Tahlia
Ilie there long after he leaves, unmoving except for the trembling in my thighs and the slow, sticky ache between them that won’t dissipate.
The scent of him is everywhere—on the sheets, on my skin, inside me where I can’t escape it.
It clings like rot that’s seeped into the fibres.
Like sin that’s become part of my biology.
I should be angry. I should scream until my throat bleeds. Break something. Scream again louder.
But my voice is missing, buried somewhere beneath the cracked ceiling and the soft hiss of the AC vent above me, like even the air circulation system is watching, recording, cataloguing my breakdown.
And I think that’s the worst part—realising I’m not alone even when the door is closed, even in these moments that should be private.
He’s watching.
He’s always watching.
I sit up slowly, and it feels like peeling myself out of someone else’s skin, like shedding an identity I never chose.
The shirt I’m wearing—his shirt, because of course it is—sticks to the sweat on my back, and my thighs are streaked with evidence of what he left behind.
The humiliation is thick and sharp, coating my tongue like copper.
But worse than that is the part of me that feels…
empty now that he’s gone, hollow in a way that has nothing to do with fear.
I hate that realisation.
I hate him for creating it.
I hate the ache inside me that isn’t fear or anger or any emotion I can name.
I shuffle to the edge of the bed, every movement slow like the air’s turned to molasses, heavy and resistant, and I press the heels of my palms into my eyes hard enough to see stars.
If I cry, I don’t want to feel it happening.
If I scream, I want it to echo back and knock the breath out of me, to hurt me more than he has.
But I do neither.
Because that’s what he wants.
That’s what he’s waiting for on those monitors.
He wants the meltdown. The collapse. The soft girl who sobs into his hand and begs for kindness that doesn’t exist in his world.
He doesn’t get her from me.
I swing my legs off the mattress, bare feet hitting cold marble that sends a shock through my system, and that’s when I feel it properly.
Inside.
His cum still there.
The sick satisfaction of being marked from the inside out.
I grab the nearest thing I can find—his discarded tie from earlier, probably thrown there on purpose as some kind of test—and I throw it with all the force I can muster. Hard. It hits the mirror across the room with a quiet slap and slides down like even it doesn’t want to be here anymore.
I laugh at the absurdity.
It’s a hollow, cracked thing that scrapes my throat raw.
Then I stand on unsteady legs and walk to the ensuite, ignoring the bruises on my hips that are starting to bloom purple and the soreness that throbs like a brand between my legs. I turn the tap, expecting the relief of water.
The water doesn’t run.
I try again, turning the handle harder.
Nothing but the ghost of pipes that should be flowing.
My heart ticks once. Then faster.
He shut off the water.
No. No—he wouldn’t be that cruel.
Except he would.
Controlling my access to basic necessities is just another way to remind me who holds the power.
I laugh again, louder this time. Unhinged. Borderline manic.
He’s not just keeping me here.
He’s controlling how I bleed.
How I breathe.
How I wash him off my skin.
I sink to the tiled floor in front of the sink, my knees pulled to my chest, and I let my nails dig into my skin hard enough to leave crescent-shaped marks that will bruise by morning.
Then I whisper, not to him, not to the cameras, not even to myself really.
To the rage that’s building like a storm.
“I’m going to kill you for this.”
And I mean it.
Even if I have to smile whilst I do it.
His shadow lingers even after he’s gone, like a stain that won’t fade.
The door clicks shut behind him, but the air doesn’t breathe again, doesn’t expand to fill the space he’s vacated. It stays tight. Taut. As if the walls themselves heard what I said—and they know it wasn’t a lie, wasn’t an empty threat.
I’ll kill you.
I meant it. I still mean it.
I’m alone, and silence isn’t silence here in this place. It crawls across my skin. It clings to my thoughts. It whispers promises I don’t want to hear.
I feel his presence in everything—etched into the grain of the walls, the scent of his cologne woven into the fabric of the bedding like it’s been soaked in it, the camera lenses that stare unblinking, knowing he’s still watching from wherever he is.
I don’t cry. That would be giving him something he hasn’t earned. And I’ve already given too much tonight.
