After a freak accident during a routine audition, Perry Heller's senses are thrown violently out of balance. Sounds arrive too clearly. Smells carry detail and intention. Emotional shifts register before faces change or words are spoken. What begins as disorientation quickly becomes something more unsettling: Perry is no longer just noticing the world, he is absorbing it.
As he struggles to hold onto a normal life, working shifts at a neighborhood café and trying to pass as unchanged, Perry discovers that his heightened awareness does not discriminate. Fear, tension, pain, and intent bleed through the people around him whether he wants them to or not. The world has become louder, sharper, and far more honest than he is prepared to handle.
When his attention is drawn to a neglected dog suffering behind a sagging fence, instinct overrides caution. The animal's distress is impossible to ignore, not because it is visible, but because Perry can feel it. What begins as quiet observation turns into action, and action into responsibility. Rescuing the dog, Otis, becomes the first decision Perry makes that aligns with what his senses are telling him rather than what is convenient or safe.
As Otis heals, Perry's life begins to reorganize around the choices he can no longer avoid. His growing connection to Tess, a woman whose presence calms the noise rather than amplifying it, offers both grounding and complication. At the same time, the threat tied to Otis's past resurfaces, forcing Perry to confront the consequences of intervening where others look away.
Here Boy! is a restrained, character-driven psychological novella about awareness, instinct, and moral responsibility. It explores what happens when the ability to perceive suffering comes with no clear instructions for how to respond. Quiet, tense, and emotionally precise, the story unfolds through proximity, silence, and the accumulating weight of choice. It asks a simple but unsettling question: when you can sense harm before it happens, what do you owe the world, and what does it cost to answer that call?
About the Author :
Peter Belz is an American writer whose work focuses on character, perception, and the quiet tensions of everyday life. His fiction and nonfiction explore moral responsibility, working-class experience, and the internal moments that shape outward choice. He lives in Pennsylvania.
