Tahlia
The silence is a liar.
It pretends to be empty, but I can feel the weight of it pressing into my ribs, crawling down my throat until every breath tastes like ink and chains.
I trace the crack in the mirror with my fingertip, the line splitting my reflection into two halves of a girl I don’t recognise anymore. One side hollow-eyed and trembling, the other sharp with rage that won’t go out no matter how many times he tries to smother it.
There’s paper on the desk. Always paper.
Books he stocked, pages annotated in a hand that isn’t mine.
At first, I thought it was just part of the cage—something to remind me what I’d lost. But tonight, the edges feel heavier.
Like contracts. Like confessions. Like proof that I was never lost at all.
I pick one up. The handwriting slants cruel, confident. Not his—older. Unfamiliar. The words blur in the dim firelight, but my name is there, written clean across the margin, sharp as a blade: Tahlia Fernwynd.
Signed. Dated. Placed.
My pulse scrapes the inside of my throat raw. This isn’t coincidence. This isn’t obsession. This is transaction.
Bought.
My knees press into the floor as I clutch the paper, nails digging crescents through the margin like I can scratch myself out of it, tear my name from the record, unwrite the sentence that sold me. But the ink doesn’t move. It stares back, dark and permanent.
The necklace glints on the rug where I left it, twisted metal that smells like him. The mirror cuts my reflection into ribbons. And suddenly I realise—every piece of this room is a document. Every object a signature. The bed, the books, the fire, the silence. All proof of ownership.
I was never stolen.
I was placed.
The thought rips through me like a blade through soft skin, jagged and final. My stomach clenches. My throat closes. I want to scream, but the sound sticks, thick with bile and betrayal.
I shove the paper away, across the desk, pages scattering like broken promises. But no matter how far they slide, I still feel the ink burnt into my hands, into my mouth, into the soft places of me that were supposed to belong to no one.
He didn’t find me.
He bought me.
And maybe that’s worse because at least monsters who hunt admit what they are. Monsters who pay for their prey pretend it’s a choice.
My eyes cut to the camera in the corner, the little red blink that feels like his pulse beating against my skin.
“You think you own me?” I whisper, voice raw, scraped out of glass and fury. “Then watch what property does when it burns.”
The chair crashes across the floor before I know I’ve touched it. Books scatter. The lamp shatters. I hurl every fragile thing I can get my hands on until the room is littered with proof that nothing, not even ink, holds forever.
But when the silence settles again—when the camera still blinks, unblinking, uncaring—I feel smaller than ever.
Because maybe it isn’t the cage that’s paper.
Maybe it’s me.
The wreckage doesn’t make me feel free.
It makes me feel exposed.
Like every torn page, every shattered spine is another piece of me laid open for him to read. Like he’s sitting behind that screen, smirking at the performance, knowing I’ll always end the same way—on my knees, breathless, clawing at the floor like a sinner who can’t decide which god to beg.
The paper sticks to my skin. One sheet clings to my wrist, ink bleeding into my pulse, a black stain that looks like it belongs there. I rip it off, but the words are still inside me. My name. His mark. A contract I never signed but somehow agreed to just by surviving this long.
I crawl to the mirror.
The crack runs clean through my face, sharp enough to split me into two girls I don’t want to know. One whose eyes are glassy with tears she’ll never admit to, and one whose lips are curved in something almost like a smile.
I hate her.
I hate both of them.
I hate that I can’t tell which one is real.
“Which one do you want, Hook?” My voice scrapes the glass. “The broken doll or the liar who pretends she isn’t?”
The mirror doesn’t answer. The camera doesn’t blink faster. He doesn’t come.
I press my forehead to the crack until the skin burns. Until the ache digs into bone. Until it feels like I could push hard enough to split my skull wide open and watch the girl inside crawl out, screaming.
But all I do is bleed a little.
A thin line, a crimson thread trickling down my temple like punctuation.
The silence swallows it whole.
I slide to the floor, back against the wall, legs pulled up tight until my knees choke my chest. The papers flutter down around me like snow, soft and deadly. My name written a hundred times in ink that will never fade.
Bought. Owned. Placed.
The words pound against my ribs like fists. I claw my nails down my arms until my skin burns, until I feel something sharp enough to remind me I’m not just a signature on a page.
I laugh then. Ugly. Hollow. Too loud for the silence that answers.
“You think contracts mean anything to me?” My voice shakes, but I force it out anyway. “I was broken before you put your name on me. I was ruined before you touched me. Paper doesn’t own me.”
But the words sound thin. Weak. Lying.
When I look at the necklace—twisted, bent, still breathing his scent—I know the truth.
Paper isn’t the cage.
He is.
And worse—I’m starting to want the lock.
The laugh doesn’t stop.
It claws out of me like something feral, filling the room until I sound like I belong in a padded cell instead of a velvet cage. My chest aches with it. My throat splits with it. But still, I laugh, because the alternative is sobbing, and I promised myself I wouldn’t give him that again.
The papers whisper against the floor, rustling with the draft of my madness, every page a reminder that someone, somewhere, sat at a desk and decided I was worth less than ink. That I could be written over, signed away, filed into the hands of a man who doesn’t know how to do anything but break.
My laugh shatters into a choke.
Then silence.
The quiet is worse.
It gnaws.
I crawl through the mess on my hands and knees, palms pressing into words that cut sharper than glass.
One sheet sticks to my skin again—my name scrawled across the margin, Hook’s initials bleeding beside it like the world already knew we’d end up here.
I tear it in half with my teeth, spitting the scraps across the floor like venom.
“Is this what you wanted?” I scream at the red blink in the corner. My voice ricochets off the walls, jagged, broken, too loud for the tiny room. “To see me reduced to paperwork? To watch me choke on signatures? Fuck you!”
The silence answers back.
I slam my fist against the floor until my knuckles bloom purple. Again. Again. Pain rattles up my arm, but it isn’t enough. Nothing is enough. Not without him here to twist it deeper.
“You’re a coward,” I whisper, breathless, forehead pressed to the boards. “Hiding behind your cameras, your contracts, your ink. You want to own me? Then come earn it.”
The fire hisses low in the grate, embers crackling like laughter that isn’t mine. I curl onto my side, cheek pressed to the rug, eyes fixed on the bent necklace glinting in the half-light.
I should throw it.
Destroy it.
Spit on it until it corrodes.
But my hand reaches instead.
The chain bites my palm as I clutch it, harder, harder, until the teeth of metal break the skin. Blood wells in tiny crescents, staining the charm. It looks right that way. Honest.
My pulse slows. My chest tightens. And somewhere in the back of my head, a voice I don’t recognise whispers the truth:
He doesn’t have to chain you anymore.
You’re already collared.
I squeeze my eyes shut until stars burst behind my lids. I want to scream again, but there’s nothing left. Just this raw, trembling quiet inside me, the kind that feels like an animal waiting in the dark.
When I open my eyes, the cracked mirror stares back.
Two girls.
Both his.
Neither free.
I drag myself up onto the bed—not like a prisoner, but like an offering, necklace still clenched in my fist, blood smearing the sheets.
And I whisper into the silence, not sure if it’s a curse or a prayer:
“Come break me, Hook. Or I’ll break myself.”
The camera blinks once.
Red.
Unmoving.
Watching.
The silence laughs with it.
And I finally stop.