Tahlia
The silence is deafening.
It drips down the walls, thick as oil, sticky as guilt that won’t wash away. There’s no door slam. No shouted orders. No rage spilling back into the room to devour me. Just the sound of my breathing—too loud, too shallow—echoing in the space like it doesn’t belong to me anymore.
He left.
For the first time, he walked out without a parting threat.
Not because I begged. Not because I fought.
But because I broke.
And I don’t know what that means.
I don’t trust it.
I curl my knees to my chest, digging my fingernails into the sides of my calves hard enough to leave crescent-shaped moons behind. My bones ache. My skin feels too tight, like I’ve been stuffed into a body that wasn’t built to survive this kind of psychological warfare.
My head drops back against the wall.
I stare at the mirror. The crack he didn’t repair.
The one I made.
It’s still there—jagged, ugly, honest.
I wonder what he saw when he looked in it.
I wonder what I see now.
Not a fairy. Not a toy. Not a prisoner.
Just a girl with glass on her hands and war in her blood.
The necklace is beside me on the floor. The chain’s snapped. The charm’s bent. It smells like him—cologne, leather, iron—and when I press it to my lips, I don’t know if I’m trying to remember him or erase him from my senses.
I should hate him.
I do hate him.
But hate has teeth, and mine feels dull now.
Like I’ve used every ounce of fire I had left trying to keep him out.
And still he seeped in—like poison in the water supply.
He left the room.
But not me because I can still feel him. The imprint of his voice behind my ribs. The weight of his eyes on my spine like gravity itself bent just to make sure I couldn’t stand.
I’m still shaking.
Not from fear. Not anymore.
It’s the kind of tremble you get after a storm. When everything looks still on the surface, but you know something underneath has been split wide open.
The kind of tremble that means the foundation just cracked.
And I don’t know if that means I’m free—or if I’ve finally fallen so far into him there’s no way back.
I crawl towards the edge of the mattress, dragging the broken chain behind me like a leash I chose.
My bare knees burn against the rug, bruised from battles I didn’t win.
I press my palm flat to the floorboards, trying to ground myself, but all I feel is the thrum beneath the wood—like the walls themselves are listening. Waiting.
I should scream.
I should destroy something.
I should become the monster he thinks I am.
But I can’t seem to move. Not fully.
The mirror watches me. The cracked line bisects my reflection—two halves of a girl I no longer recognise. One side is the version I pretended to be, back when sunlight touched my skin. The other is what he’s made me. What I’ve let him sculpt with words, hands, hunger.
I can’t decide which half is more terrifying.
The necklace dangles from my fingers, the charm swaying gently like a pendulum measuring time I don’t have.
I lift it again. I don’t wear it. I just hold it close—tight enough to bruise.
My thumb strokes the bent metal, over and over, like I can polish the damage out of it.
Like I can unbend the part of me that broke when I begged.
A sound escapes my throat. It’s not a sob. It’s not even a gasp.
It’s laughter.
Hollow, cracked, splintered laughter that sounds like it belongs in a padded room.
Because he’s winning.
Not with chains. Not with threats.
But with absence.
And that’s what breaks me most of all.
I was prepared for the monster who would punish me, break me, fuck the fight out of me.
I wasn’t ready for silence.
I wasn’t ready for him to leave.
And now the space he’s not in burns hotter than when he was inside me.
I hate him.
I miss him.
I want him to rot.
I want him to come back.
God, I want him to come back.
I sink to the floor again, curling around the weight of it all like it might protect me.
But the truth is, I don’t need protection anymore.
What I need… is a plan.
Because if he won’t break me today, I’ll make sure he bleeds tomorrow.
The light in the room has shifted again, though I don’t remember when. The corners have turned to ash, shadows blooming like bruises across the floor, swallowing the gold trim and velvet luxury until everything feels… wrong. Like I don’t belong here. Like I never did.
The necklace clinks softly as I drag it across the floor beside me.
I trail it like a weapon. A promise. I picture wrapping it around his throat.
Picture the way it would dig into that perfect, arrogant jawline.
I want to hear him beg with blood in his mouth.
I want to make him feel the way I do now.
But then I think of his eyes.
The way they didn’t match the rest of him. Cold, yes—but there was something just beneath. Not kindness. Not mercy.
Loneliness.
Like he wasn’t just trying to destroy me.
He was trying to drag me into the grave he already lives in.
That thought clings to me like smoke. I hate it. I hate him.
And yet my chest aches in this silence. In this absence.
Because at least when he’s here, I know what game I’m playing.
Now?
Now I don’t know if I’m the prey… or if I’ve already become the monster he wanted me to be.
I rise slowly from the floor, my joints stiff, every muscle aching in protest. I step over the shattered edge of the mirror, barefoot, uncaring. A sliver slices my heel, blood blooming on the expensive rug like a kiss. I don’t flinch. I barely even register it.
