CHAPTER FORTY-TWO #2
Trapped beneath him with my mouth forced shut, I felt the pills crawl down my dry throat. I immediately stopped moving when they were too far down to stop the inevitable. He seemed to understand because he immediately let go and climbed off me, not a care in the world.
He let out a calming breath as I sobbed on the floor, attempting to turn and crawl away.
He didn’t stop me. He knew how fast the pills would work in my system.
I’d never been this conscious before when taking them, so I didn’t know.
I crawled and then stood on wobbly legs.
I attempted to hurry across the house, but my legs shook, and the rooms began to spin.
Within moments, exhaustion slammed into my body, and I fell to the floor, feet from the front door.
Everything went black.
By the time I came to, I was in the back of Oliver’s car. Like last time, my body wouldn’t cooperate. I could hardly move. Tears slid down my face as I lay there, helpless, feeling the jerky movements of the car as it drove around the potholes in the bumpy off-road trail to the cabin.
He’s going to kill you, Daisy. Maybe you should let him.
This was going to be different. He didn’t have Rowe to dangle before my eyes. He would be cruel. He would use different tactics, but I didn’t know what.
Oliver was stronger. He didn’t care about my screams. The walls of that cabin had long since learned not to listen to my cries.
The door opened. Arms gathered my limp body. Oliver picked me up with ease and carried me. His touch was gentle. His words sweet as he uttered, “Everything’s going to be alright, Daisy. You just wait. We’ll go back to the way it was in the start. We just have to go through this teething phase.”
I could do nothing but cry. The path through the woods was muddy and cold, the sky above smothered in dark clouds. His feet were steady over roots and uneven rock; he didn’t slow down. Not until we reached the old shed behind the cabin—the one he called the lesson room.
Inside, the air was damp. Mold darkened the corners of the walls. The only light came from the four oil lamps, already lit—waiting for me, like he’d planned this long before our argument.
One lamp was placed beside the thin mattress on the floor. The other flickered just out of reach. Cruel in its distance. He knew what he was doing.
My throat was raw by the time he locked the door.
“You’ll stay here,” he said, voice echoing in the hollow space. “Three days. One glass of water. Same rules. You read. You answer. You learn.”
I didn’t reply.
I just curled into myself, arms around my knees, my heart loud enough to drown out his words. There would be no rescue. Just me, the cold, and the ghost of my son.
He left the texts he always made me read in the corner. The ones full of twisted philosophies and scribbled annotations in his beautiful handwriting.
The door slammed shut. The bolt clicked.
And then I was alone again.
No Rowe.
No sunlight.
Just the lamp by my side, flickering and fading by the minute.
I stared at the other lamps out of reach, the flame dancing gently, just far enough to remind me I wasn’t in control.
I pressed my forehead to my knees and let the tears come quietly this time because screaming wouldn’t save me.
Nothing would.
The lesson room was cloaked in silence, save for the soft hiss of the oil lamps that burned. Their glow painted the walls in amber streaks, casting long shadows. The air was heavy with the scent of old parchment and iron.
Both legs were bound in chains, the skin beneath them already raw and bruised. My clothes clung to my damp skin, my hair matted to my cheeks. I stared at the floor, unmoving, my breath shallow.
One second I was alone.
The next Oliver stood before me, tall and composed, dressed in his usual, impeccable attire. His hands were clasped behind his back, his posture rigid, like a man delivering a sermon.
“You refuse to learn,” he said, voice calm but edged with steel. “And that refusal is a choice.”
I didn’t respond. My eyes flicked up to meet his, defiant.
“Life is a choice,” he continued. “You either want to live, or you choose to leave.”
I scoffed, barely audible. “You think this is living?”
Oliver stepped closer, the sound of his boots loud in the quiet space.
In professor mode, he delivered his words with focus.
“Tranquility is not found in rebellion. It is found in understanding. In surrender, Daisy. The Stoics taught that peace comes when we accept the nature of things. Socrates knew this. He drank the hemlock not in fear, but in grace. His death was noble. A final act of clarity.”
He reached into his coat and pulled out something small. He presented it to me between his index and thumb. A large single pill gleamed under the flickering light—opaque, pale blue, like a little gem.
