peter Parker is still imprisoned.”
The reporters talk on over the blare of sirens and the crackling of a camera being adjusted, which heralds a change of visual scenery. A crowd of reporters, a cluster of police cars and a squad of officers are visible through the darkness. A clamour erupts among the press as the ragged figure of a boy emerges from the shed. He is supported by a female police officer who watches him attentively.
“Get back!” hollers a much burlier officer in the direction of the reporters. “Have some compassion. You’ll overwhelm him.”
“The search for Peter Parker is over,” a reporter declares in voiceover. “He was found in a large garden shed in the backyard of a house which, it has just been confirmed, belongs to Larry Miller.”
The kid blinks rapidly, his mouth open, his legs shaking. He seems lost. He’s unaware of the cameras. His t-shirt is too large and his pants are too small. There’s blood on his hands.
“We are thrilled to announce the retrieval of both Tony Stark and Peter Parker from the hands of Larry Miller,” booms a police officer from a podium. “Miller is now in custody and will face trial imminently. Parker and Stark are recovering in the care of some of New York’s finest healthcare workers.”
A younger, more uncertain voice echoes over the police statement: “It’s, it’s pretty hard to talk about.”
The image fades in, revealing the face of the boy we saw earlier in the low-lit apartment, an older version of the boy led to the police car amid the chaos of the press. His eyes are red-rimmed.
Before this iteration of the boy can speak again, the image is overtaken by a shaky portrait angle - a phone recording - of the same boy again, in a school class. 9th September 2020. Something is clearly wrong. The class rustles awkwardly around him as he sits on his chair with violent shivers wracking his body, his head cradled in his arms. Just audible are a few choruses of bitten-back giggles. A teacher crosses the room to him and lays a hand on his forearm, but he jerks away from the touch, still silent and trembling. “What the hell?” murmurs the person behind the lens.
The red-eyed boy returns, gazing down at a dog resting across his lap. “He would come in, usually at night, and he would - he would - rape me.”
The dust of that statement has hardly settled when yet another reporter invades the screen: “Our studio recently received a statement from the court detailing Larry Miller’s sentence. He has been found guilty of two counts of aggravated kidnapping; he will receive a life sentence without parole.” 30th November 2020.
The video cuts back to the man interviewing the red-eyed boy as his forehead creases in shock. “Oh. Oh, wow. We had no idea. I can’t imagine what that must have been like for you.”
Steam from a mug held in both hands. We’re back in the quiet corner of the apartment with the same boy once again.
Over this continues the voice of the reporter who described Larry Miller’s prison sentence. “I’m sure Tony Stark and Peter Parker will feel as relieved as us all to hear that Miller will be fully prosecuted. Our neighbours and kids are safe from another threat that once walked the streets freely.”
In the corner, a final date materialises: 3rd February 2025.
The sound of birdsong isn’t quite audible, the camera being a distance away from the boy and the open window, but it can be imagined that he’s hearing some sweet natural melody that draws his eyelids shut for a moment. He leans his head sideways on the windowsill and just listens. Our boy is finally at peace.
Along the bottom of the frame, a title appears.
A MISSING BOY RETURNS A DIFFERENT MAN
A Film by Harley Keener
When the video cuts, the boy is sat on a couch in what is presumably the same apartment, positioning himself so he’s in the centre of the frame and looking straight towards the camera. He pauses, then looks just past the lens. "Wait - so, Harley, I'm not even supposed to act? It's just me being myself?"
"Yeah,” huffs the person behind the camera. “Is that hard?"
"Yes, with you watching and pointing a camera at me!”
“Come on, it’s literally gonna get dark soon if you keep fussing. Just say your name.”
“Okay, okay.”
The boy composes himself, then continues in a slightly more put-together tone. “Hi. I’m Peter Parker.”
We see the boy in his apartment again. This time, he’s stowing his mug in the sink at the kitchenette, taking a coat and a dog lead from a set of hooks by the door, calling out what must be the name of the dog - “Kobol!” - while all the time followed by the camera with its gentle handheld sway.
He attaches a bright red harness that reads EMOTIONAL SUPPORT around the torso of his large and ridiculously fluffy dog, then turns for the door, the camera tilting upwards to follow his head and shoulders.
“You might know me as that kid that got kidnapped in a shed that one time. That’s cool. You can’t help hearing the news. But, uh… you know, I’m also… a person. I like to paint. I’m doing a degree in art. I hadn’t watched Stranger Things until Harley made me a few weeks ago, and - can I just say - it’s way better than I thought. Oh - uh - is this getting too random?”