Instead, I press the heels of my palms into my eyes and count backward from fifty, like I used to when I was a kid and the nightmares wouldn’t stop chasing me. Like if I could just make it to zero, the monsters would vanish into smoke.
But this time, the monster is real.
And he doesn’t vanish.
He waits.
When I drop my hands, I see it—something small and black resting on the corner of the bedside table.
A single object I didn’t notice before in my haze.
A wrapped sweet, the same kind that was in the bowl at the club where this nightmare started.
The wrapper glints like oil in the low light, folded into the shape of a rose with meticulous precision.
A message. A taunt. A game he’s playing.
I walk over slowly, picking it up like it might bite me, and I feel my stomach twist. He’s been here longer than I thought, longer than just the time I saw him. He’s been preparing this room. Leaving breadcrumbs. Sinking his claws into the space before I ever stepped foot in it.
I shouldn’t unwrap it.
I do anyway, fingers trembling.
Inside is a tiny silver key.
No note. No instructions written on paper.
Just the promise of something he wants me to find. Or open. Or regret discovering.
I stand frozen for a moment, then scan the room again with new eyes. Carefully. Meticulously. The key is too small for a door lock. But maybe…
I move towards the dresser, pulling open the drawers one by one until I find it. The last drawer has a lock. Small. Ornate. Brass that’s been polished recently.
It clicks open easily when I insert the key.
Inside, there’s velvet. Black. Soft. And nestled in the centre like something precious is a necklace. Thin. Delicate. With a pendant in the shape of a hook.
I let out a breath like a curse.
He’s branding me.
Marking me as his.
Even when he’s not here, he’s wrapping his hand around my throat and pulling the strings tighter, claiming ownership.
I don’t put it on.
But I don’t throw it away either.
And that scares me more than anything—the fact that I’m considering it, that some sick part of me sees it as beautiful.
I slam the drawer shut, harder than I mean to, the sound echoing like a gunshot against the velvet-drenched silence.
That necklace is still in my palm.
It feels heavier than it should. Too heavy for something made of chain and metal.
It feels like a promise I didn’t make.
Like a threat I can’t escape.
I curl my fingers around it, the little hook digging into the skin of my hand. I stare at the bloodless imprint it leaves when I finally uncurl my fist. His mark, even when I refuse it. Even when I scream no.
But he doesn’t need my permission.
Hook’s obsession doesn’t ask politely. It devours.
And that’s the part that keeps crawling under my skin—he’s not trying to seduce me like normal men do.
He’s trying to break me.
And he’s good at it.
I know the type. Men who don’t speak unless they mean to destroy.
Men who don’t touch unless it’s to claim.
He’s the kind of monster you read about in stories meant to scare little girls into staying inside after dark—except I never listened to those warnings, and now I’m paying for it with every breath I take inside this velvet-wrapped coffin of a room.
The walls press closer.
I can’t sit still. I pace. Back and forth.
Each footstep sharp against the floor, each turn tighter.
Like I can wear a path straight through the room and out of this madness.
But it doesn’t work. My chest is tight. My hands are trembling.
I feel his eyes even when I know the screen is black. That’s what he does. He stains things.
The mirror mocks me when I glance towards it—my hair a mess, my lipstick long gone, eyes too wild to be beautiful. I don’t look like a girl anymore. I look like prey. But not the kind that runs.
The kind that waits.
And I hate it.
I hate that he’s rewiring me, piece by piece, without ever laying a hand on me in this moment. I hate that I can still feel his breath in the echo of the room, the phantom burn of where his gaze used to be. I hate that I’m not crying.
I know what that means.
It means a part of me—some fractured, wrong part—has stopped trying to fight the war.
And started planning how to survive it.
I spin, fist clenched tight again around that cursed little necklace, and hurl it at the mirror with all my strength.
Glass fractures.
A jagged crack splits through the centre like a lightning strike—and for one terrible, perfect second, I see both sides of myself reflected at once in the fractured surface.
The girl I was.
The thing I’m becoming.
I don’t know which one scares me more.