But then I smell it.
Iron.
I turn the corner and freeze.
The walls are covered in photographs.
Hundreds of them.
All of me.
Me sleeping. Me showering. Me walking streets I don’t even remember. Me at seventeen, smiling like I didn’t know he was already there. Me last night, bloodied and defiant in the mirror, his red light blinking in the corner.
Every moment. Every breath. My entire life pinned here like a shrine.
My knees weaken, my throat closing. The word he wanted from me hums sharper, sharper, cutting me from the inside out.
A voice in the dark, smooth, low, breaking the silence like glass:
“I told you the cage wasn’t to keep you in, little fairy.”
My breath catches, body locking, heart detonating in my chest.
“It was to keep the world out.”
He steps from the shadows, hook gleaming, eyes feral, smile sharp enough to ruin.
And I realize—there was never an outside.
Every hallway. Every door. Every wall.
It’s all still his.
The cage doesn’t end.
It only gets bigger.
My legs lock, but my body trembles. The air tastes like rust, heavy with the stink of paper and dust and blood.
Every wall is me. My face. My skin. My life dissected and nailed into place like I’m a butterfly pinned to a collector’s board. My entire existence reduced to evidence of his obsession.
He steps closer, boots echoing in the narrow hall. The hook drags lazy against the wall, scraping, singing sharp against the photographs until one curls and falls.
“You thought this door was freedom?” His voice is low, hungry, a laugh hiding in every word. “You sweet, broken thing… you’ve never breathed a second that wasn’t mine.”
I stumble back, my bare feet slipping on the clean floor, too smooth, too wrong. His smile sharpens.
“Look at them,” he orders, the hook sweeping toward the walls. “Every picture. Every breath you’ve ever taken. I kept them because you never knew how to keep yourself.”
My chest heaves, a sob tearing raw from my throat. “You’ve stolen everything from me!”
He moves faster, closing the space between us, his body a wall of heat and steel. His hand fists in my hair, yanking my head back until my eyes crash into his.
“No,” he growls, lips brushing mine, voice guttural. “I saved everything. You’d be dust without me. Forgotten. Dead in a gutter with no one to whisper your name.”
Tears sting hot, blur my vision, but I bare my teeth, spit blood and fury back at him. “Then kill me now.”
The hook tilts under my chin, cold and sharp, lifting my face higher. His smile is slow, cruel, reverent.
