“What do you want from us?” I spat. “We’re not fucking pets!”
He laughed again, a low, wet sound. “You’re whatever I need you to be. Creatures in a box. Born to be watched. Born to suffer.”
He lingered in the doorway, backlit by the sick yellow light from the stairs. Then, the door slammed shut. His boots retreated, up and up and up until even the sound died. The bulb overhead buzzed, throwing weird shadows on the walls.
She lay where he’d left her, hair spilled over her face like blood. I pressed my forehead to the glass, hating myself for not being enough. Hating him more.
Sometimes I wished I’d never come out of the cage my father made for me. Sometimes I wished I’d stayed an animal.
But I couldn’t stop watching her. Couldn’t stop wanting to pull her onto my side of the world, where no one could touch her. Couldn’t stop wanting to hurt him, in ways that would make even hell look like a holiday.
I slid down the glass until I was sitting, breathing in the dark. My hands shook. My knees ached. Every inch of me wanted violence.
We were pets. We were prey. And until I broke this cage, I was nothing.
I watched her for a long time, cataloging every inch, every tremor. Waiting for her to move, waiting for the next storm.
When the echoes finally died, all that was left was the scrape of my own breathing and the faint, humiliating buzz of the basement bulb. I could smell metal. Blood, maybe, or maybe just the memory of it.
She didn’t move. Not at first.
I pressed two fingers to my temple, grinding them into the bone, like I could push out the headache that had been burning there for hours. It never worked. I looked at her through the glass, watchedthe way her shoulders shook, just once, before she forced them still again.
The urge to smash the barrier ripped through me. A violence I didn’t recognize, bigger than anything my old man had ever managed to make me feel. I wanted to kill. Wanted to gut him, paint the walls with his insides. Not just for me. Not this time.
For her.
Which was fucked up. Because I didn’t care. Not about her, not really. She was baggage, leftover from a life that didn’t want either of us. I told myself that every hour. But right then, I wanted him dead so hard my teeth ached.
I couldn’t say any of that. Couldn’t say anything, not at first.
“Amelia.” The word almost caught in my throat, like a bone. I coughed it out, bitter. “He didn’t cut you bad, did he?”
A long pause. Her head still stayed down, hair hiding everything.
“Hey.” I tried again, rougher. “You alive over there or do I gotta start talking to myself?”
Nothing. Not even a twitch.
I glared at the ceiling. Typical. She’d rather freeze herself solid than let anyone see her bleed.
The darkness crawled closer, licking at the edges of my vision. My pulse was sick and slow.
I leaned my head back against the concrete and let the words fall out before I could stop myself.
“Remember that winter around second grade?” My voice sounded all wrong. Too soft, like I’d borrowed it from someone weaker. “The one where your mom left you in the freezing rain? I guess she was too fucked up on drugs to pick you up.”
I could feel the ghost of a laugh, somewhere in the back of my chest. It hurt.
“I saw you. I did. I’m the one who left the jacket by the school doors so you would see it when you went to go sit on the steps like a sad little puppy.”
A faint sound. Could’ve been a laugh, could’ve been a sob. I didn’t dare look too close.
I kept going, needing the noise.
“I even followed you home. Just to make sure youmade it there. You never knew that the jacket belonged to me, so I didn’t ask for it back.”
Silence again.
