So I revised. Took it back. Apologized to empty air for the flash of anger he'd trained out of me so carefully.
"I'm sorry. Don't hate you. Could never hate you. Love you too much. Need you too much. Please, I'm sorry. Just come back. I'll never be angry again. Never resist. Never anything but grateful and good and yours."
The apartment's silence mocked my promises. Luxury surroundings that meant nothing without context. Without him to share them, admire them, fuck me against every expensive surface, they were just walls. Pretty prison for an abandoned pet.
My vision started greying at the edges. Dehydration probably. Or maybe just the body's mercy, shutting down systems that served no purpose. What was the point of consciousness without his voice filling it? Why maintain a body he no longer wanted to use?
But dying felt like another choice I wasn't authorized to make. So I lingered in the space between, neither fighting nor surrendering. Perfectly trained to wait for commands that never came.
"This is a test." The revelation felt important even through the fog. "Has to be. Seeing if I'll follow protocols without enforcement. If I'll stay good even alone."
Yes. That made sense. He was watching somehow. Waiting for me to prove I'd internalized his training. That I could maintain discipline without external structure.
But what were the rules for abandoned pets? What protocols covered waking up collared in one life and collarless in another? How long was I supposed to wait before accepting he wasn't coming back?
Forever, probably. He'd trained me for forever.
So I waited. Counted heartbeats when I could focus. Traced patterns in the ceiling when my eyes would track. Existed in the space between breaths where time meant nothing and pain was just another sensation to catalog.
"Still here," I reported to surveillance that didn't exist. "Still good. Still yours. Waiting for instructions. Waiting for you. Waiting forever if that's what you need."
My voice had gone beyond hoarse to something raw and animalistic. Barely human. Fitting, really. I'd never felt less human. More like a robot with corrupted programming, stuck in a loop between need and inability to meet it.
The old Lilah would have been dead by now. Would have found pills or razor or rope and ended things with the same rage she'd brought to living. But Bunny just waited. Patient as prayer. Faithful as the tide.
Because somewhere, maybe, he was testing that faith. Measuring devotion by how long I'd linger in limbo. Proving I'd internalized his ownership so completely that I'd choose death over independence.
"Still waiting," I whispered to shadows that lengthened and shortened without meaning. "Still yours. Always yours. Even if you never come back. Especially if you never come back. Waiting is what good girls do."
The words faded into silence that pressed against eardrums like cotton. But underneath the quiet, I could almost hear it—phantom praise for patience, imagined approval for obedience. The ghost of his voice telling me I was good, so good, his perfect girl who knew how to wait.
So I waited.
And waited.
And dissolved a little more with each hour that passed without him.
Perfect in my destruction.
Obedient in my unraveling.
His good girl to the end, even if the end came alone on a couch I hadn't chosen, in a life I couldn't navigate, loving a man who'd carved out my heart and left me to bleed out beautifully.
Still waiting.
Still his.
Forever.
Forced Function
The anger came on day four. Or five. Or twelve. Time had lost meaning in my couch prison, but suddenly, between one heartbeat and the next, rage bloomed like a poisonous flower in my chest.
"Fuck you."
The words came out cracked and raw, directed at walls that had heard only begging for days. My throat screamed from dehydration, but the pain felt real. Felt like something other than the endless ache of abandonment.
"Fuck you for leaving me like this." Louder now, though still barely a whisper. "For making me need you then disappearing. For turning me into this... this thing that can't even get water without permission."