We’re in a field with Peter and Kobol, the camera a few metres from them both, then, after a cut, a little closer. The sun, the frost-tipped grass, the puffs of vapor blooming from Peter’s mouth and the pink flush of his cheeks, all suggest that it’s a cold winter morning.
For a moment, the camera drifts away to study the rural parkland that surrounds them. The stiff grass stalks. The sun burning past bare, rigid tree branches.
When the shot cuts to focus on Peter again, he turns to the camera and begins to speak to it, or rather the person - presumably Harley - behind it. “This is the route I take most often in the mornings.
"I’m out walking and running all the time, trying to buy back the time outdoors I lost as a kid. I thought I’d skip a run this time so you’re not trying to run after me.”
There’s a laugh behind the camera.
Kobol treks back and forth amid the grass as Peter blows warm air into his cupped hands. He grins bashfully, then admits, “Harley usually does this for me. I have perpetually cold hands, and he’s perpetually chivalrous.”
Another disembodied laugh. “I’m using both hands here. I physically can’t.”
The footage cuts to show Peter from far away. He stands still and watches the sky. The parkland cradles him.
At the next cut, we’re back with Peter. “This is - this is exclusive access, guys. Nobody’s seen this except my close family and friends.” His smile is a little uncertain. He tugs down the high collar of his fleece coat, revealing a reddish-purple bruise on the side of his neck. It’s clearly a hickey.
Still holding his collar down to expose the angry bruise, Peter smiles again, even less confidently - it’s more of a twisting of his mouth. “Uh,” he begins, “This built up over time. It’s called hemosiderin staining, apparently. When a bruise is violent, or... caused again and again in the same place... it sticks around. So, uh - hm. You can understand why I don’t exactly wanna show it off.”
Another take of Peter shows him more carefree as he walks alongside the camera. “I always take Kobol. He’s not always wearing the emotional support harness, though, because I get some funny looks and questions when he is, which - that’s pretty ridiculous, right? I get bothered by strangers more when he’s supposed to be left alone to focus on his job. But Kobol is great.
“You know, I feel like it’s such a bummer that so many people don’t manage to get outside for days on end. I’ve got a new appreciation for the outside world. I don’t want to live a day without it.”
Peter is back in the apartment, in jeans and an oversized sweater. The mark on his neck is no longer visible, presumably hidden under a layer of makeup. He guides the camera around the space and describes each area. “A bathroom with a door, wow! We didn’t have that in the Room, which was - very unfortunate. Stinky. Moving on, moving on… the living room, where Harley and I chill out, play video games, watch Kim’s Convenience, the occasional Truffaut film... hang out with friends... sometimes make out...”
“Pete!” is hissed indignantly from behind the camera.
Peter just covers his mouth with a hand and giggles.
“Oh my God, what is going on with you?”
“I don’t know,” Peter says. “No - yeah, I do know. I think I had a lot of coffee just now. I kinda need to pee.”
The camera dips sharply. It’s now pointing at the floor. “I’m cutting this,” Harley says. “I’m cutting, I’m cutting.”
Sure enough, it cuts - Peter’s sitting cross-legged on his bed. “Dragon bedsheets!” he enthuses with a comical grin. “They’re probably meant for, like, an eight-year-old, but I - I literally don’t care. I sleep right by the window and leave a little shaft open so I can see the moonlight even at night, and then I know I’m in a safe spot.” He flops down so he’s lying on his back. “Kobol usually sleeps right on top of me. He’s super heavy but also very grounding. He’s also gotten good at waking me up when I get nightmares. I tell you, my dog is a godsend.”
The brightness of his smile sticks with us. It seems incongruous for the boy who was so torn apart as he was led to the police car, as he revealed the truth of his treatment to the interviewer.
The visual feed moves on while he continues to describe the cheerful decorations he’s added to personalise his room and set it apart from what he calls the Room: we see him doling out portions of homemade stir-fry to a few friends; meticulously grooming Kobol with a wide metal comb; upending a case of pencils onto the dining room table and selecting one to apply to the page of a sketchbook. The camera approaches him as he settles into drawing then peers over his shoulder to reveal a sketch of a male dancer, arms extended to the heavens and toes elevating him off the floor.
Interview Peter chips back in. “It’s funny. The fact that I was confined for so long has kind of increased my drive to have a great life on the outside. Not that I’d, like, recommend an extended period of confinement to anyone - but it just so happens that the crappiness of my past has made me want to create an extraordinary future. Something that’s far away from - from walls and darkness and tinned food and... uh, well - constant terror.”
