My hands fumbled at the wall behind me, searching blindly for seams or latches, anything that might break the spell of his darkness.
He let me grope around, savoring it, his own breathing settling into a predator’s hush. “You remind me of a mouse, you know that?” he murmured, voice syrup-thick and hateful. “Scurry, scurry. But there’s nowhere for you to go. Not this time.”
The air in the blackness started to thicken, a velvet sack pulled over my head, suffocating and absolute.
I could hear my own heart, roaring in my ears, and it told me I was prey.
This was what he wanted: to see what shape my terror would take when no one was watching. The horror wasn't that he might hurt me, but that I might beg him not to.
I let myself slide to the floor, knees curling tight to my chest. I wouldn’t give him tears, but the tremor in my arms said enough.
He prowled the small perimeter, boots dragging over the planks, every so often pausing to let the silence press harder.
He crouched, I could feel the heat of him, the animal patience of a true sadist. “You know, I could keep you here all day.” His breath soured the air. “No one would care. Not even your own goddamn family.”
“My family’s garbage,” I said, hating him for making me say it. “But at least I’m not a copy of my father, like you are.”
He went still. I heard him exhale, long and hollow.
“Shut up,” he said, voice stripped of affect. “You don’t have a right to talk about him. About me.”
“Then let me out,” I said, louder, more desperate than intended.
My hand scraped the wall for anything. Nail, knob, even a splinter to dig under my skin so I had pain I owned, not pain he gave.
He didn’t move. “Make me.”
Hatred and terror warred inside my chest, a chemical cocktail. I rose, fists balled, pushing blindly along the edges with my knuckles.
I moved along the frozen plaster, splinters raking my fingertips, and the panic at my throat threatened to choke me.
I remembered the way my mother used to pace outside my childhood closet, her voice a low, hungry croak, waiting for me to come out so she could finish the fight. I’d lasted hours that way, feeding off the darkness until it tasted like home.
This dark was worse. There was no promise of morning, just Caiden, circling, hungry to see me crumble.
I could hear him crouch, knees popping, the hiss of his exhale close enough that I imagined his lips at my ear. “You’re not even worth hating, you know that? You think you matter, but you’re a nothing. You’re a ghost.”
I flinched at the word. “You’re wrong,” I said, but the syllables wavered, thin as thread.
He crawled closer, boots scuffing, then crouched, so close that his heat pressed against my side. “Ghosts don’t feel pain,” he whispered. “But I know you do.” And his fingers brushed my wrist, deliberate, not gentle.
“Let me go,” I rasped, voice cracking. “Let me go, Caiden. I fucking mean it.”
He didn’t answer. He just stared, his face inches from mine, a mask of hate and hunger and something so lonely ithurt to witness.
I tried to wrench free, but his grip was iron. Rage and shame and terror carved me open.
I pictured the bus, the empty house, the way my mother flinched from noise.
Nobody came for me, not really.
But I screamed anyway, a wild, animal sound that tore my throat raw and bounced crazed through the black.
The scream was a mix of a shriek and words. A chant of “let me go, let me go, let me go, leave me alone.”
He flinched. Not much, but enough. “Jesus, Amelia,” he breathed, and his grip loosened just a millimeter.
“Is this what you want?” I gasped, eyes leaking hot tears I refused to let fall. “You want to see me break? You want to feel like a man? Go ahead, hit me. Do it.”
