Chapter 8
Mouth full of cotton, throat like sandpaper dreams…
Kieran
Breakfast sat in Kieran’s stomach like wet cement, every bite forced down under Vale’s watchful eyes.
The eggs had been perfect—fluffy, seasoned with herbs he couldn’t name—but they might as well have been cardboard for all he tasted them.
His body ran on three hours of broken sleep and pure adrenaline, his hands shaking so badly he nearly dropped his fork twice.
Think. There has to be a way out.
But every escape scenario crumbled under basic scrutiny. The windows were sealed. The doors were locked. Even if he somehow overpowered Vale—which seemed laughable—he was miles from anywhere, with no phone, no money, no idea which direction led to civilization.
“You’re not eating,” Vale observed from across the kitchen table.
“I’m full.”
“You’ve had four bites.” Vale’s tone remained conversational, but something sharp lurked underneath. “Proper nutrition is essential for managing your condition. We discussed this.”
We didn’t discuss anything. You talked, I bled.
Kieran forced another forkful of eggs into his mouth, chewing mechanically while Vale watched. The morning sun streaming through the kitchen windows felt like mockery—such a beautiful day outside this beautiful prison.
“Better,” Vale said when Kieran’s plate was half empty. “We’ll work on your appetite. Stress suppresses hunger, but you’ll adjust.”
Adjust. Like this is my new normal.
“I need to ask you something,” Vale continued, setting down his coffee. “About your creative process.”
Kieran’s shoulders tensed. Nothing good came from Vale’s questions.
“When you write songs, how does it happen? Is it methodical? Do you sit down with intention and craft each line?”
The question felt like a trap, but Kieran couldn’t see the teeth yet. He pushed eggs around his plate, buying time to think through the safest answer.
“I asked you a question, Kier.”
That nickname. Every time Vale used it, something inside Kieran recoiled like touching a hot stove.
“It depends,” Kieran said carefully.
“On what?”
“On the song. S-sometimes I’ll work on lyrics for days. Som-metimes—”
“Sometimes what?” Vale leaned forward, interested in a way that made Kieran’s skin crawl. “Tell me about the other times.”
Kieran’s throat felt tight. The truth was embarrassing. It made him sound like some mystical idiot who waited for inspiration to strike instead of approaching music like a craft.
Vale stood and moved around the table. “You’re overthinking your answer. That means you’re trying to give me what you think I want to hear instead of the truth.”
“I’m not—”
Vale’s hand settled on the back of Kieran’s neck. “Tell me the truth, Kieran. How do your best songs come to you?”
“They just come t-to me!” The words tumbled out in a rush, desperate to avoid whatever consequence silence would bring.
“Some…sometimes it’s just a line that gets st-stuck in my head, or a m-melody I hear in the shower, or a rhythm f-from listening to my footsteps and they build from there and I c-can’t control when it happens, it just happens! ”
Vale’s fingers traced small circles against his nape. “They just come to you. Like gifts.”
“Y-yeah. I guess.”
“Beautiful.” Vale’s grip shifted, became something possessive rather than threatening. “That’s exactly what I hoped to hear. Come with me.”
“Where?”
“I have an idea.” Vale’s hand remained on his neck as Kieran stood, steering him like a child who couldn’t be trusted to walk in the right direction. “Something to help those gifts come more frequently.”
They moved through the house, Vale’s fingers maintaining constant contact with Kieran’s neck. Possessive. Controlling. A collar made of flesh and bone that guided him toward a door he hadn’t noticed before.
It opened to steep stairs, descending into darkness.
Kieran’s feet stopped moving without conscious decision. Every instinct screamed that nothing good waited in basements, that darkness plus isolation plus a man who cut him for not showing enough emotion equaled something worse than what had come before.
“I don’t—” His voice cracked. “What’s down there?”
“Another studio. More private. Better for intensive work.” Vale’s grip on his neck tightened. “Come on.”
“I don’t want to g-go down there.”
“I didn’t ask what you wanted.” Vale’s fingernails dug into his skin. “I said come with me.”
The message was clear: walk or be dragged.
Kieran walked.
The stairs were solid hardwood, with no creaking to mark their descent.
Vale’s hand never left his neck, guiding him down into air that grew cooler with each step.
The basement revealed itself in glimpses—exposed stone walls that looked original to the house’s foundation, professional acoustic panels mounted with perfect symmetry in an all glass sound booth, a small table with equipment that looked more medical than musical…
And in the center, a single chair with a guitar stand beside it.
