A struggling writer witnesses a brutal attack on a young woman, he fails to come to her aid, and runs. When he returns to her, he hides his cowardice, lying about the events. He paints himself the hero, and the woman, comatose, his silent alibi. The writer struggles no more, his fiction now bound in book, his tell-tale heart soothed by success. Soon, sinister fans accost and quiz, cracking his veneer. His late nights now haunted by visions. Frayed, the writer returns to his source, the woman, that he might see light through the colour of her eyes.