The tinny ringtone of a video call connecting ushers us into the next shot. Kobol is curled up at Peter’s side on the couch. Peter’s balancing a tablet across his drawn-up knees as he waits for somebody to connect, the camera shifting a little and reminding us of Harley behind it, waiting with him.
A familiar face, the face of the man who’d sat by the red-eyed Peter in the interview, appears on the screen.
“Hey, kid. Long time, no see.”
“Tony, it’s been five days.”
“Is this being filmed?”
“Yeah.” Peter points towards us. “Harley’s doing the documentary.” He lifts the tablet over Kobol’s snoring form and angles it towards the camera; we are confronted with the eyes that we’ve been seeing through thus far - the glossy lens of a boxy handheld camera and the wiry, beanie-clad young man who operates it. He throws out a quick wave in the tablet’s direction, then rushes to support the camera again.
“Hey, Keener.”
“Will you ever call him Harley?” pleads Peter, visible in the far right of frame as he continues to brandish the screen.
“Nope.”
Cut to interview Peter, who plants his elbows on his knees and says, “I owe everything to Tony. Really, basically everything in the world. If he hadn’t been there with me in the Room, hadn’t... loved me and supported me the way he did… I wouldn’t be here right now, that’s for sure. He was all that kept me going. That sounds pretty depressing, but - that was it. He was it. I mean, there’s not a lot to look forward to in life when you’re facing, like, an interminable amount of time stuck in a little room, getting violated by this random guy whenever he so pleases.”
He pauses, jaw tight.
“But Tony was amazing. He somehow managed to stay calm and comforting, just - all the time. He’d get beaten up, and just walk it right off and crack a joke. I can’t comprehend how he managed that, but… I sure am glad about it.”
Tony needles Peter with a look through the tablet. “You’re not slaving away doing all that cooking for your friends?”
“No,” smiles Peter long-sufferingly, “We go out to Chick-fil-A too, don’t worry.”
“You scoundrel. As if I don’t allocate you an allowance that gets you proper meals out.”
“I donate a quarter of it to charity.”
Tony blinks.
“What?” Peter asks. “Are you frozen?”
“You are adorable,” Tony tells him fervently.
“Uh, thanks?”
Interview Peter takes over again. “My family… they’re the people that make life happen for me. My parents, Tony and Pepper. Rhodey, my unofficial godfather. My friends.
“I was - for a while after getting out of the Room, I was really dependent on Tony and my family. I was still trying to get used to the world and I clung to the people that still made sense in it. Now, because they’ve been so good at listening to my needs and stuff, I’m more than halfway through my college degree. Like, I never thought that would happen.”
The tablet falls from Peter’s knees as he breaks out into peals of laughter mirrored by the virtual Tony.
“When we were in the Room, when Larry visited me, I was pretty adamant that Tony never talked about what went on. I tried to pretend he didn’t see anything. I mean, we were never more than about ten feet apart, and sometimes Larry even came in the middle of the day, so… but I just couldn’t let him try to help me. It would have... made it more real, I guess. And plus, he couldn’t do anything to stop it. He did try. Larry just threatened me.
“Um, but, like I said, sometimes it kinda couldn’t be ignored. Tony always seemed to know when I was… when I was in enough of a state that I’d let him help me out. So - Larry’d usually get me to… lie in bed… but - I hope it’s not weird that I’m telling this story - uh, but one day he came in at, just, the worst time, because I was in the middle of an impromptu panic attack. Just - you know, another day in the life. But he, uh, he came in while Tony was trying to calm me down and pulled me away and laid me over the kitchen table and just--”
Interview Peter drops his hands to his thighs with a bitter slap.
“It always went something like that, but I’d never been so - all over the place, I guess. Crying, not really breathing. And Tony got mad and ran at Larry, but - but Larry hit him and then zip-tied him to a pipe, which was crazy, and I didn’t hardly even notice because I was still just trying to breathe but I couldn’t because I knew what he was about to do and that he’d do it right in front of Tony, on the, on the table and everything, and that it was gonna hurt so much…”
He breaks off. He covers his mouth with his hand. He searches behind the camera lens with eyes that are suddenly brimming full with fear.
Interview Peter has been our rock, explaining his world to us, sat neatly in the centre of frame, but now even he must fall.
“Harley,” he whispers, “Can we - can we stop? For a moment?”
Almost instantaneously, Harley appears from behind the camera, settling himself on the couch at Peter’s side. His movements are slow and measured. It looks like he’s done this many times before. Peter buries his face in Harley’s chest; Harley, taller and leaner than him, brackets him in a soft embrace and sets his chin on the top of his head.
