I raise my chin, bare my teeth, and let the smile stretch wider, blood still staining my mouth. “You’ll never hear it,” I whisper, voice shaking but certain. “But you’ll feel it when I use it to destroy you.”
The red light blinks again.
I imagine him on the other side of it, cock twitching, breath ragged, hook clenching. Hungry. Obsessed. Already unraveling.
Good.
Let him watch. Let him want. Let him think he’s winning because resurrection isn’t about healing. It’s about becoming something that can’t be killed the same way twice.
I lick the blood from my cracked lip, let it stain my tongue, and stare down the mirror until I almost believe the monster staring back is someone I can live with.
Almost.
The blink of the red light taunts me.
Always watching. Always waiting.
It wants me weak, ruined, begging.
So I give it something else.
I peel the blanket off my body and let it drop to the floor. My skin is a gallery of scars, welts, bruises, blood—every inch of me painted by him. He thinks he owns it. Thinks it means victory.
If he wants a show, I’ll give him one.
I climb onto the chair in the corner, knees shaking, bare feet sticky with blood. The mirror reflects me back—naked, broken,defiant. I spread my arms wide, chin lifted, as if the cage were an altar and I the sacrifice that refuses to die.
“Is this what you wanted?” I whisper to the camera, voice sharp enough to slice. My lips curl into a smile, crimson and cracked. “Do you like watching what you made?”
The silence hums back. No answer. Just the red blink.
I drag my nails down my chest, reopening shallow cuts, smearing blood across my breasts, down my stomach, marking myself in crude lines. Each scratch stings, each drop of blood drips onto the papers scattered below.
I tilt my head toward the lens, eyes burning. “Here’s your confession.”
My hand slides lower, over the bruises on my hips, between my thighs slick with him and me both. My body trembles, but I don’t stop. I want him to see it. To choke on it. To know that even when I give in, it’s mine to give.
“You’ll never hear the word,” I hiss, my voice cracking, breath stuttering. My fingers slip lower, filthy, trembling, dragging wet across my swollen flesh. “But you’ll watch me burn in it. You’ll watch me carve love into a weapon.”
I grind my hand harder, nails digging crescents into my own skin, gasping through the sting. My reflection moans back from the mirror, blood smeared down my body, eyes wild, mouth open.
Not his ruin.
Not his possession.
Mine.
The camera blinks. Blinks. Blinks.
And I smile through tears, through shame, through fire because the performance isn’t for me. It’s for him.
And the monster who thought he caged me doesn’t realise—I’m the one who just locked him in.
Tahlia
Iwake to silence that feels different.
Not heavy. Not suffocating.
