I want her begging and still biting.
I want her to hate me… until she forgets how.
This isn’t about sex.
It’s about ownership.
And I won’t stop until the girl who walked in is nothing but a ghost.
—J.H.
Tahlia
The silence is a trick, a weapon disguised as absence.
It stretches long and thin, like piano wire pulled taut, wrapping around my lungs and tugging every time I breathe wrong—which is all the time now, has been since he locked that door. Even the air feels infected, contaminated.
Like it’s been through him first. Tasted his mouth. Picked up his scent—that dark spice and something metallic underneath. Learnt how to sink inside me before I realise I’m already full of it, drowning in his presence even when he’s not here.
I fucking hate this with every cell in my body.
The room’s colder today, or at least it feels that way. Or maybe it’s me. Maybe this is what happens when the screaming finally stops—when the fire dulls into embers that just burn low and steady under your ribs, constant and inescapable. No crackle. No spark. Just heat that eats you alive from the inside, consuming you by slow degrees.
I sit on the edge of the mattress, the frame still crooked from where I kicked it in a fit of rage hours ago. One of the legs gave out, splintered wood testament to my fury.
I’m proud of that small victory. It’s not a win, not really, but it’s something—a reminder that I exist outside of his hands,outside of his control. That there’s still part of me sharp enough to break something, even if it’s just furniture.
Even if it’s just a bed that he’ll probably replace tomorrow.
The camera above the door blinks red with mechanical indifference.
It used to make my blood boil, that invasive eye watching my every movement.
Now it just makes me tired, the anger exhausting itself into numbness.
I haven’t cried yet.
I won’t, refuse to give him that.
Tears are soft and I’m not soft, can’t afford to be. I’m the girl who survived men with fists for mouths and hands that didn’t know the difference between holding and owning. I’m the girl who turned herself into glass so she couldn’t be touched without consequences, so sharp she’d cut anyone who tried. I’m the girl who?—
I don’t know who I am anymore, and that terrifies me more than anything he’s done.
Not since he started talking like he’d already named me before I ever told him my fucking name, like he knew me before we met.
My eyes drift to the mirror on the far wall, the one that’s warped at the corners like it’s been replaced too many times by girls who came before me.
My reflection looks wrong, alien. Like it’s wearing me instead of being me, like I’m a costume someone else has put on. The pink smudged lipstick I haven’t bothered to fix. The shadows under my eyes like bruises painted by insomnia. The marks that aren’t on my skin but still ache somewhere deeper, in places I can’t reach.
He told me to wear red tomorrow.
It should’ve been a joke, should’ve made me laugh at the absurdity but somehow it felt like a promise, like a threat wrapped in preference.
My hands shake as I pull the blanket tighter around my body, trying to trap warmth that isn’t there. I tell myself it’s just cold, just the temperature of this room. That I’m not scared. That the phantom of his voice in my head isn’t real, isn’t actually echoing in the empty spaces. That I’m not already counting the hours until I see him again—not because I want to, not because I need to—but because the not knowing is worse than anything he’s actually done to me.
I don’t want to want anything from him. Not touch. Not mercy. Not even answers.
But I do want something, and I hate myself for it.
