And then Manhattan snaps into place.
Marble floors.Glass walls.A door that looks open until you touch the handle, and it won’t turn.Perfume layered over bleach until the scent makes my throat ache.A clock with no hands.Shoes lined up on the mat like soldiers who will never question orders.
“Smile, Cleo.”
His voice is quiet.That’s the worst part—the way it doesn’t have to rise to make the room shrink.On other days, it’s a low, controlled cut, a tone that suggests patience, and then it slices away.
Patience doesn’t explode with him—it unravels in slow motion.His jaw ticks, his fingers curl as if he’s testing what might snap first.A faint flare of his nostrils is the only warning before the air in the apartment thins to nothing, forcing me to pull each breath through a pinhole.His footsteps follow, not loud, but exact—each one a blueprint for what’s coming.
He tells me to smile like it’s a simple request, and I know—down to how my palms go clammy and my nails press crescent moons into them—that I’m not allowed to say no.My body remembers how to become small.My skin remembers how to pretend.I want to disappear so badly I can taste it, like the metallic tang you get before something breaks.I want to leave and never return, but those are dangerous thoughts in that apartment, and they have a price.
That apartment was a prison with good taste and a razor under every pillow.The things he did with a quiet voice left marks you couldn’t stitch or explain.I learned how to make the smile he wanted fit my face even when my insides were folding.I learned how to plan an exit and then hide it again because survival meant playing the part.
When he says it—“Smile, Cleo”—I can feel the old panic like a freight train in my bones.It’s not loud, nor dramatic, but definitely inevitable.And in that soundless way, the room closes in, and I am back in a life that taught me to swallow myself whole.
“You should thank me,” he murmurs at my throat, breath warm and clean with mint and money.“Not everyone gets this kind of care.”
Thank him?
My hands go numb.My mind slips out of my body and stands in the doorway like a spectator at its funeral.I watch him speak to the woman he invented the day I slid the ring onto my finger—the version of me that knows how to be small, correct, and pleasing.
She nods at every sentence, mouth soft, eyes lowered, because if she doesn’t, he does what he always does.His gaze sharpens until my throat burns with apologies I don’t mean.He keeps pressing on a slip until it becomes a confession I can’t take back.He pulls away warmth like it’s a privilege I haven’t earned, makes the calls that remind me he can ruin me outside these walls too, rewrites the day so that every wrong sticks to my skin.
My body knows the routine before my mind does.My stomach knots until I can’t swallow.My palms sweat and then go cold.My chest rises too fast, shallow gulps of air that never feel like enough.I clench my jaw so tight it hums in my ears, but I keep my face smooth because anything else is dangerous.Inside, my thoughts scatter, darting like trapped birds, banging against the cage of my skull until I force them into silence.
He turns humiliation into a lesson, carves obedience into me until I learn that silence is survival.Watching it, I feel a slow, precise machine dismantling me piece by piece, stripping me down to parts I don’t recognize.And all I can do is sit inside my wreckage and remember how to breathe.
I want to escape from this life, but the windows don’t open.
The air tastes reheated.
The city lights flick on like someone flipping a switch.He tells me stories about friends with yachts and foreign names.He tells me who is dangerous and who is useful.He tells me what I will wear, what I will say, and what I will do when someone offers me champagne.
He doesn’t have to tell me what happens if I get it wrong.
I get it wrong one night anyway.A laugh slips out at the wrong time.I don’t even remember what for.The sound is small, human.It bounces off the marble and lands between us like a dropped glass.
His smile doesn’t falter.His hand on my back does.Pressure, steady, precise.A reminder.“Careful,” he whispers with teeth that never show.“I can make you disappear in a way no one will question.”
The word ‘disappear’ lives under my tongue for days.I swallow it until it feels like a bone.
Someone knocks.The door opens without permission.A woman brings in a tray.Water.Fruit.The same arrangement every morning, like proof that time is passing.She sets it down and leaves without meeting my eyes.
In the dream, I try to eat but can’t.The fork is too heavy.My hand won’t lift.The ring burns where it sits.
Then he’s at the table, close enough that the silverware shivers when he sets his hand down.He takes my wrist like it belongs to him and yanks.The fork skates off the edge and slams to the floor.His palm crashes against my cheek, and the taste of metal spreads across my tongue as my lip splits.The room tilts.
He pins my arm against my ribs with his forearm until I can’t pull away, until my fingers turn numb.His grip lingers on my skin long after he lets go, an imprint that blossoms into a bruise I will have to hide under shirts and empty explanations.
I jerk awake with the taste of copper at the back of my throat and the sweater bunched against my mouth.For a second, I don’t know where I am.Marble?No.Cedar.City sirens?No.Waves hitting rock.A cologne I used to fear?No.Something cleaner, warmer.Eddie.Barret.The names line up and hold like lifelines I’m still too dizzy to reach.
I gag out a sound that could be a cry, but it breaks loose before I can stop it.A hoarse, raw scream rips out of me, scraping my throat on its way up.Sweat slicks my skin along the collarbone, cold and sudden.My palms are damp.Despite my open eyes, my chest heaves as if trapped in a dream.
My heart bolts like something waiting for permission to run and finally gets it.I swallow uselessly and taste iron again.Somewhere inside me, a small animal scream wants out, and I clamp my jaw until it quiets, but the sound rattles the inside of my ribs anyway.
The room is dimmer now.Fog has thickened outside, a sheet pulled over the view.The tray on the table waits with its quiet offering.A berry bleeds into the porridge like a bruise spreading.
My hands remember the wrong grip.My skin braces for the wrong touch.The door is still ajar.
