Lola
Nights here are relentless. They press up against these thin, splintered walls, and claw at the fogged glass.
The moon hangs like a sick pale eye above the trees, watching me, judging.
This cabin is not a home. Not tonight. Not ever.
Just a cage in the middle of nowhere. The wind screams. Floorboards tremble with every gust. Shadows pile in corners.
I pace the short hallway, up and down, around the warped table.
I can't sit still. It’s so fucking cold I can feel it under my skin.
Every sound sets me off. Groans in the roof, branches knifing the siding, frost ticking its slow death over the window.
Breath fogs in front of my face. My feet ache against the bare wood, numb already, but I move anyway.
Brody hasn’t come back. Three hours? Four? Maybe more. Time here is elastic, stretching and convulsing around pain. He left in the slush and dark, with something monstrous in his eyes. He told me nothing. Just stormed out, boots like gunshots on the porch.
The world outside is nothing but moonlight and snow and branches clawing at each other. I keep looking through the glass but all I see are skeletons and ghosts. Sometimes I think I see a shape moving in the treeline. Sometimes I pray it’s not him.
Then I pray it is.
He’s the only thing worse than being alone here.
Wind hits the cabin, and the windows shudder.
It’s like something is trying to get in.
Or maybe something wants to get out. Shadows slide over the floor, black bands that stretch and twist with the moon.
Each time I pass the window, I catch my own face staring back.
Eyes wide, blue, made for surrender. I want to look away but I can’t. I look haunted. Maybe I am.
I wrap my arms around myself. My sweater is too thin, useless against the hunger of this place. I walk. I freeze. I listen for footsteps that never come.
Thoughts spiral. Marcus. Marcus. Marcus. He would never let me out of his sight this long. He’d be watching. Waiting. Ready to pounce the second I breathe wrong. Maybe Brody’s with him. Maybe they’re the same, two monsters in different skins. My stomach knots. I want to puke.
Sudden silence. Even the wind has stopped. I stand in the dead air, holding my breath, my heart thumping harshly.
Then the front door explodes open, so hard it cracks against the wall. White-out blizzard rips through the entry, snow hurling across the floor, and Brody fills the frame. Too big, shoulders wedged in the glow, skull mask loose around his neck like a warning.
He looks at me. Not with eyes. With hunger. With rage. He moves in stutters. Sweat streaks down his face, plastering his hair to his forehead. He staggers but never loses balance, just pivots, scanning for enemies that aren’t there.
His smell hits first. Vodka, sweat, and something beneath. Not weed. Not cigarettes. Something that stings inside my nose, gets into my sinuses and burns. He slams the door behind him, so hard the window rattles in its frame, so hard the whole place seems to shudder with fear.
“Lola!” he screams, voice shredded, echoing off the walls. He barely sounds human.
It spikes something in my chest. Panic, old and familiar. The kind that makes me want to fold into nothing, hide under the bed, block my ears.
He kicks a chair; it flips into the cabinets, splinters flying.
He shoves the table sideways into the wall; plates and glasses crash, one shattering, spraying the tile with glittering shards.
His hands twitch, fists flexing and unfurling, nails biting his own palms. He doesn’t even blink.
Just fixates on me, blue-grey steel gone bloodshot.
He paces like a wolf, restless, untouchable, making little half-muttered growls under his breath.
I back up. Careful steps. My heels hit the far wall. The cold seeps in, up through the soles of my socks, gnawing at my bones. He lunges. I don’t even move. Fear pins me to the spot.
Brody catches my wrist in both hands, yanking hard. Pain jolts up my arm, the way Marcus used to do, just to show me what’s coming. There’s no warmth in his skin. Only pressure. He could break me if he wanted.
He drags me close, breath hot and rotten on my face. The drugs, the liquor, the sweat. The mask dangles against my chest, the hard plastic grinning with its empty sockets.
He yells at me, words I barely recognize.
Words that melt into spit and curses and tangled questions.
“Where were you? Who did you see? Who’s here?
” Over and over, words melting together, accusations and demands.
“You lying? You fucking lying to me, Lola? You make a call? Who—who’s out there, who’s hiding—? ”
I shake my head, stammer out a denial, but he isn’t listening. He sees only what the chemicals show him.
He shoves me, then pulls me back. My head snaps. The pressure bruises. He rips his shirt off and slams it over my head. It blinds me, smothers me, his hands holding it tight. I claw at the cotton but he’s stronger. He just laughs.
He’s not Brody. Not anyone human.
My ears fill with the sound of my own heart. I can’t see. I can barely breathe as he yanks me upright, choking me with the shirt. The world narrows to darkness and his grip. I’m a ragdoll, legs scraping across carpet, then the burn of cold tile, kitchen, then hallway, then front door.
The night howls in. I feel the wind before I hear it, slicing through the wet shirt, through my skin. My feet slip on frost. My toes are numb already.
He manhandles me out the threshold. Then, light. He rips the shirt from my head, and shoves me. I tumble into the snow, knees buckling. The last thing I see is him, face hollow, eyes inkblot black behind the mask.
He slams the door. I blink, but can’t make sense of anything except the pain. At first it’s just cold, and then it’s something else, agony’s dull shadow, the kind of ache that eats you from the inside out.