“This,” he said, holding it up between his fingers, “is your hemlock. Your escape. Your silence.”
I stopped breathing. My eyes locked onto the pill, then back to Oliver.
“I have the letters you’ve hidden under Rowe’s bed,” he said softly. “Every apology. Every confession. Every word soaked in your grief. Rowe’s death shattered you. You’ve been chasing him ever since. You think the afterlife will reunite you. That’s the lie grief tells.”
He knelt beside me, his voice dropping to a whisper. “If you take this, the world will begin to spin. Your stomach will twist in agony. Your limbs will betray you—paralyzed, useless. And then…silence. A death that looks like suicide. A death that tells the world you, Daisy Black, gave up.”
I turned my face away, trembling.
“You want to chase Rowe?” he hissed. “Then chase him. But do it with conviction.”
I shook my head violently, tears streaking down my cheeks.
Oliver’s hand shot out, gripping my jaw, forcing my mouth open. “Swallow it!” he shouted, voice cracking with fury as the pill pressed against my lips. “Swallow it and be done! If you’re weak, if you’re not who I imagined you to be, then do me a favor and take the fucking thing!”
I gagged, thrashing against the chains, my muffled cries echoing off the walls. He shoved the pill into my mouth, his fingers pressing hard against my cheeks.
Terror laced through me as the pill sat in my mouth.
But I didn’t swallow.
He held me there, breathing hard, eyes wild.
Then—he let go.
I spat the pill out, and it bounced once before rolling to the wall, where it lodged beneath the loose edge of the baseboard. I wailed, shocked and distraught, my panic causing me to spit wildly around me, to get the taste of the pill out of my mouth.
Oliver stared at me, his chest heaving. Then, without a word, he turned and walked to the door. He didn’t collect the pill. He didn’t look back. He seemed equally distraught, like he too had been pushed to the brink of something he couldn’t come back from.
The door slammed shut behind him. I was left alone, chained in the flickering light, the pill on the floor between us.
I stared at it until the silence became unbearable.
Then I screamed.
My breath was shallow. My body ached. But I didn’t move.
The pill lay on the floor, a pale blue dot against the dim light. I stared at it with a stillness that lacked fear and defiance.
He was gone.
The door had slammed behind him, but the echo still rang in my ears. My jaw throbbed where he’d gripped it. My lips were wet with spit and tears. I could still taste the bitterness of the pill on my tongue. I had spat it out. I had fought. But now, I wasn’t sure why.
I wasn’t sure of anything.
Even if I screamed, who would hear me? Who would believe me? Oliver was beloved. Brilliant. Untouchable. I was the grieving woman who’d lost her mind. The letters he kept—my apologies, my confessions—they would paint me as unstable. Suicidal. No one would question him. They’d question me.
I thought about what it might be like to leave.
To feel the cold air on my skin, the cool grass beneath my feet.
But the world outside felt alien even from here.
Hostile. Indifferent. I would stand at the edge of the property, staring into the night, and it would stare back like it didn’t care.
No one would ask if I was okay. No one would stop.
I didn’t belong out there anymore.
Where would I go?
He tells me I’m brilliant. That my mind is rare.
That I see things others don’t. And then, in the same breath, he tells me I’m broken.
That I misunderstand everything. That my grief makes me irrational.
He quotes Socrates, then locks the door.
He praises my intellect, then shoves the pill into my mouth.
I was tired. Not just sleepy—bone-deep tired.
My body was brittle. My thoughts foggy. I hadn’t eaten properly since Rowe died.
I slept in fragments, waking to the sound of my own breath, unsure if I was alive or dreaming.
I couldn’t make decisions like this. I couldn’t trust myself.
I’m too raw, too worn down. I’m not in a state to fight. I’m barely in a state to exist.
Oliver didn’t just threaten my life. He threatened my meaning. He tells me I’m a shadow on the wall, flickering with borrowed light. That without him, I’m nothing. That I was blind before he found me. That I’m still blind, but he’s trying to help me see.
And…was he right?
The pill wasn’t just a threat. It was a gift. A way out. A way forward. He spoke of noble death. Of clarity and transcendence. He said the pain would eventually stop. That the silence would be pure. That I’d finally understand.
And I almost took it.
For a split second as it sat in my mouth, I considered swallowing.