Pain feels like a choice now.
And I’m done letting him make all of them.
I cross the room and drag the heavy velvet curtain back, but there’s no window behind it. Just stone. Seamless, cold, and blank. I laugh again, but there’s no humour in it this time.
He’s built this place like a tomb.
And I’m the corpse still breathing.
I turn to the bookshelf next—if only to destroy something. I want to rip pages from spines. Want to see the bindings split. But as I reach for one, I freeze.
Because the titles are all familiar.
Every book he’s stocked this room with—my favourite authors, my favourite editions, annotated in a hand that isn’t mine but might as well be.
He knew.
He always knew.
And that breaks me more than any chain.
I sink back against the wall and press the necklace to my lips, the charm biting into my skin like penance. A single thought crashes through my skull, impossible to ignore.
He owns me.
Not because he stole me.
But because he saw me first.
And now I don’t know who I’m trying to escape more—Hook… or myself.
I sit on the floor like I’m not real. Like I’m a painting that got smudged, something that was once pretty but now just looks wrong—colours bled in the wrong places, lines too harsh, edges too sharp.
My knees curl to my chest, the necklace still looped around my fingers like I don’t know how to let go.
The silence stretches. It doesn’t feel peaceful. It feels like he’s still here. Like he left his hunger in the walls. His obsession in the floorboards. I swear I can feel it—the weight of his gaze, the heat of it, the way he watches when he isn’t even in the room.
Or maybe he is. Maybe the whole place is him.
The door doesn’t open. He doesn’t come.
I hate how my heart waits anyway.
I hate how my thighs press together like my body remembers his voice more than it should.
“Don’t touch me,” I whisper to the room, to the ghost of him in my blood. “Don’t want this.”
But I do. God, I do.
Not because it’s love. This isn’t love.
This is obsession.
Addiction.
It’s the way he breaks me so perfectly, so intimately, I’m scared no one else will ever find the pieces.
I drag myself to my feet and stalk the room like it’s a cage and I’m the beast—teeth bared, heart bruised. I pull a book off the shelf and hurl it at the door, just to hear something crash. Just to make a mark. But the door stays closed. The silence doesn’t crack.
Neither does he.
And that’s what finally makes me scream.
“Say something!” I yell at the nothing, the air, the camera I know is there. “Stop hiding behind your goddamn walls like a coward! You want a doll to play with? Pick one that doesn’t bleed!”
My voice breaks at the end. Splinters into something sharp and messy, and I collapse into the chair I swore I wouldn’t touch again, nails digging into the arms until the velvet tears under my fingers.
A sob stabs up my throat before I can swallow it.
One.
Then two.
Then I’m crying like I’ve been cut open, the tears hot and fast and furious. And I hate that I’m crying for him. For the way he made me feel seen. Desired. Ruined.
I hate that I miss the sound of his voice.
I hate that he owns it all now—my rage, my ruin, my goddamn heartbeat.
And somewhere, I know he’s watching.
I know I just gave him exactly what he wanted.
I wipe my face with the back of my hand like it’ll erase the weakness—but it doesn’t. The salt of my tears clings to my lips like a scar. My throat burns. My skin aches. And I swear I can still feel the imprint of his hands even though he’s not here.
Even though he left me alone.
Not forever. No. He doesn’t do that. He doesn’t leave—he lingers. In the shadows. In the cameras. In my goddamn mind.
I pace.
I curse.
I scream until my voice goes hoarse and raw and ruined, like the rest of me.
“Is that what you want?” I snarl at the ceiling, at the corners of the room where I know he’s watching. “To see me broken? Begging? Because you’ve done it. You win. You win.”
The words taste like blood.
But still—no door. No boots. No monster coming in to mock the mess he made.
I think that’s what breaks me.
Not the punishment. Not the cruelty. Not even the way he makes my body betray me.
It’s the absence.
It’s the silence.
It’s the fact that he’s choosing not to come.
My knees hit the floor again, hard, like I’m praying to some god who never cared. I drag my fingers through my hair, nails scraping my scalp, just to feel something—and I stay there, panting, wrecked, drowning in the ghost of him.
“I hate you,” I whisper, voice like a secret I wish I could believe. “I hate what you’ve made me.”
But the worst part?
I don’t hate him.
I hate that I don’t.
I hate that some twisted, shattered part of me still aches for his hands. His voice. His control. Because when I’m under it, I don’t have to think. I don’t have to feel. I just burn.
I just belong to something.
Someone.
And maybe that’s what scares me most.
Not that he’s ruined me.
But that he’s the only one who knows how to put the pieces back together—wrong. Backwards. In his image.
And maybe…I want him to.