I shove the paper away, across the desk, pages scattering like broken promises. But no matter how far they slide, I still feel the ink burnt into my hands, into my mouth, into the soft places of me that were supposed to belong to no one.
He didn’t find me.
He bought me.
And maybe that’s worse because at least monsters who hunt admit what they are. Monsters who pay for their prey pretend it’s a choice.
My eyes cut to the camera in the corner, the little red blink that feels like his pulse beating against my skin.
“You think you own me?” I whisper, voice raw, scraped out of glass and fury. “Then watch what property does when it burns.”
The chair crashes across the floor before I know I’ve touched it. Books scatter. The lamp shatters. I hurl every fragile thing I can get my hands on until the room is littered with proof that nothing, not even ink, holds forever.
But when the silence settles again—when the camera still blinks, unblinking, uncaring—I feel smaller than ever.
Because maybe it isn’t the cage that’s paper.
Maybe it’s me.
The wreckage doesn’t make me feel free.
It makes me feel exposed.
Like every torn page, every shattered spine is another piece of me laid open for him to read. Like he’s sitting behind that screen, smirking at the performance, knowing I’ll always end the same way—on my knees, breathless, clawing at the floor like a sinner who can’t decide which god to beg.
The paper sticks to my skin. One sheet clings to my wrist, ink bleeding into my pulse, a black stain that looks like it belongs there. I rip it off, but the words are still inside me. My name. His mark. A contract I never signed but somehow agreed to just by surviving this long.
I crawl to the mirror.
The crack runs clean through my face, sharp enough to split me into two girls I don’t want to know. One whose eyes are glassy with tears she’ll never admit to, and one whose lips are curved in something almost like a smile.
I hate her.
I hate both of them.
I hate that I can’t tell which one is real.
“Which one do you want, Hook?” My voice scrapes the glass. “The broken doll or the liar who pretends she isn’t?”
The mirror doesn’t answer. The camera doesn’t blink faster. He doesn’t come.
I press my forehead to the crack until the skin burns. Until the ache digs into bone. Until it feels like I could push hard enough to split my skull wide open and watch the girl inside crawl out, screaming.
But all I do is bleed a little.
A thin line, a crimson thread trickling down my temple like punctuation.
The silence swallows it whole.
I slide to the floor, back against the wall, legs pulled up tight until my knees choke my chest. The papers flutter down around me like snow, soft and deadly. My name written a hundred times in ink that will never fade.
Bought. Owned. Placed.
The words pound against my ribs like fists. I claw my nails down my arms until my skin burns, until I feel something sharp enough to remind me I’m not just a signature on a page.
I laugh then. Ugly. Hollow. Too loud for the silence that answers.
“You think contracts mean anything to me?” My voice shakes, but I force it out anyway. “I was broken before you put your name on me. I was ruined before you touched me. Paper doesn’t own me.”
