Even when he’s not here, he’s wrapping his hand around my throat and pulling the strings tighter, claiming ownership.
I don’t put it on.
But I don’t throw it away either.
And that scares me more than anything—the fact that I’m considering it, that some sick part of me sees it as beautiful.
I slam the drawer shut, harder than I mean to, the sound echoing like a gunshot against the velvet-drenched silence.
That necklace is still in my palm.
It feels heavier than it should. Too heavy for something made of chain and metal.
It feels like a promise I didn’t make.
Like a threat I can’t escape.
I curl my fingers around it, the little hook digging into the skin of my hand. I stare at the bloodless imprint it leaves when I finally uncurl my fist. His mark, even when I refuse it. Even when I scream no.
But he doesn’t need my permission.
Hook’s obsession doesn’t ask politely. It devours.
And that’s the part that keeps crawling under my skin—he’s not trying to seduce me like normal men do.
He’s trying to break me.
And he’s good at it.
I know the type. Men who don’t speak unless they mean to destroy. Men who don’t touch unless it’s to claim. He’s the kind of monster you read about in stories meant to scare little girls into staying inside after dark—except I never listened to those warnings, and now I’m paying for it with every breath I take inside this velvet-wrapped coffin of a room.
The walls press closer.
I can’t sit still. I pace. Back and forth. Each footstep sharp against the floor, each turn tighter. Like I can wear a path straight through the room and out of this madness. But it doesn’t work. My chest is tight. My hands are trembling. I feel his eyes even when I know the screen is black. That’s what he does. He stains things.
The mirror mocks me when I glance towards it—my hair a mess, my lipstick long gone, eyes too wild to be beautiful. I don’tlook like a girl anymore. I look like prey. But not the kind that runs.
The kind that waits.
And I hate it.
I hate that he’s rewiring me, piece by piece, without ever laying a hand on me in this moment. I hate that I can still feel his breath in the echo of the room, the phantom burn of where his gaze used to be. I hate that I’m not crying.
I know what that means.
It means a part of me—some fractured, wrong part—has stopped trying to fight the war.
And started planning how to survive it.
I spin, fist clenched tight again around that cursed little necklace, and hurl it at the mirror with all my strength.
Glass fractures.
A jagged crack splits through the centre like a lightning strike—and for one terrible, perfect second, I see both sides of myself reflected at once in the fractured surface.
The girl I was.
The thing I’m becoming.
