Tahlia
The first thing I feel is the weight.
Not of his body—though he’s still inside me, heavy, filling, anchoring me to the bed—but of everything else. The silence that follows screams. The sting of blood drying on my skin. The papers sticking to my chest like a second skin, ink smeared red where he pressed them into me.
I don’t move.
I don’t dare.
Movement means choice, and I don’t know which choice would be worse: to shove him off me, or to hold him there.
The hook still rests against my throat, not pressing now, just waiting. I can feel the faint tremor of it when his breath shifts, the steel rising and falling with each inhale like a promise that hasn’t been broken yet.
My wrists ache from where he pinned me. My thighs burn. My pussy throbs with a brutal ache that doesn’t know if it’s pleasure or punishment.
And still—still—I feel myself clenching around him, weak, ruined, but wanting.
Tears sting my eyes, hot and furious. I blink them back, refusing to let them fall, because I won’t give him that. Not now. Not when he’s already stolen everything else.
My body betrays me again. A shudder runs through me, my hips twitching, grinding against him even in exhaustion. My face twists, shame and hunger tangled so tight I can’t tell one from the other anymore.
He shifts then. Just slightly. Enough to remind me he’s still hard inside me. Enough to remind me he doesn’t need to move for me to feel owned.
“Lesson learned,” he whispers, voice rough against my skin, and the words crawl down my spine like a brand.
I want to spit in his face.
I want to claw my name out of the paper, out of my chest, out of the blood he smeared into me.
I want to forget.
But when I close my eyes, all I see is him. All I feel is him.
And that’s when I understand.
The shatter wasn’t the mirror.
It wasn’t the papers.
It wasn’t my wrists or my throat or my cunt.
It was me.
I’m not whole anymore. I’m shards. Splinters. A girl scattered across a bed of glass, rebuilt into something I don’t recognise.
And the worst part?
I don’t want to be put back together.
I want to burn.
His weight shifts finally, the pressure easing, but not the ache. He pulls out slow, cruel, dragging every inch until I feel empty in the worst way—hollowed, scraped raw, left open. My body clenches uselessly, pathetic, begging for what I swore I didn’t want.
I want to scream at myself for it.
But my throat is shredded.
All that comes out is a rasp.
The sheets are ruined, wet with sweat, blood, and something filthier. Pages cling to my skin, tacky with red, curling against my stomach, my thighs. I rip one free, crumple it in my fist, but it doesn’t matter. There are dozens more, scattered everywhere, sticking to me like proof.
I crawl weakly to the edge of the bed, glass crunching beneath my knees. My palms press into it, cutting fresh lines into skin already marked. I don’t care. The sting feels cleaner than what he left inside me.
The mirror is gone, reduced to shards, but I see myself reflected a thousand times across the floor. Eyes swollen. Lips split. Neck bruised where his hand held me down. Between my thighs, blood and slick glisten under firelight.
I look ruined.
I look used.
I look like his.
The worst part—my body doesn’t flinch from it. My thighs press together tight, searching for friction even as shame scalds me.
A sob rips out of me, raw, ugly, unstoppable. I slam my fist into the floor, glass biting deep, blood streaking across my knuckles.
I thought the breaking point would be when he touched me.
But it’s this.
The after.
The knowing that even when he’s gone, he’s still inside me.
My breath comes ragged, shallow, animal. The room spins with the scent of sweat and iron. I press my forehead to the floor and whisper, low, feral, like a prayer to no one:
“I hate you.”
The words echo back at me, hollow, meaningless. Because hate doesn’t cleanse me. It corrodes me deeper.
My fingers dig into the shards until my hands are dripping red. I curl them to my chest, clutching pain like it’s a secret, like it’s mine.
Maybe the only thing left that belongs to me is the ruin and maybe that’s enough.