“Turn it off,” I whisper, but my voice has no power.
Damien doesn’t move. “Raven,” he says, and my name sounds different—tight and careful, as if it might break. The phone vibrates with a message overlaying the live feed of my face:
Don’t stop now. You’re doing so well.
My fingers slip, and the phone almost drops. “I can’t,” I say, the words tearing out of me. “I can’t—I didn’t?—”
“You don’t have to,” Damien says, but his eyes never leave the screen. I understand then that this isn’t about what I do, but about what I allow myself to feel while being watched.
Do you remember the first night you felt safe with him?
My throat closes because I do remember the exact breath, the exact lie I told myself when Damien’s presence stopped feeling like danger and started feeling like gravity.
The phone buzzes:
I was there too.
My vision swims. “No,” I whisper. “You weren’t.” The camera view shifts—the phone tilts by itself, a remote command changing the angle just enough to catch the mirror on the wardrobe door. In it, I see a small black circle high in the corner of the room, tucked into the moulding. Blinking.
Damien moves fast and violent, a blur of motion. He rips the device from the wall with a sound of snapping plastic and screeching wires. He crushes it in his fist until the casing cracks. The phone in my hand vibrates harder, almost mocking him:
You always destroy the toys you don’t understand.
Damien turns slowly. “At least show some fucking respect,” he says, his voice a low, lethal hum. “You’re still alive because I allow it.”
The reply:
No. I’m alive because she lets me be.
My chest caves in. “I don’t let you do anything,” I say to the empty air.
The phone buzzes:
You do. Every time you don’t look away.
I realise I’m still kneeling, still holding the phone, still staring into the abyss of the lens. Another message:
Tell him what you felt when you realised I was watching.
“No,” Damien says instantly, but my mouth opens anyway, driven by a compulsion I can’t name. “I felt… chosen.”
Horror flashes across Damien’s face, a look of profound betrayal. The phone vibrates: There it is. I start crying again, silent and violent, as if my soul is trying to exit my body. “That doesn’t mean I wanted you,” I choke out.
It means you didn’t scream
Damien is shaking now, his control finally fraying at the edges. “That’s enough. You don’t get to turn her fear into a confession.”
I didn’t. I turned it into a mirror.
The camera switches to rear-facing, showing the room, but the angle is lower, closer—like someone is crouching just outside the doorway in the hall. Damien steps in front of me, blocking the view. “You come near her again, and I will end you.”
You already did. Just not the way you think.
Then, an audio file arrives. I don’t touch it, but it opens on its own, the play bar moving. My own voice fills the room—breathless, soft, saying Damien’s name like a prayer, like a secret, from a night weeks ago. Damien stares at the phone, then at me. River didn’t steal anything; he just stood close enough in the silence and waited for me to speak. Now none of us know which moments were real—only who was listening.
I don’t recognise my own voice anymore. It sounds wrong—too intimate, too exposed. Damien takes the phone with surgical care. “How,” he asks, the word a demand for logic in a world that has gone mad.
You taught her how to talk when she’s afraid. I just stayed quiet long enough to hear it.
