My legs start to shake too.
That’s new.
I widen my stance further, distributing load, letting the bar take more of my weight through the cuffs. My shoulders scream in protest. I accept it. Shoulder pain I can handle. Collapse I can’t.
The hunger voice changes tactics. It shows me images – movement, impact, release. It wants violence because violence is simple.
I give it something else.
I focus on pressure. On contact points. On the exact feel of metal against skin, fabric against sweat. I catalogue sensations like tools laid out on a bench.
Here. Now. This.
The room can watch forever. I won’t give it the moment it wants – the lunge, the snap, the failure. If I go down, it will be slow. Deliberate. On my terms.
My hands keep shaking. But I keep standing. And in the long, empty stretch where nothing happens, I understand something important: They thought taking my voice would make me easier to break.
They were wrong.
Silence is where I learned control.
And control – real control – is choosing not to give them the ending they designed.
I PREFER KERAUNOPHILIA
Fight Like A Girl - Emilie Autumn
Kookaburra
Three weeks.
That’s how long it takes for captivity to start looking like routine. For the hum of lights to replace birdsong, for the absence of choice to masquerade as calm. They call it acclimatisation; I call it conditioning. Every breakfast tray, every check-in, every forced smile is another tiny experiment. I play my part, perfectly.
Doctor Callaway says the structure will help.Structure,she murmurs, the word smooth as a pill. She likes order, likes things that stay where she puts them. I like to watch her tidy the world – papers squared, pens aligned – because every neat surface is a mirror I can smudge.
I wake before the alarm now. Sit on the edge of the narrow bed, count the camera clicks. I wave sometimes, slow and lazy, so whoever’s on the other end knows I know.
Breakfast arrives on a tray: eggs, toast, orange juice, and a little white cup with my medication. I drink the juice, hide the pills under my tongue until the guard leaves, then spit them into a tissue and flush them down the toilet. I’ve learned to hold them perfectly still – no dissolve, no taste. Control is in the details.
By the time Doctor Callaway arrives, I’m already dressed. She likes that.Compliance,she calls it. I call it theatre. She sits opposite me in her usual chair, clipboard balanced on her knees, ankle crossed over ankle. Always poised. Always polite.
“How are we feeling today, Kayla?”
“Peaceful.”
The lie slides out like breath. She writes something.
“Any intrusive thoughts?”
“Only about your haircut.”
That earns a flicker of a smile. She thinks I’m joking. I am, but not about the part she should fear.
She starts her daily questions – sleep, appetite, mood. I answer in soft, cooperative tones, let her believe the weeks are smoothing me out. But while she talks about progress, I study her. The small tension in her jaw when she mentions her supervisors. The way her eyes dart to the camera whenever I say something that doesn’t fit the script. She’s watched as much as I am. That’s useful.
The conversation drifts toward morality again – her favourite terrain. “You understand that what happened at the asylum was…extreme,” she says carefully. “Do you ever think about what led to your incarceration there? Do you think about remorse?”
“Every day.”
