Tahlia
Iwake to silence that feels different.
Not heavy. Not suffocating.
Empty.
The red light above the camera is dark.
My breath stutters, chest clenching. For the first time since he locked me here, the eye that watched me night and day is gone.
Something inside me snaps awake.
I push myself up, every scar tugging, every bruise screaming, but I don’t care. My gaze locks on the door—the door he swore would only open when I said it.
And then I hear it.
The click.
The lock disengages.
The sound rattles through me louder than any scream, louder than any thrust, louder than every vow he’s carved into me.
The door swings an inch. Just enough to taunt. Just enough to tempt.
I stumble to my feet, glass crunching under my toes, blood smearing the floor. My hand hovers over the handle, trembling, shaking. My heart is a drum, every beat a war between hate and hunger.
Is it a trap?
Of course it is.
But it’s also a door. And it’s open.
My throat burns, my voice rasping out before I can stop it:
“Hook?”
No answer.
Just the yawning dark beyond the crack in the door.
I press my palm flat to the wood, every scar on my chest screaming, every cut burning, every bruise humming with memory.
He wanted me to believe forever was a cage.
But what if forever waits on the other side?
I push.
The door groans.
And the cage breathes open.
The air beyond the door is colder, thinner, like it hasn’t been touched in years. It brushes my skin, raising every scar, making me shiver.
I step across the threshold barefoot, glass and blood trailing behind me like breadcrumbs. The floor outside is smooth, clean, unmarked—wrong.
The hallway stretches narrow and dark, lit only by a single bulb that flickers overhead. Shadows crawl along the walls like they’re alive.
I take another step.
And another.
Every nerve in my body screams trap, but my chest feels cracked open, lungs greedy for air that isn’t thick with him. My heart stutters with something I haven’t felt in forever. Almost—hope.
But then I smell it.
Iron.
I turn the corner and freeze.
The walls are covered in photographs.
Hundreds of them.
All of me.
Me sleeping. Me showering. Me walking streets I don’t even remember. Me at seventeen, smiling like I didn’t know he was already there. Me last night, bloodied and defiant in the mirror, his red light blinking in the corner.
Every moment. Every breath. My entire life pinned here like a shrine.
My knees weaken, my throat closing. The word he wanted from me hums sharper, sharper, cutting me from the inside out.
A voice in the dark, smooth, low, breaking the silence like glass:
“I told you the cage wasn’t to keep you in, little fairy.”
My breath catches, body locking, heart detonating in my chest.
“It was to keep the world out.”
He steps from the shadows, hook gleaming, eyes feral, smile sharp enough to ruin.
And I realize—there was never an outside.
Every hallway. Every door. Every wall.
It’s all still his.
The cage doesn’t end.
It only gets bigger.
My legs lock, but my body trembles. The air tastes like rust, heavy with the stink of paper and dust and blood.
Every wall is me. My face. My skin. My life dissected and nailed into place like I’m a butterfly pinned to a collector’s board. My entire existence reduced to evidence of his obsession.
He steps closer, boots echoing in the narrow hall. The hook drags lazy against the wall, scraping, singing sharp against the photographs until one curls and falls.
“You thought this door was freedom?” His voice is low, hungry, a laugh hiding in every word. “You sweet, broken thing… you’ve never breathed a second that wasn’t mine.”
I stumble back, my bare feet slipping on the clean floor, too smooth, too wrong. His smile sharpens.
“Look at them,” he orders, the hook sweeping toward the walls. “Every picture. Every breath you’ve ever taken. I kept them because you never knew how to keep yourself.”
My chest heaves, a sob tearing raw from my throat. “You’ve stolen everything from me!”
He moves faster, closing the space between us, his body a wall of heat and steel. His hand fists in my hair, yanking my head back until my eyes crash into his.
“No,” he growls, lips brushing mine, voice guttural. “I saved everything. You’d be dust without me. Forgotten. Dead in a gutter with no one to whisper your name.”
