I press my palm against the reinforced glass. It’s warm from the afternoon sun, it’s also still solid and immovable.
Below, guards patrol the grounds. Two visible from this angle, maybe more I can’t see. They move in patterns, deliberate circuits that probably make sense. I’m too hungry to track them properly. Too dizzy to count the intervals.
The beauty of the view makes this cage worse.
That’s the point, isn’t it? He’s showing me the world I can’t have. Dangling freedom just beyond the glass, close enough to see, too far to touch.
Bastard.
I make it three steps from the window before the floor rushes up to meet me. The marble is cold against my knees as I catch myself on the edge of the bed, fingers digging into silk, and drag myself onto the mattress.
It’s been five days without real food. The oranges were forever ago, and my stomach has finally stopped growling. It just cramps now, a constant dull ache that pulses with my heartbeat. I’m also shaking. Fine tremors running through my hands, my arms, my legs. When I try to make a fist, my fingers won’t cooperate.
This is the only power I have though. My body against his will. My hunger against his patience.
Can I outlast him?
The question feels different now than it did on day one. Day two. Even day three.
I’m desperate for a shower. For clean clothes. Forfood.
My hand slides under the pillow. The caliper is still there, cold and sharp against my palm.
I close my eyes. The angels on the ceiling blur into gold smears behind my eyelids.
Sleep takes me in pieces.
The light has changedwhen I wake.
Evening now. Golden hour bleeding into dusk, the sky outside my window turning shades of coral and violet. I’ve been asleep for hours. Most of the day, probably.
Something catches my eye.
There, on the ceiling, the corner above the wardrobe. There’s a shadow that doesn’t quite match the plaster.
I squint. Blink. Force my eyes to focus through the hunger-fog clouding my brain.
There it is.
A tiny lens. Barely visible, tucked into the decorative molding where the wall meets the ceiling. If I hadn’t been lying here staring at nothing for days, I never would have noticed it.
I knew he was watching. Knew there had to be cameras somewhere. He sees everything. Takes my oranges. Knows when I sleep, when I wake, when I scream at the ceiling like a crazy person.
But seeing it is different.
The violation crashes over me like a wave. Cold and heavy and suffocating. Every moment I’ve spent in this room.
He watched all of it.
I want to destroy the fucking thing. Rip it out of the wall with my bare hands. But there are more. There have to be more. The bathroom. The studio. Everywhere I go in this gilded prison, his eyes follow.
Fuck this.I stand.
The room tilts. I grab the bedpost and wait for the spinning to stop. My legs feel like wet paper, barely holding my weight.
Fuck him.
I look directly into the lens. Plant my feet. Raise both hands.
