Tahlia
Iwake up with a headache behind my left eye and a bruise on my pride I can’t fucking rub off.
Morning doesn’t feel like morning. It feels like an aftermath. Like something already happened while I was unconscious and I’m only just waking up in time to feel the echo of it in my bones.
The apartment is cold. Too quiet. The heater rattles in the corner like it’s dying again, and the light bleeding through the blinds is that hazy kind that makes everything feel like it’s still midnight even though it isn’t.
The kind of light that doesn’t forgive you for being awake.
My lips are dry.
My thighs ache.
I hate myself for the second one.
I sit up slowly, tug my oversized hoodie down to cover my bare legs even though no one’s here to see, and tell myself it was just a moment. Just adrenaline. Just some sleazy rich bastard who thought he could psych me out in a back room with a pretty face and a metal hand.
It worked.
I didn’t scream. I didn’t fight. I didn’t even leave right away.
I stood there like a goddamn idiot, letting him talk to me like he knew my bones. Like he’d studied my weaknesses.
And worse — he had.
Because he knew things I haven’t said out loud in years.
Things I buried under sarcasm, under vodka, under duct tape and therapy bills and blackout curtains. Things he shouldn’t know. Couldn’t know.
Unless—
No.
I shut that thought down the same way I’ve shut down every other one that threatened to crack me open — quickly, violently, without looking too closely at what bleeds when I do.
I get up. Make coffee. Add two sugars and a splash of oat milk because I’ve been pretending I’m the kind of person who drinks oat milk now. It tastes like regret. Or maybe that’s just me.
The mug shakes slightly in my hand. I pretend not to notice.
I check the locks on the front door. Again.
They’re still locked.
I check the window latches. Still shut.
I check my phone. No messages. No missed calls. No weird notifications. I don’t even know what I’m hoping for.
Maybe a warning.
Maybe a threat.
Maybe a fucking sign that last night wasn’t as real as it felt.
Because the silence is worse.
The silence means he’s waiting.
I pull my phone open, scroll to my camera app, then stop. I hesitate. Why am I doing this? What do I think I’ll find?
But my hands move anyway.
I open the app.
Flip the view.
Check the little green light.
Recording.
No.
No, no, no, no, no.
The room tilts. My breath comes too fast, too shallow, like my lungs are trying to outrun something my body already knows it can’t.
I’m shaking before I even switch to my call log. And there — at the very bottom — a number I don’t recognise. Last night. Ten minutes after I got home.
No voicemail.
I delete it. I delete the app. I turn the phone off and throw it into the couch cushions like it might bite.
And then I do something I haven’t done in years.
I lock myself in the bathroom.
I slide down the wall until my arse hits tile, wrap my arms around my knees, and force myself to breathe. Four seconds in. Seven hold. Eight out.
My therapist calls it grounding.
It doesn’t work.
Because the air in this apartment suddenly feels wrong. Too still. Too thick. Like someone’s already been here and left a piece of them behind. I don’t hear anything.
But I feel it.
A presence.
Like heat in the floorboards.
Like breath on my neck.
Like the memory of his voice, still lodged between my thighs like a bruise I can’t stop pressing on.
You’ll scream. But not for help.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
I don’t want this.
I don’t want him.
I don’t—
My fingers slide down. Just to check. Just to see.
And that’s the worst part.
Because I’m wet.
I press my hand flat to the tile. Cold. Solid. Real.
But my body isn’t buying it.
My chest is tight. My stomach is doing that hollow flutter it used to do when I was sixteen and hiding in the school bathroom, trying not to cry because someone said my laugh sounded like a porn star’s moan.
Trying not to lose it because my maths teacher stared at my arse again and no one said anything.
Trying not to break because my boyfriend had a new lock screen and it wasn’t me.
I learned how to bury things early.
I learned how to survive pretty.
But I never learned how to un-want something that scares me.
And I want him.
I want his voice in my mouth. I want the press of his words against my throat. I want the way he looked at me — like I wasn’t something to flirt with, or fuck, or fix, but something to ruin. Carefully. Completely. Like he’s been designing my downfall for months and finally got the blueprint right.
And that should terrify me.
It does.