There’s silence in the room. If the camera could turn away of its own will, it would, but the shot continues to play. The discomfort of having to watch this feels important, feels like a lesson to be learned.
A harsh sob pierces the quiet.
Cut. Peter is back in his neat central position on the same couch. The room is lighter and he’s wearing a different outfit. This must be the next day.
He shoots the camera a glance. “Sometimes, I have bad days.”
A change of scene takes us to a new location, halfway down the cereal aisle in a Costco. Peter is shown from the waist upwards as he scans the shelves for something. Before he can find it, he stops in his tracks. The camera approaches him questioningly. We can tell now that his gaze is focused on a box of Cheerios. To the viewer, that’s all it seems to be, but to Peter, they appear to hold a deeper and graver significance.
Suddenly, he jolts out of his reverie and pats the box a few times, forcefully. “Why am I ... uh, Harley, what are we getting?"
From behind the camera: "Lucky Charms."
"Yeah. My memory is way too short, yikes.” Peter throws out a laugh that’s got nothing to it. His search down the aisle continues. “Lucky Charms, Lucky Charms..."
What we see next pulls much more potently at the heartstrings. The screen is black, but we hear all.
“Keep breathing. You can do it.”
“I can’t.”
“You can, baby.”
“I can’t. I want it to stop. I want it to stop.”
Peter is struggling to breathe. His and Harley’s voices are a little muffled, a little distant, creating the impression that the camera has been set on the floor a few feet from them so as to afford them a little privacy.
“Sorry,” sobs Peter.
“It’s totally fine.”
We break out of the darkness; Peter is at the kitchen table. The camera, initially set on the surface, is lifted upwards. “Hey, Pete, can we get started with some filming around the house?” Harley says as he adjusts the angle.
There’s no reply from Peter, no sign he even heard Harley.
“Peter?”
Still nothing. We might have presumed the video feed was frozen but for the handheld camera’s movement around the eerily still Peter. His expression is blank.
The camera is set down. Harley appears again from behind the lens, adopting the same calm, slow approach towards Peter that we saw earlier in the film. “Pete, do you think you’re blanking?”
Nothing.
Ever so gently, Harley places his hand over Peter’s. “Here. Can you show me you understand me?”
For a moment, it seems unlikely that Peter will offer any response. He’s as motionless and emotionless as a wax figure. But, after a moment, he upturns his hand and laces the fingers through Harley’s.
The new interview Peter returns. He’s still a reminder of the past iteration of himself who broke down. “A lot of people just don’t believe that I went through what I did. They think I’m making it up for… attention, I guess? Which is - that’s a heck of a way of getting attention. And some people can’t accept that my trauma needs to be accommodated. They’re usually the types that think I should have been a man and fended Larry off. Which would have either killed me or hurt me worse, so - I guess the moral of the story here is that traumatic experiences are best understood by the person who actually went through them.
“I’m getting through college, but that doesn’t mean it’s been easy. Uh…” he shrugs, then grins past the lens. “I’m sorry! I’m bad at complaining!” he protests to Harley. “What’s been hard? The, uh…”
“Deadlines,” comes a prompt from Harley.
“Yeah, deadlines. If I'm in a rough spot, I just - can’t get things in for a deadline. I also can’t always turn up for class. That’s why I have materials here in the apartment, in case I can’t face class for a little while. That’s where the additional needs team comes in.”
A close shot of a door reading Additional Support Office is briefly blocked by the figure of Peter approaching it, then walking through. It swings shut again.
“They help me stay on track at my pace. They’re really incredible. They should be paid, like… a lot. Yeah. For all the great stuff they do for me and other kids who benefit from their help. Apart from them, I’ve got an external therapist, and I’ve also got my art. It took me a while, but I started using art to understand what I went through, instead of to block it out.”
He’s walking down a corridor now, the camera tailing him in a manner that we’ve become used to.
“Ooh, my class’s studio is here.” Ducking away through a door, he disappears from view for a minute while the camera catches up. We pass through the door this time and emerge into a bright, open, airy studio that immediately feels appealing. It feels like exactly the place our boy should be after years of confinement.
Cut to Peter at an easel, painting effortlessly. The painted figure looks like himself. Whoever it is, they’re stood on tiptoe on a folding chair, craning their neck to peer through a skylight that casts a powerful beam of light across the gloom of the remainder of the canvas. That’s what the image is: darkness and light, joy and hopelessness, a myriad of the murkiness of life’s experiences. Although it can be presumed to be an expression of Peter’s time in the Room, it’s somehow infinitely relatable.
