I frown but scramble out, smoothing down my loose cotton dress with shaking hands. The fabric feels absurdly soft and insubstantial now. Its flowing tie-dyed pattern clashes against the brutal architecture surrounding me.
The house, a temple to minimalism and intimidation, looms above us. He glides toward the black front door without checking to see if I follow. He doesn’t need to.
We both know I have no other choice.
Inside, the space is vast and cold.
Marble floors capture our footsteps and throw them back, amplified and accusatory. Everything appears immaculate and brutally clean. Leather and metal and glass arranged with surgical precision. No photographs. No personal touches. Nothing to suggest a human being lives here rather than some sentient algorithm.
I address him with a feigned smile. “Is this your house?” I’ll findsomethingto compliment about it, I’m sure.
He jerks his chin toward the black couch. “Sit. Don’t go anywhere.” He vanishes down a hallway, his footsteps soon fading to nothing.
The silence that follows seems like a test. I stand in the center of the living room, a splash of patterned color in a worldof black and gray. There are no salt lamps here. No crystals catching light or tapestries to soften harsh edges.
I’ve never felt more out of place or exposed.
I wait until I’m sure he’s gone before I wander. I need to understand this place. To feel my way through and around, to find its secrets and energy.
I drift to the wall beside the stone fireplace and press my palm against the cool gray surface. Nothing comes back to me.
Only dead space, insulated against intuition. I trail my fingers over a metal sculpture perched on a glass side table. Cold glaciates my palm, radiating an emptiness that causes my teeth to ache.
Abstract, expensive, and meaningless.
The black leather couch is the same. Butter-soft and recently reconditioned but with no imprint to suggest people sit here. No memories or echoes of life.
This isn’t a home. It’s a clean room.
A space designed to leave no trace behind. Even the air appears filtered and scrubbed clean of any identifying particle. I’ve never been somewhere so resistant to being known.
My skin crawls at the alien sensation. I don’t want to stay here.
His footsteps announce his return, and I spin around, caught in my disobedience like a child in the cookie jar. He doesn’t comment or even raise an eyebrow. Just gestures for me to follow with a tilt of his head.
I can’t decide if the silence is worse than a scolding.
We walk down a long corridor lined with doors. All closed. All identical. The hallway stretches, dreamlike until he stops, opens a door on the left, and waves me inside with a hand. Flakes of dried blood fall to the polished walnut flooring.
I venture inside, focused on not touching that hand.
Then he leaves without a word.
The lock clicks behind him.
I’ve just walked into my own jail cell, a room straight out of an architectural magazine.
A king-sized bed dominates the space, piled high with what must be a hundred pillows in shades of cream and gray. A glass wall offers a view of the dark, manicured garden, and subtle landscape lighting illuminates a privacy fence.
The window is surely bulletproof. No way in or out. Just the illusion of freedom.
A thick, plush rug lies under the bed and spreads out to cover the tasteful hardwood floor. Sheepskin, maybe, though I can’t tell through my socks.
The fur throw blanket at the foot of the bed screams expensive even from across the room.
It’s the second most luxurious prison cell I’ve ever seen.
The lock disengages, and the door opens again.