But terror isn’t simple anymore.
Because the panic flares in my chest like heat, and I know I should feel violated — but instead I feel… full. Watched. Like my skin is a spotlight and he’s in the rafters waiting for the cue.
God, what the fuck is wrong with me?
I drag myself up off the floor, grab my hoodie tighter around my body, and rip open the bathroom mirror cabinet like I might find answers between the vitamins and the Xanax.
I take one pill. Just one. I don’t like how they numb me. But I don’t trust myself right now.
Because part of me is already making excuses.
Maybe he guessed my name. Maybe it was a trick. Maybe I was just imagining the way the door locked and unlocked without him touching it. Maybe he just wanted to scare me and that’s the end of it.
But it’s not.
Because deep down I know.
I know when I’m being circled.
I’ve felt this before. Not with him. With the last one. The one who liked to wake me up by choking me, then called it foreplay. The one who said I was too loud, too sharp, too ungrateful for someone with stretch marks and a smart mouth.
But even he never made me feel like this.
Like prey in a glass tank.
Like something someone’s been feeding and fattening just to see how long I’ll last.
The air shifts.
I freeze.
Not because there’s a sound. There isn’t.
Not because I see anything. I don’t.
But because I feel it again.
That presence. That electric, invisible thread pulling tight across my chest like I’m wearing a collar I didn’t notice until it started to choke.
I turn slowly.
Eyes scan the apartment. No windows open. No doors ajar. No proof.
But something’s here.
He’s here.
Even if it’s just in my head.
Even if it’s only in the places he’s already carved out.
I should call someone.
But who?
Who the fuck do you call when the man watching you is too careful to leave fingerprints, and too rich to ever face a consequence?
Who do you run to when the devil wears a suit and tells you he’s not here to fuck you — he’s here to own you?
I grab my phone from the couch, hands shaking, screen cracked, battery low. I scroll to the last number. The one I deleted.
It’s still gone.
But I know he left it.
I know he wanted me to see it. And I did.
And I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.
So I do the worst thing I could possibly do.
I open my texts.
And I write:
What do you want from me?
My thumb hovers.
One second.
Two.
Then I hit send.
And just like that, I give him permission.
The second the message sends, I regret it.
Not because it’s wrong.
Because it’s real.
Because it feels like kneeling. Like offering him the leash and pretending it wasn’t already wrapped around my throat. Like saying, Here. Do it again. But slower this time.
I stare at the screen, expecting nothing.
He doesn’t reply.
Of course he doesn’t. That would make it easy. That would make him a man.
He’s not a man.
He’s a fucking storm waiting for the right moment to break everything I’ve tried to build back.
I drop the phone onto the table like it’s radioactive and back away. Three steps. Four. Then I sit on the edge of the kitchen counter and pick at the raw skin beside my thumbnail until it bleeds.
What do you want from me?
I can still see the words glowing against the black screen like a curse I carved into myself. Not whispered. Not screamed. Just… offered.
I didn’t ask who he is.
Didn’t ask how he knows me.
Didn’t ask why.
I asked what.
Because some sick, coiled part of me wants to know.
Wants a list. A plan. A countdown.
Wants him to say:
I want you bound.
I want your mouth open and your legs wider and your mind undone.
I want to ruin you in such specific, unforgivable ways that you’ll never be able to look at yourself in a mirror again without thinking of me.
I exhale.
It’s too warm in here.
I shrug off the hoodie. The air kisses my bare skin, but it doesn’t cool me. I’m still flushed. Still throbbing in places I shouldn’t be after being psychologically violated in a velvet room by a man I’d never seen before last night.
Except I have.
Not in person. Not up close.
But I’ve heard his name.
In whispers. In rumours. In the kind of half-jokes girls tell each other when they want to believe it’s just an urban legend. The man with the hook. The one who doesn’t fuck, just keeps. The one who collects women like secrets and buries them somewhere no one ever finds them again.
And yet the stories were always vague.
No photos. No videos. Just a name you say when you want a girl to stop smiling so wide.
Hook.
I’d never seen his face until last night.
And I hate that now I can’t stop seeing it.