“A lot of my Room art is displayed somewhere at the moment,” he tells the camera with excitement in his eyes, twisting in his seat. “People just seem to connect to it really deeply, which is awesome. I never really expected myself to make a whole career out of art, but it looks like it might actually be happening. It’s crazy.”
Interview Peter says, “I also love to exercise. Other than running, I dance and I box.”
The Peter that had just been painting is in a gym now. He’s changed into a loose tank top and sweatpants, revealing surprisingly muscular arms. As he moves through the gym, strapping gloves around his hands, he tells the camera, “As a kid, I was skinny as anything, and even more so when I got holed up and, you know, deprived of sunlight and basic nutrition. Now I weight train and box, and - the version of me that had his power stripped away by Larry feels less like me. You’d have a harder time trying to kidnap me now, that’s for sure.”
Of course, we’re going to get to see him in action.
He’s bursting full with a blend of rage and euphoria at the punching bag, far from the politely smiling boy we’ve seen a lot of. A short montage ensues: Peter breathing in controlled measures through chin-ups on a bar; Peter pushing a heavy vertical plate inward and outwards with his feet; Peter squatting with a barbell. The quiet teenager is turned into a powerful man. A small smile curls across his face as he lowers the bar to the floor.
"Stop drooling, Keener," he calls towards the camera, which falls into a skew-whiff angle.
"I am not drooling," is the affronted retort from behind the frame. "I am watching respectfully."
"Oh, so there's respectful ogling now?"
"You're a bully, Peter Parker. I'd swear at you if my grade wasn't riding on it."
That smile fades into one even wider: he’s in a dance studio full of mirrors that reveal flashes of Harley and the camera for fractions of moments as the angle follows the flowing movements of his warmup.
“I take a contemporary class once a week,” interview Peter says in voiceover, “And in between, I just rent out a studio whenever I feel like… dancing. Just - filling the space with myself is very therapeutic. I’m calm when I’m dancing. I’m at home in myself, which is something I didn’t get to experience for a while. God, that’s pretty cheesy. But - I don’t know, it's true.”
A frame dazzled with blinding white sunlight is cut through in slow-motion by Peter’s gracefully extended hand. He’s a different man again in the studio. Here, he hovers a few inches from the ground as if feather-light. He’s a single curving entity.
The spellbinding effect is broken by the next shot as Peter, still in slow-motion, stumbles out of a move and bursts out laughing. In the next, he’s pulling a reluctant Harley from behind the lens and drawing him in for a clumsy slow-dance. Harley pecks him on the cheek, then relaxes into the movement. The camera lingers on them.
“Hmm.” Interview Peter shifts in his seat, shoving his hands into the pockets of his hoodie. “What do I want people to know? Uh, well, I’d like to politely request that they stop asking if I was really raped.” He gives a helpless laugh in the direction of the camera. “I think people should think about how they evaluate other people’s trauma. Because - to be honest, we shouldn’t evaluate other people’s trauma at all. If they’re brave enough to speak up about it, we should respect it. Oh, and - men are victims of sexual abuse. Not as often as women, but we are.
“If I could put anything out into the world… it’s that everyone can get something out of life. Even when it’s incredibly tough, when you’re hardly doing anything but surviving, it’s a life you can make the most of. Please make the most of it. Please don’t go through life full of regrets. You know, this part of my life isn’t remarkable. I’ve had enough remarkable for too many lifetimes. But I have no regrets, and you don’t have to either. Just live.”
Like a sleep-heavy eye, the visual feed slowly closes - then opens again. Some of Peter’s paintings are arrayed in a semicircle in the studio; the camera scans past them all, allowing us to take in each one.
A small, landscape canvas of the corner of a porcelain bathtub, within it a pair of bloodstained boxers submerged in a layer of faintly red-tinted water.
A parody of a formal group portrait, one you might see of royal families, but set in a dingy square room against the backdrop of an unmade bed and a kitchenette. Peter and Tony huddle close together on folding chairs, while a third man, his face a blur of white paint, looms over them both.
A square of white starkly contrasting against a gloomy background, partially blocked out by a veined hand that’s unnervingly large.
Tony’s face gazing right out of the canvas, lit gently by low lamplight amid darkness.
And, finally, a much more abstract work, simply an explosion of white and daffodil yellow and sky blue, rimmed only by a faint blooming of grey rather than the oppressive gloom of the previous images. Hopeful.
Bright.
Cut to black.