Chapter 39
They put the cuffs on tight. Cold metal snapped around my wrists, the sound of it ringing in my ears, like it echoed somewhere inside my head instead of just in the air.
My hands were pulled back, forced together, skin pressing against skin in a way that made it impossible to ignore where I ended and the restraint began.
You don’t realize how much you use your hands until you can’t.
Not even for anything big, just small things like balance and space.
The unconscious shit your body does to remind you it’s still yours, that disappears and suddenly you’re aware of everything.
The angle of your shoulder, the pull in your spine, the way your fingers twitch even though there’s nowhere for them to go.
They walked me through it like I wasn’t there.
Voices over my head, around me, not to me.
Words passed between them like I was just something they’d picked up off the ground and needed to move from one place to another.
I moved when they shoved me forward, stopped when a hand caught my shoulder, kept walking whenever they told me to keep going.
My body followed instructions automatically while my head lagged somewhere far behind the rest of me.
At first there was gravel grinding under my shoes.
Cold air hitting my face every few seconds as one space blurred into another.
I remember the back seat of the car most clearly.
The stiff plastic beneath me. That artificial clean smell they use in places where ugly things happen too often, strong enough to almost hide what sat underneath it, but not completely.
My head leaned back for a second, eyes half open, watching the world pass through the window in broken pieces.
Streetlights cutting through the dark in intervals, flashing across my face, gone before they settled.
I didn’t try to track where we were going, I honestly didn’t care.
Because wherever it was, it wasn’t worse than any place I'd been before. Or maybe it was, hard to tell.
Time got weird after that, off in a way.
The station didn’t feel real when we got there.
Too many straight lines and flat surfaces, like everything had been built to make sure nothing could hide inside it.
They moved me through it the same way, hands still behind my back.
There was a moment, small, stupid even, where I thought about resisting.
Not really to get away, just to feel something push back, but I didn’t.
I didn’t have the energy for it or maybe I just didn’t see the point.
The cuffs stayed on long enough that my shoulders started to burn, that deep, dull ache settling in like it belonged there now.
When they finally took them off, it didn’t feel like relief.
My hands came forward slowly, like they didn’t trust the movement, like they were expecting to be stopped again.
They pushed me forward again. Another door, this one heavier.
It opened slower and behind it, that was where it ended.
Or started. Hard to tell the difference.
The cell wasn’t big. Not small enough to cause panic, but not big enough to forget you were inside it either, just enough space to exist. Concrete on all four sides, a bench fixed into the wall, same material as everything else, like comfort wasn’t something that had ever been considered when they built it.
The air was stale, it felt used. Like it had been breathed too many times by too many people who had nothing left to give it.
I stepped inside, they didn’t have to push me this time.
The door shut behind me with a sound that didn’t echo– it just stopped, final.
I stood there for a second, hands hanging at my side now, free, but not feeling like they belonged to me.
Not yet. I walked over to the bench and sat down.
It was cold, hard enough that it didn’t let you forget it was there.
I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, hands hanging between them, head dipping as I stared at the floor.
There wasn’t much to look at, really– just some scratches and marks.
Things left behind by people who had sat in the exact same spot, doing the exact same thing, probably thinking they were the only ones who had ever felt like that.
They weren’t and I wasn’t either. Something inside of me had gone quiet, it wasn’t loud anymore, which was weird.
After everything, the house, the fight, the grave, the fucking hole in the coffin, I expected something. Anything.
Instead, it was quiet, empty. Like something had burned all the way through and left nothing behind to keep going.
I sat there, staring at the floor, feeling my pulse slow down in places it shouldn’t have, uneven, dragging itself into something heavier.
I sat there long enough for the room to settle around me.
Not that it changed anything, but there’s a point where a place stops feeling new and starts pressing in instead.
Where you stop noticing the details and start feeling what they do to you.
That’s when my head started working again and it went straight to him.
Zwierek.
It didn’t feel like a question. It felt obvious– too obvious maybe.
Because who else would it be?
Who else could have known where I was?
Who else would care enough to show up, watch me, wait, and then hand me over like that?
Nobody just stumbles into something like that by accident.
The longer I sat there thinking about it, the more obvious it became that he’d planned it from the start.
Every part of it. And once the thought settled in properly, it fit together in a way that made my stomach turn because of how much sense it suddenly made.
He was there, I saw him, we looked at each other and then he was gone, and suddenly the police were there instead.
You connect those things, little Ghost. You have to, otherwise it doesn’t add up, otherwise it leaves space for something worse, something I didn’t want to name.
I leaned forward, elbows digging into my knees, hands hanging loose between them, fingers flexing once before going still again.
A strange thought slipped in. I felt like disappearing.
Not dying or escaping, just disappearing from this earth and leave no trace behind.
Like if I sat there long enough, if I stayed still enough, I might fade into the walls, into the floor, into something that didn’t need to be remembered.
That felt easier than anything else, but it didn’t last. Because right under it, there was something easier, darker.
I don’t hate easily, little Ghost, never have.
Most things don’t reach that far, no, they pass through, leave something behind maybe, but not enough to stay.
But when it happens, when something actually lands, it turns into something that wants to finish what had started.
And thinking about him, about the way he stood there, watching me, not saying a word, not stepping in, that was enough.
It settled deep in my core, dangerous in a way that didn’t need to be loud, because hate like that doesn’t scream or shout, it waits.
Zwierek built the blade himself and he didn’t get to just stand there horrified when it finally cut back.
That’s the part he would never admit. He broke me apart piece by piece, taught me violence, fed me pain until it settled into the bones, and then one day turned around and asked why there was blood on his hands.
Asked why there were teeth where there should’ve been obedience.
But I was never made to be ridden into the ground for someone else’s comfort.
I would rather become something feared than spend my life bent into something harmless.
A wolf survives. The other thing just waits to be used until there’s nothing left of it.
So let him hate me for what I became. Let him choke on it.
Because if he ever dropped to his knees and begged whatever god still listens for mercy, he’d only be begging to escape something he created himself.
I exhaled slowly, eyes still fixed on the floor, tracking a crack in the concrete that didn’t lead anywhere, and underneath all of that, there was something older, something that had nothing to do with him. Or maybe everything, actually.
A kind of endurance I never asked for. A way of continuing, even when it should’ve stopped, even when it would’ve made more sense for it to stop.
I’ve always been good at that. Outlasting what should break a person, dragging myself past points where something inside should’ve given up and just…
didn’t. It’s not strength; it doesn’t feel like it.
It feels more like being stuck in something that refuses to end, and then there’s the other part.
The one I don’t talk about unless I have to, the thing that feels older than anything that’s ever happened to me.
Like whatever is wrong with me, I don’t think it started somewhere; it was already there.
I didn’t become it, I just grew into it, like I was built around it from the beginning.
Shaped by it, defined by it and everything else, everything that came after, just made it easier to see.
I leaned back, let my head rest against the wall for a second, eyes closed.
You see what I’m doing, don’t you, little Ghost?
I’m making it simple, putting it on him.
Because it fits, because it makes sense, and maybe that’s true, maybe he did it.
Maybe he stood there, watched me tear open the ground and decided that was the moment I’d gone too far, even for him.
Maybe this was what he wanted. But there’s something about it that didn’t sit right and I could feel it, just under everything else, like a splinter I hadn’t pulled out yet.
I ignored it anyway, because at that moment, I needed him to be the one who did it.