A sharp, stinging slap crashes against my cheek.
My eyes jolt open. I didn’t even know they had closed.
“You’ve got such a smackable face,” Tim whispers, his voice unhinged now, full of amusement and something worse. “Don’t even think of passing out. I’m not done with you.”
I blink into the dim light, my vision still fuzzy, disoriented. The room is quieter now — too quiet.
My brows knit together.
Where… where are the others?
“They went out to get more alcohol,” he says casually, voice low and dripping with intent. “So… it’s just me and you now.”
My breath falters, then quickens — shallow and ragged like I’ve been sprinting, though I haven’t moved.
My heart is pounding so loudly, I swear it echoes in my skull.
Tim shifts closer. I instinctively flinch, but my body won’t cooperate. Every limb feels heavy, like soaked cloth.
“Now that we’re finally alone,” he says, crouching in front of me, his eyes dark and gleaming with something twisted, “I can try something I’ve been dying to do.” He smiles, wide and sickening. “Every damn time you walk around the house in those tight shorts… You don’t even know what kind of control it takes not to slip into your room at night and do it then.”
I freeze. I know exactly what he means, and he knows I do.
The recognition must be all over my face, because his grin sharpens like a knife.
“There we go,” he whispers. “You get it now. So be a good boy and don’t struggle… unless you want me to strangle you.”
I barely have time to react before his hands are on my suit jacket, yanking at it roughly, trying to peel it off. Panic floods me like fire, sharp and all-consuming.
And somehow — somehow — my body chooses to fight. I push him with as much force as possible, and he stumbles back.
My legs wobble under me as I try to get up, my knees nearly giving out. But Tim is stronger. Much stronger. He grips me like I weigh nothing and slams me back down. This time, he does it with so much force that my head smashes against the side of the bench and then the wooden floor with a crack, pain detonating behind my eyes like a firework.
The world tilts violently.
Then the ringing starts again, but this time much louder.
It’s piercing — a shrill, glass-shattering whistle that burrows straight into my skull. I cry out, my voice so raw it makes my heart ache, hands flying to cover my ears, but it doesn’t help. The sound isn’t coming from the room; it’s coming from inside me.
Then the sound becomes muffled, like I’m underwater. My head pounds where it slammed against the floor, and the wood beneath me feels sticky with sweat, or maybe blood, I can’t tell anymore. I just know I’m spinning.
Tim’s face is suddenly above me—flushed, twisted, hungry. He’s talking, his lips moving fast, but the ringing in my ears drowns it all out. I can’t hear. I don’t want to.
His hands are on me again. Clumsy, fast, desperate. Yanking at my trousers. Fingers fumbling at buttons, trying to peel me apart.
I try to move, but everything is heavy. My limbs won’t obey, and my mouth feels like it’s stuffed with cotton. I can’t scream. I can’t even cry.
No
I feel it then, something deeper than fear, deeper than pain. It’s bitterness, outrage, and hatred. It claws its way up my spine like fire.
No, no more, I will not let him take this.
And then, somehow, I see it.
His knife.
It’s lying just a breath away, half-hidden in the dark crack between the floorboards and the bench—the knife he used to threaten me earlier.
