It clicks again.
There’s no flash.
No red light.
But it’s watching.
Like it always was.
A speaker crackles overhead. Not loud.
Just static. Then a single note.
A low whistle.
Then a voice.
Distorted. Soft.
“They said you forgot me, little moth. But I knew you’d remember… Once I peeled him off you.”
I freeze.
Him.
Damien.
He knows about Damien.
He’s the one who took me from him.
The voice continues, calm. Sweet.
“I let you play in the dark. Now it’s my turn again. Let’s see if you still taste like memory.”
The light flickers once and I scream.
The scream rips out of me before I can stop it but it doesn’t echo.
It’s like someone designed this place not to be heard from—the way sound is swallowed by padded walls, low ceiling, and suffocating air.
I yank at the straps on my wrists—rough canvas, tied in knots meant tofeelescapable.
Almost.
I twist, panic making my limbs wild, desperate. The bed creaks but doesn’t move. Bolted to the floor.
This isn’t a room. It’s a recreation and I know exactly what it’s recreating.
The psych ward.
Not the real one—but the version I remember. When I was fifteen. When they locked me in that windowless room and told me the whistling wasn’t real. That the wasps were metaphors. That I needed rest and sedatives and quiet.
But he was already there.
And now I’m back.
Back in the room he built to mimic the one that tried to erase him.
