Chapter 11 #2
He struck the glass again and again, putting his whole body behind it, wood slamming against that impenetrable surface until his arms burned and his hands ached and tears blurred his vision so badly he could barely see.
The glass didn’t seem to get the message that it was glass.
“It’s reinforced.” Vale’s voice came from the kitchen doorway, calm and unsurprised, like he’d been watching the entire time.
Kieran spun, rolling pin still raised, back pressed against the door that wouldn’t break.
“I had all the glass replaced two years ago.” Vale took a step into the kitchen.
“After another student, who begged for my mentorship, mind you, tried something similar. That’s hurricane-grade laminated security glass.
You’d need a battering ram to break it.” He took another step towards Kieran.
“Or a gun. Do you have a gun, sweetheart?”
Kieran’s grip on the rolling pin tightened. “S-stay back—”
“You’re not going to hit me with that.” Vale’s voice held no anger, no threat. Just certainty. “We both know you’re not.”
“I will—” But even saying it felt like a lie. Even raising the rolling pin toward Vale instead of the glass felt impossible.
“No, you won’t.” Vale closed the distance slowly. “Because you know what happens when you fight me. You know how much worse I can make things.” His hand extended, palm up. “Give me the rolling pin, Kieran.”
“No—”
“Give. It. To me.”
Kieran’s hand opened before his brain gave permission. The rolling pin dropped into Vale’s palm.
And then the panic hit.
Not the sharp spike of adrenaline from moments ago—something deeper, more primal.
His whole body shook, his breath coming in rapid, shallow gasps that his lungs couldn’t keep up with as his vision tunneled.
Until all he could see was Vale’s face too close and the rolling pin in his hand and the glass that wouldn’t break and—
He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t slow down. Couldn’t make his lungs work properly.
“Kieran.” Vale set the rolling pin aside, his hands coming up to Kieran’s face. “You need to calm down.”
“I c-can’t—” The words came out between gasps. “C-c-can’t breathe, can’t—”
“Yes, you can. I’ll help.”
Vale’s hand slid to his throat.
“No—” Kieran tried to pull away, but his back was already against the door and there was nowhere to go. “Please, don’t—”
The pressure came anyway. Vale’s hand crushed his throat, cutting off the air he so desperately needed. Kieran clawed at Vale’s wrist weakly, uselessly. His body was already running on empty. He had lost this fight before it began.
Vale controlled his breath the same way he had before. Squeeze. Release. Let Kieran gasp one desperate breath. Squeeze again.
“There,” Vale whispered in his ear, pressing up against him and pinning him against the door. “That’s better.”
It wasn’t better. Nothing was better.
“Do you understand now?” Vale asked. “There’s no way out. The doors won’t open. The glass won’t break. And even if you got outside—” He gestured vaguely toward the windows, toward the cornfields stretching endlessly beyond. “Where would you go?”
Kieran slid down the door to the floor, his legs giving out. He wrapped his arms around his legs and sobbed quietly into his shins.
“I just—” His voice broke. “I just w-want it to stop.”
“I know.” Vale crouched in front of him, his hand finding the back of his neck again. “But it doesn’t stop. It transforms. You learn to find meaning in it, the beauty in it. That’s what our lessons are for.”
“I don’t w-want meaning—”
“Yes, you do. You just don’t realize it yet. Come on. It’s past time for your lesson.”
He helped Kieran stand and guided him away from the door that wouldn’t break, past the rolling pin that had accomplished nothing, toward the basement stairs where he was supposed to find meaning in the things Vale’s hands did to him in the dark.
There’s no way out. There’s no way out. There’s no way out.
The words repeated in his mind like a mantra. Like a death sentence.
Like truth.
Kieran kept his eyes away from every clock in the house.
He stared at his breakfast plate instead of the microwave display.
He focused on his notebook, on writing lyrics that got more desperate and confused with each line.
In the early afternoon, he found himself in the living room without remembering how he got there, his body moving through the handful of unlocked rooms in the house like a ghost.
He didn’t want to know what time it was. He didn’t want to watch the minutes count down toward the inevitable. He didn’t want that spike of dread that came from seeing 1:50, 1:55, 1:58...
If he didn’t look at the clock, maybe two o’clock wouldn’t arrive. Maybe time would just... stop.
But he felt it anyway. Two o’clock approached like a physical thing, pressure building in the air and making his body shake with anticipation.
“It’s time, sweetheart.”
Kieran’s eyes squeezed shut. “Please.”
The word came out so quiet it barely qualified as sound. Just breath shaped into a desperate syllable.
“Please, what?”
“Please d-don’t—” His voice cracked. “Please, I c-can’t—not today, please—”
“Yes, you can.” Vale’s footsteps approached. “You go down there every day. You’re getting stronger every time.”
“I’m n-not—” Tears leaked from his closed eyes. “I’m not g-getting stronger, I’m—I’m falling ap-apart—”
“Sweetheart.” Vale’s voice dropped lower, soft but immovable. “We’re going to the basement. You can walk down the stairs, or I can carry you. But we’re going.”
“I c-can’t—”
“Yes. You can.” Vale’s hand slid to the back of his neck. That familiar pressure that made his nervous system go quiet and made his body stop listening to his mind’s desperate protests. “Walk.”
Kieran’s feet moved.
Whenever Kieran tried to count the days, his mind fractured.
Time became a thing measured in moments instead of numbers—the bite of Vale’s reprimands when Kieran told him to fuck himself, the velvet warmth when he murmured good boy after compliance.
Sometimes Kieran existed in the space between those extremes, untethered and drifting, watching himself from a distance that felt safer than being present in his own skin.
Vale would ask him questions. Evening questions, morning questions—he couldn’t tell anymore. The light through the windows could have meant anything. Dawn. Dusk. The spaces in between where time folded in on itself and refused to make sense.
And then there was the basement.
Two o’clock came again with its usual inevitability.
Vale appeared in the kitchen doorway. “It’s time.”
Kieran made a sound—high, broken, barely human. Not words. Not even trying for words. Just a whimper that meant please, no, not again, I can’t.
Vale crossed to him and found the back of his neck. “I know. Come on.”
Another whimper. Kieran’s hands gripped the counter, but he didn’t fight when Vale gently pried his fingers loose.
“You’re alright. You’re going to be fine.”
I’m not. I’m not alright. I’m not fine.
But the words wouldn’t come. Just more of those broken sounds while his feet followed Vale to the basement.
He didn’t know how to get away anymore. He didn’t know how to refuse, how to fight, how to hold onto any piece of himself that wasn’t shaped by Vale’s hands and voice and careful, devastating lessons.
Vale kept telling him what he wanted.
You want to be healthier. You want to go to the basement. You want to become a better musician. You want me to help you.
And Kieran couldn’t remember anymore what he’d wanted before. He couldn’t access the person who used to make his own choices, who used to know his own mind.
That person felt like someone else entirely.
Someone who died on these stairs weeks ago.
The hood went on.
Kieran stopped whimpering.
He stopped making any sound at all.