The cut of his jaw. The curve of his mouth. The way his eyes didn’t blink when I slapped him, like he liked it. Like he could’ve snapped me in half with one hand but decided to let me pretend I had power for five more seconds.
I want to say it was fear.
I want to believe it was fear.
But my thighs are still damp and my heart is still doing that tight little dance it only does when I’m about to ruin my own life on purpose.
My phone vibrates once.
I stare at it for too long before I pick it up.
Unknown Number:
Ask better questions.
No punctuation. No emojis. Just those three words like they’ve been waiting all morning to crawl under my skin.
I swallow.
My fingers move.
What the fuck did you do to me?
There’s no reply.
Not right away.
I try to breathe. Try to tell myself he can’t be here, he can’t see me, he doesn’t know what I’m wearing or how I’m sitting or the way my fingers won’t stop curling into the fabric of my shorts like I need to hold myself together before something breaks.
Another buzz.
Unknown Number:
I didn’t do anything.
You came apart all by yourself.
I suck in a breath.
My legs clench.
My shame burns like fire down my neck and between my thighs because he’s right.
He didn’t touch me.
He didn’t even raise his voice.
He just looked at me like I was a puzzle already solved, and now I can’t stop wondering what it would feel like to be undone in his hands for real.
Not because I want him to love me.
But because I want him to destroy me in a way that feels earned.
I stare at those words for so long the screen goes dark.
You came apart all by yourself.
It doesn’t feel like a threat. It feels like a mirror. Like he’s holding it up and making me look.
Because he’s not wrong.
I was already cracking. Already rotting beneath the gloss.
I’ve been running on fumes for years — on spite and caffeine and rage buried so deep it started to feel like stability.
I’ve spent months pretending I’m not still afraid of the dark, not still flinching when a stranger touches my wrist, not still dreaming about carpet burns and apologies that come too late.
But all it took was him — one room, one breath, one look — and I’m unraveling faster than I ever have before.
And he knows it.
He knows me like the rules I never wanted to follow. Like a blueprint I never meant to draw. Like he’s read every chapter I tried to tear out and memorised the parts I crossed out in black ink.
He speaks like he’s been here before.
Like this isn’t obsession — it’s routine.
Like girls like me always break the same way.
I push off the counter, pacing in slow circles across the kitchen floor like movement will fix something, like I can walk it out of me, like I can stretch far enough to peel him from my bloodstream. I want to scream, but it won’t come out. I want to throw something, but nothing feels heavy enough.
I check my phone again.
No new message.
He doesn’t need to say more.
He already said everything.
I didn’t do anything.
You came apart all by yourself.
And he’s right — because I can still feel the heat between my legs and the sting in my eyes and the truth of it all twisting around my throat like barbed wire laced in silk.
I’m not afraid of him.
I’m afraid of what I’ll let him do to me.
I’m afraid of what I’ll beg for.
Of how far I’ll let it go before I finally pull away — if I ever pull away.
Because something tells me I won’t.
Something tells me he knows the exact moment I’ll stop fighting.
And maybe I already have.
I walk into the bathroom again, stare at my own reflection in the mirror.
I look like a girl pretending to be in control.
Pink lips. Gold hoops. Oversized hoodie to hide the fact that I haven’t eaten all day. Dark circles under my eyes like war paint. Pretty, if you don’t look too close.
But my pupils are blown.
My throat is red.
And my hands won’t stop shaking.
I turn the tap on and splash cold water against my cheeks. It doesn’t help. I grip the sink until my knuckles ache. Until I can feel my nails digging into porcelain. Until my breath steadies just enough to pretend.
But I can’t pretend when I turn and see the door.
Not just the door.
The corner.
The camera.
It’s hidden so well I would’ve never noticed if I weren’t looking for it.
But I see the lens now — small, matte black, nestled in the air vent like it belongs there.
I stop breathing.
My body goes still, cold, slow.
And for one heartbeat, I feel nothing but ice.
He’s here.
He’s been here.
Watching. Waiting.
And I sent the fucking text.
I let him in.
I back away slowly, phone slipping from my hand, mouth dry, lungs locked.
There’s no sound. No movement. Just the soft hum of the vent and the heat of humiliation crawling down my spine.
And all I can think is —
What else has he seen?