The chair faced away from the stairs, positioned so whoever sat in it would see only stone wall. There were no windows. No other doors. Just a single exit behind where Kieran would be sitting, behind where Vale would be standing.
I’m trapped.
“Sit,” Vale said, finally releasing his neck.
Kieran sank into the chair on legs that felt disconnected from conscious control.
The basement was too quiet, with the kind of silence that made his own heartbeat sound like thunder.
Vale moved around the room at a languid pace, adjusting something on the small table, checking the guitar’s tuning with a gentle strum.
“You said your songs come like gifts,” Vale said, retrieving something from a shelf mounted on the stone wall. “But gifts can be cultivated. Coaxed. We just need to create the right conditions.”
He returned holding what looked like a cloth bag—black canvas, with a drawstring at the opening. The kind of thing that might hold laundry or gym equipment, but somehow looked sinister in Vale’s hands.
“What is th-that?”
“A focusing tool.” Vale set it on the guitar stand. “Sensory deprivation heightens other senses. Removes distractions. Forces the mind to turn inward.”
He wants to put that over my head.
The basement, the isolation, the chair facing nothing but wall—Vale was systematically removing every connection to the outside world, narrowing Kieran’s existence to just this room, just Vale’s voice, just whatever twisted lesson came next.
“No.” The word came out smaller than intended. “I’m n-not letting you put that on me.”
“You are.” Vale picked up the guitar and handed it to Kieran like he had already won. “Because the alternative is we work on your emotional accessibility through other methods. Harder methods.”
Kieran’s arms ached where yesterday’s cuts still throbbed beneath the bandages. “This is insane,” he whispered.
“This is education.” Vale moved behind the chair, bag in hand. “You’re going to play something new. Something that comes from the darkness, from the isolation, from the fear you’re feeling right now.”
“I c-can’t create like that—”
“You can. You will.” The bag touched the top of Kieran’s forehead. “Because that’s where real art lives. In the spaces that terrify us.”
The bag slipped over his head.
The canvas smelled like nothing, like absence, like the inside of closed spaces never meant for breathing. Kieran’s hands tightened on the guitar neck instinctively, the familiar weight his only anchor as sight disappeared entirely.
“There,” Vale’s voice came muffled through fabric, still behind him. “Now you can’t see anything except what’s inside your own mind. No distractions. Just the darkness.”
The drawstring pulled snug around his neck.
Not choking, but tight enough to feel suffocating.
The canvas sucked against his mouth when he inhaled and pushed away when he exhaled.
His own breathing was suddenly too loud, too ragged, too fast. He felt like he was boiling alive, then freezing, as sweat made his scalp itch and his neck feel damp.
“Breathe,” Vale said softly. “Slow down. You’re hyperventilating.”
Kieran tried to obey, tried to force his breathing into something resembling a normal rhythm. But panic clawed at his throat, screaming that he couldn’t get enough air, that the darkness was going to swallow him whole.
“Count your breaths. In for four, hold for four, out for four.”
Kieran focused on the numbers, on the mechanical act of controlling his breathing. In—two, three, four. Hold—two, three, four. Out—two, three, four.
Gradually, his heart rate began to slow. The panic receded slightly, enough that he could think beyond the immediate terror of suffocation.
“Good,” Vale said, and Kieran could hear the satisfaction in his voice. “Now. Play something. Anything. Just find one note and let it ring.”
Kieran’s fingers found the low E string and pressed down on the third fret.
The note rang out in the basement’s perfect acoustics, clear and resonant. Without sight to distract him, Kieran could hear overtones he’d never noticed before—the way the note vibrated not just in the guitar but in the air itself, in the stone walls, in his own chest.
“Another,” Vale said.
Kieran found a second note, minor third above the first. Let them ring together, dissonant, but somehow right.
“Keep going. Find the melody.”
But there was no melody. Just fear and darkness and the sound of his own breathing through canvas. Kieran’s fingers moved randomly across the fretboard, hitting notes that clashed and jarred, that sounded like what panic felt like.
“Stop,” Vale said, grabbing the neck of the guitar and muting the notes. “That’s noise, not music. Start over. Find something real.”
Kieran tried again, but his hands shook too badly. Every note came out wrong, buzzing against the frets or missing entirely. His fingers felt disconnected from conscious thought, refusing to execute even basic chord progressions.