I gasp. Breath explodes out of me and hangs in the dark. The moon is the only witness. Pale, distant. No light from the windows. Brody shut the world in with him. All that’s left for me is the blue-white drift, deeper than my ankles, blowing into my eyes. I can’t even see the edge of the woods.
I stumble toward the door, half-blind. Skin on fire, then nothing. I slam my fist against the wood, hard enough to crack it if I could. “Brody!” It’s a scream, inhuman, ripped out of my belly. I bruise my hands on the door. Over and over. “Brody, let me in! Brody!”
There is no sound from inside.
Tears start but freeze before they can slide off my chin.
Every inch of me shudders, begs for relief, even if it’s just another punch.
I drop to my knees in the snow. It swallows me, numbs my skin.
I try to breathe but can’t; it’s like the cold has frozen my chest. Light spots.
Noise in my head. The world closes in. My field of vision shrinks to the black behind my eyelids.
Nothing helps. Not the air, not the sky, not the jagged memory of Brody’s hands. I’m spinning, clamped in place by terror and cold. The panic attack is a star collapsing, blank and endless. I can’t move. Can’t get up.
Is this what dying feels like? Lonely. Small. I want someone—anyone—but there is no one.
Only the snow, the moon, the mute cabin.
I curl forward, clawing at my hair, at my shins. Heart hammering so loud it drowns out everything else. Can’t slow it down. I don't want to. Every second outside is an eternity. I count them, but lose track.
This is how I’ll end. Out here, pathetic, freezing, salt and ice on my face. Just another victim. Maybe I was always meant for this.
But, the world breaks open. A blade of yellow light stabs the snow, burns lines into my eyes. I shrink from it, useless hands covering my face, but it finds me anyway.
The door swings wide, slams into the siding. My name spat into the night. “Lola.”
The word is guttural. He comes out, huge, unstoppable, skull stretched tight over his face, eyes burning from the black holes. Not a man. Not my boy. He’s a fucking reaper.
He’s on me in half a second. His hands are biting into my arm, yanking me up. He hauls me onto my feet, snow cascading off my hair, burning my shins, numbness popping and fizzing up my legs.
I try to stay up but my knees fold. He drags me anyway, up the steps, slamming me into the warmth so fast I can’t even make sense of it.
He throws me down, flinging me onto the rug by the dead hearth.
I curl in on myself, desperate to get small, to disappear.
Behind me, the door slams shut. The sound vibrates through the floor. He locks us in.
Brody is pacing like a beast, the skull mask on his face makes him unreadable, untouchable. His hands won’t stop shaking.
He mutters to himself, pacing the length of the room, tripping over broken glass. Sometimes he barks a word—"liar," "mine," "safe," "fuck, Bambi, fuck"—and sometimes it’s just a low growl.
I shrink tighter, not wanting to look at the mask. The mouth, empty sockets. No way to see if he’s angry or empty. I can’t even guess if he wants to hurt me or cradle me.
When he storms past, I flinch. Every time.
My brain lights up with memories: Marcus with his belt, Marcus whispering calm after the storm, dragging me out of the closet, calling me “sweetheart” even when he had blood on his knuckles.
I see other men, too. The ones who liked to make me cry, who liked to watch me shake.
Brody’s silhouette blocks everything. Sometimes he stops in front of me, stooping low, breath hard and threatening.
Sometimes he stares, sometimes he stalks away, rattling the table so more glass hits the floor.
I can’t tell what version of him I’m getting.
The protector or the monster. Maybe there’s no difference.
Curling up, my skin prickles where the melting snow soaks my clothes. My jaw aches from shivering, and every inch of me hurts. Knees, wrists, ribs. My mind flickers, short-circuits, shows me old punishments and the promise of new ones.
He could kill me here and nobody would know. Nobody would care.
Brody stops, looming over me. I try not to breathe, but my body betrays me, wet, hiccuping, panicked. He tilts his head, the mask a dead thing, and just watches. I expect a touch. A slap. A shove. Instead, nothing.
It’s worse than violence. The waiting, the not knowing.
Abruptly, he spins and slams his fist into the wall so hard I expect blood. More muttering floats from him.
I count my breaths. One, two, three. Every time he moves, I brace for the blow. My heart climbs higher in my throat. Part of me wants him to leave. Part of me wants him to peel off the mask and just be Brody again. Maybe there is no Brody left.
Maybe there never was.
I’m not sure if he’ll smash my skull or curl me into his lap and tell me I’m safe. Maybe both. I’m not sure which is worse.
I pull my knees to my chest, shrinking down, so small, so pointless. More memories leak in. Marcus’s voice, “good girl, stay still,” the way he’d pet my hair with one hand and hold a cigarette in the other. I remember being left in the cold before.
My tears won’t stop. I think about the woods, about wolves tearing me apart, maybe that’s the better option. At least their hunger is honest.
I close my eyes and continue to count the breaths. Each second ticking by until he makes the next move. Bone-deep dread crawls in my marrow.
In the dark, with the mask watching, I can’t tell where he ends and the monster begins. Maybe there are no more lines. Maybe the boy I loved, the boy who protected me, the boy who loved me, is gone.