That filthy, awful voice that haunts the space between silence and sin.
And it’s not just arousal—it’s need. It’s hunger sharpened on the edge of trauma. It’s the way I clench my fists because the alternative is touching myself to the memory of his breath on my neck.
He hasn’t touched me since.
But I feel owned.
Claimed.
Ruined in ways that feel permanent.
I roll to my knees and crawl to the cracked mirror.
The girl who stares back at me is thinner. Hollower. Wilder around the eyes. She looks like she hasn’t slept in days, and maybe she hasn’t. Not real sleep. Not the kind that heals.
And for a second, I hate her. I hate her for the way she looks like prey, for the way her lips are chapped from begging, for the way she still flinches at shadows, even though she knows who cast them.
And then—God help me—I press my forehead to the glass.
Because the monster who made her look this way is the same one I dream about.
I miss him.
I don’t know who I am when he’s not here to tell me.
Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I imagine him behind me, one hand on my throat, hook on my hip, whispering the kind of things that make me forget my own name.
You’re mine, little fairy. Even when I’m not touching you. Especially then.
A sob climbs up my throat. I swallow it.
No tears. Not for him. Not today.
Instead, I crawl to the edge of the bed, curling against the mattress like it still remembers his weight, his scent, his heat. My fingers dig into the sheets, pulling them tight, anchoring myself to the ghost of him.
I hate him.
I hate what he’s made me.
I hate the emptiness more.
And if he doesn’t come back soon, I might forget how to burn.
Hook
She looks smaller on the monitor tonight.
Not because she’s curled up—that’s nothing new, a position I’ve catalogued countless times—but because something inside her has folded, fractured, frayed in a way that feels final. The way she pressed her forehead to the mirror like she wanted to crawl through it, like she was begging the reflection to shatter so she wouldn’t have to, made something cold and cavernous in me ache.
I don’t look away.
I can’t.
I sit in the dark, fingers steepled, elbows resting on the arms of the chair like a throne carved from my own derangement, and I watch her unravel inch by inch, like a present I wrapped too tightly, ribbon cutting into soft skin, bow laced with blood.
She doesn’t know it, but I’ve stopped sleeping. Every blink is a missed moment. Every breath without her voice in it feels like theft.
This is devotion in its purest form.
