The darkness doesn’t answer.
My mother’s face. I try to remember my mother’s face. The way she smiled when she tucked me into bed. The feeling of her hand on my forehead when I was sick, cool and soft and completely safe.
But the face won’t come.
I can see her outline. The dark hair. The curve of her cheek. But where her features should be, there’s just a blur, a smear of memory that won’t resolve no matter how hard I try.
And behind the blur, watching me with patient, colorless eyes: the Monster.
I see his face instead. I see his hand reaching for my chin. I feel the touch of his fingers against my jaw, the way he tilted my head back. His face is clear. His face is perfect. Every line, every angle, every shadow.
I can’t remember my mother. But I can see him.
I leaned into it.
The shame crashes over me like a wave. I leaned into his touch. In the moment when he held my face and brought the water to my lips, I leaned toward him like a flower turning toward the sun, seeking more contact, more sensation.
What does that make me?
My father’s voice answers from the dark:“Weak.”
The cramps are getting worse. I can feel my calves knotting, the muscles contracting in ways that shouldn’t be possible, and I try to stretch against the restraints but there’s nowhere to go. The pain builds and builds until I’m gasping, and then it releases, leaving me trembling and slick with sweat that immediately turns cold.
I’m dying. The thought arrives with strange clarity. I’m actually dying, right here, in this chair, in this building where no one will find me.
My father isn’t coming. The video they showed me proved that. My father has already replaced me, already moved on to Dmitri. I was never the heir he wanted. I was just the heir he was stuck with.
And I’m going to die in the dark, alone, with nothing but hallucinations of my dead mother and my living cousin for company. The last person who touched me was the man who’s killing me, and the worst part is that I want him to come back.
Not to save me. Not to give me water.
Just to touch me again.
The wanting is unbearable. It burns worse than the thirst. It coils in my chest like a living thing, feeding on my weakness. I hate him. I hate myself. I hate the way my body responds to the memory of his hands.
He mapped me with a scalpel. He traced the lines of my bones like he was charting new territory. And my treacherous, desperate body arched toward the blade and begged for more.
What kind of man does that make me?
I try to remember my mother’s face again. The image flickers, almost coalesces, and then dissolves into pale eyes and still hands.
I can’t remember her anymore.
All I can see is him.
The darkness presses closer. My heart is doing something strange, fluttering instead of beating. This is what dying feels like. The slow shutdown.
I should pray. I should think of something meaningful.
But I can’t think of anything to say.
All I can do is sit in the darkness and wait for the Monster to come back, and hate myself for how desperately I want him to.
The cramps return. I bite through my own lip to keep from screaming. Blood fills my mouth, hot and metallic, and I swallow it because it’s wet and my body doesn’t care where the moisture comes from anymore.
In the darkness, I wait.
In the darkness, I break.
