Part One
The Room With No Exit
Dear whoever finds this,
It’s not a fairytale. It’s a fucking trap.
He didn’t chain me—but I’m not free.
He doesn’t touch me—but I’m not untouched.
The cameras blink. The walls breathe. And I swear he hears my thoughts.
He calls this patience.
I call it hell dressed in silk.
If I make it out, I’ll bury this place.
If I don’t…
Tell him I died fighting.
—T.F.
Tahlia
Idon’t believe in fairy tales; I believe in fire escapes, and I know where every single one is in this building, where the stairwells narrow, where the doors stick, which windows open and which ones are painted shut like promises no one intends to keep.
The bar smells like sweat, perfume, and rot, not real rot, just that stale citrus they spray in the bathrooms to cover vomit and disappointment, and there is always disappointment here, it clings to the leather seats and the chipped gloss on the dancers’ poles like it belongs, like this place feeds on it.
I’m not supposed to be here.
But I’m here every Saturday, sitting in the same back booth where the shadows pool thickest, telling my sister I’m at yoga, telling my therapist I’m working through my triggers, telling myself I’m safe because I don’t strip, I don’t sell, I don’t even flirt, I just sit with my pink drink and watch women softer than me fall apart on purpose.
It should disgust me.
It doesn’t.
Because at least they chose it.
Me, I’ve been owned before, and it didn’t look like a collar, it looked like a bedroom with one lock on the inside, a phone with no SIM, a man who whispered he loved me while holding a blade against my ribs, and I survived him, learned to be sharper than his knife, learned how to smile while I planned his fall.
So I don’t fucking dance, I don’t touch, I don’t play.
I watch.
And that’s when I feel it, that prickle, that heat, like eyes on me from a distance I can’t quite trace, like the room has shifted its weight.
I glance at the bar mirror and see nothing but men too drunk to aim their cocks and women pretending to laugh, no shadows, no one looking, and still I feel it, that slow awareness crawling up my spine like a warning.
I’ve felt it for weeks.
Every time I come here, that same shiver runs through me, like my body knows something I don’t, like someone’s watching from behind the walls, or under the floor, or through the cameras humming quietly above the lights.
Maybe that should make me leave, maybe a normal girl would run.
But I’ve never been normal.