Tears sting hot, blur my vision, but I bare my teeth, spit blood and fury back at him. “Then kill me now.”
The hook tilts under my chin, cold and sharp, lifting my face higher. His smile is slow, cruel, reverent.
“Oh, little fairy,” he whispers, pressing his forehead to mine, his breath hot, his eyes wild. “You still don’t understand. Death is too small for what we are. The only ending you’ll get is ruin. And I’ll make sure it’s ours.”
The photographs rustle in the draft, whispering like ghosts. His hook presses harder, just enough to sting, just enough to promise.
And the cage closes tighter, wider, endless.
The hook presses harder under my chin. My pulse hammers against it, hot, wild, daring him to slice. His breath sears my mouth, his forehead crushing into mine, and for one jagged heartbeat the air is still.
Then I move.
I slam my knee up into his ribs, sharp, desperate. The impact rips a grunt from his throat, but his grip doesn’t loosen. He snarls, hook scraping my skin as I twist, my nails raking down his face until blood beads under my claws.
“Fight,” he growls, shoving me back into the wall of photographs. Frames crack, glass shatters, my own images raining down around me. “Show me you’re still alive.”
I swing a fist, wild, cracking against his jaw. Pain jolts up my arm, but the sight of his lip splitting is worth it. He smiles through blood, feral, eyes lit with madness.
“Good girl.”
He lunges. The hook slams into the wall beside my head, missing by inches, embedding in the wood. I duck under his arm, shove hard, sending him staggering into the shrine of me. Pictures rip under his weight, my life crumpling with him.
My hands find a shard of glass on the floor. I grip it tight, slicing my palm, but I don’t care. I raise it, screaming, and slash across his chest. The shard bites, blood blooming bright against his shirt.
He laughs—laughs—even as blood drips. His hand shoots out, catching my wrist, twisting until the shard falls. It shatters on the floor, useless.
“You want to kill me?” he rasps, dragging me close, his blood smearing against my skin. “You’ll have to love me first.”
I spit in his face, screaming wordless rage, shoving against him with everything I have. For a second—just a second—I think I’ve won.
Then he slams me down onto the floor, glass digging into my back, photographs sticking to my skin, the hook glinting above us both.
And the shrine burns with our ruin.
The world narrows to glass and blood. His weight crushes me into the floor, shards cutting deep into my back, photographs plastered to my skin with sweat. Every breath is a scream. Every movement tears me open.
I twist, clawing, my nails raking down his throat, leaving jagged trails of red. He snarls, grabs my wrists, slams them above my head. My body arches, desperate for air, but all I get is his mouth crashing down on mine, hot and metallic, his blood mixing with mine.
I bite. Hard.
Copper floods my tongue. He jerks back, blood dripping from his lip, but his smile is wild, broken, unhinged.
“Bleed with me,” he growls, and drives the hook into the floor beside my head. The wood splinters. My scream rips through the hall.
I buck against him, shards embedding deeper into my spine, slick heat dripping down my thighs. My hand finds another shard, small, sharp, and I drag it across his arm. Blood spills fast, splattering my chest, painting me in him.
We’re both slick now—him on me, me on him, the shrine a battlefield painted red.
He grabs my chin, forces me to look at him through the haze. His eyes blaze with hunger and hate and something worse—worship.
“This is it,” he pants, his blood dripping onto my lips, sliding down my throat. “This is love, little fairy. Not words. Not vows. Blood.”
His chest heaves. My body trembles. My heart pounds so hard it feels like it might split open.
And I realise—he’s right.
This isn’t freedom. This isn’t survival.
This is ruin. Ours.
When he finally collapses against me, hook clattering against the floor, both of us shaking, the hall is drenched in us. Our blood smeared on the walls. My face torn from a frame, his shirt shredded to ribbons.
There’s no winner.
Only wreckage.
And in the wreckage, I hear my own voice whispering—broken, filthy, undeniable:
“Forever.”