His To Keep

Prologue.

The House is always cold.

Even in the summer, when the sky outside bruises pale with heat and the grass curls in on itself like it’s begging for rain, the inside stays frozen.

Not a sharp kind of cold—not the kind that bites or cuts—but a slow, creeping chill that sinks beneath your skin and settles deep in the marrow of your bones, the kind that waits.

It doesn’t shiver or sting. It seeps. It wraps itself around your ribs like a second set of hands and lingers there, patient, watchful. As if it’s alive. As if it’s listening.

Some say the House remembers. That it absorbs things—every cry, every secret, every breath held too long—and hides them in the floorboards like artifacts, pressing them between its wooden ribs to keep them fresh.

The walls hum when it’s quiet enough, not with electricity or wind, but something older.

Something slower. Something that sounds like breathing if you lie still long enough.

It’s always coldest in the basement. No matter how many heaters they plug in, or fires they light upstairs, the air down there stays frozen, thick and unmoving, pressing heavy against your chest like a hand. Like grief. Or guilt. Or maybe both. Maybe here, those are the same thing.

The House doesn’t like sunlight either. It peels away from it, inch by inch, like it’s allergic.

Curtains stay drawn, windows gather dust, and lightbulbs flicker just enough to remind you they’re working—but only barely.

Shadows linger longer than they should, curling up in corners, stretching beneath staircases, slipping into the edges of mirrors and doorframes like they’ve got nowhere else to be.

Sometimes it feels like they’re watching you.

Sometimes it feels like you’re watching them.

The difference blurs. Like everything else in this place.

At night, the shadows stretch their legs.

They grow bold and climb the walls, slip beneath the door cracks, and sit at the edge of your bed whispering things in voices that sound like your own.

Sometimes they murmur. Sometimes they scream.

Sometimes they say your name—softly, sweetly—like they’ve always known you.

But maybe it’s just the pipes. Maybe it’s the other girls.

Maybe it’s your own mind curling in on itself, trying to make sense of something that was never supposed to be understood.

You’re not supposed to ask questions here. You’re not supposed to think.

No one talks above a whisper.

Unless they’re a man.

The men don’t whisper. They don’t have to.

They speak in full voices—loud, rich, and dripping with the kind of confidence that only comes from knowing the walls will never echo back at them.

Their boots strike the tile with a rhythm that echoes like gunshots through the narrow halls.

They move through the House like they own it, like it was built for them, like it was carved from something sacred just so they could ruin it with their laughter and perfume and smoke.

And maybe it was.

Some wear gold pins on their lapels. Some wear leather gloves.

Some talk too much and touch too easily, while others stay silent, watching, marking things down with pens that never seem to run dry.

But the ones you learn to fear most are the quiet ones.

The ones who don’t need to touch you to leave a mark.

There’s one man no one talks about. Not in whispers. Not at all.

He doesn’t come often. But when he does, the House goes still.

The air pulls tight like a thread being drawn through fabric, and the men who normally swagger through the halls with smirks and cigarettes fall silent, their shoulders snapping straight, their eyes lowering like boys caught in church.

His name isn’t spoken here. Not because it’s forbidden.

But because even the walls seem to flinch when it’s near.

They say he built the House. Not with brick or wood, but with bone. With blood. With debts no one dares to collect. They say he doesn’t touch the girls. He doesn’t have to. He decides who disappears. Who stays. Who forgets. The basement door opens for him—and him alone.

No one sees him leave.

He doesn’t need to announce himself. The House recognizes its master.

Sometimes the doors to the Rooms open. Sometimes they don’t. But when they do, you don’t look. You don’t breathe. You don’t blink too loud, because if you do—if you turn your head, if you catch a glance of the wrong face—they might take you too. That’s one of the first things they teach you.

How to vanish without moving.

How to become invisible without going anywhere.

How to take up less space than your own shadow.

There are no women in the House. Only girls.

Girls with delicate wrists and haunted eyes.

Girls with soft hands and softer voices.

Girls who used to dream in color, who used to have names that meant something.

Girls who learned not to flinch when their hair was pulled too hard.

They move in silence, in practiced choreography.

Identical dresses. Identical shoes. Ribbons tied in perfect bows by older hands that tremble from remembering too much.

They say the youngest are six. The oldest—maybe twenty.

But time bends here. Days don’t pass the way they should.

They blur, soft and slippery, until you’re not sure if the bruise on your knee is from this morning or last year.

Birthdays fade. Names dissolve. You stop existing the way you used to.

You become whatever they need you to be.

You’re not here to grow up. You’re here to learn.

How to stand. How to kneel. How to smile with your eyes but not your mouth. How to make tea exactly the way they like it. How to stop crying without clenching your teeth. How to survive being wanted.

At five in the morning, you wake up.

If you’re smart, you’re already awake by four-thirty, breath held, hands folded, waiting. The belt doesn’t like to wait. And it never misses.

By six, you’re lined up with trays, serving breakfast. Hot food. Cold hands. Painted-on smiles. The men eat first. They always do. Girls don’t eat unless told. Some pretend they’re full just to look obedient. Some forget what hunger even feels like.

By seven, your body isn’t yours anymore.

It belongs to the House.

To the men.

To the Rooms.

You are a thing. A reflection. A doll to be posed. A shape that can be twisted until it fits the story they want to tell.

You don’t say no.

You don’t say anything at all.

Even your voice has been taken. Claimed. Silenced.

At fourteen, they say you’re ready.

Ready to leave. Ready to serve.

Ready to be wanted.

But only if you’re good. Only if you’re beautiful. Only if you’ve earned it.

They call it an honor. A promotion. A privilege.

A gift.

Some girls cry when they’re chosen. Some smile. Some never get picked at all. And somehow, that’s worse.

You don’t remember where you came from. Not anymore. Some of us remember flashes—a face, a voice, the soft pull of a lullaby sung too quietly to survive in here. But the House has its ways. It scrubs out memory like rust from a blade. It tells you it’s better this way.

That forgetting is cleaner.

That forgetting is safer.

Some girls tried to run.

Once.

The House didn’t like that.

We don’t talk about what happened. But we heard.

We heard the screaming.

We heard the silence that came after.

One girl came back missing fingers. Another forgot how to speak. But I think the House took her tongue—kept it, tucked it away like a trophy. After that, no one else tried.

No one escapes the House.

Not the ones who smile. Not the ones who leave in heels and lipstick, telling themselves this is love. Not even the ones who build new names and try to live new lives.

Because the House always remembers.

And if you don’t come back?

It finds you.

Because the House isn’t just a place.

It’s a rule. It’s a punishment. It’s a god.

And gods don’t forget. They just wait.