Leaving me alone like this might be deliberate. As if he knows silence can be sharper than proximity. As if he understands comfort and uncertainty together will do more to me than confinement ever could. Break me down with warmth instead of force—make the cage feel like a choice until I stop noticing the bars.
It’s a cruel thought, so I file it away and get out of the tub.
After wrapping a towel around me, I pad out of the bathroom. I need clean clothing, and right now the only place I can think of is the cold room I’ve been avoiding, the one with the steel door, the one he brought me to on the first night and I haven’t gone back to since. It stands open now, as if it’s been waiting, and my pulse quickens.
Get a grip, Sophia. He’s not here.
I step inside, rubbing my wrist, remembering the ropes, the ointment he placed by my feet like it was some peace offering, some misplaced kindness.
The room is spare—nothing warm about it, nothing that breathes the way the kitchen and the bathroom do. But at the foot of the bed, folded in three neat stacks, are clothes.
Sweaters. Tights. Soft cotton shirts. Practical. Neutral. Nothing loud or attention-seeking. The kind of thing I’d choose for myself if I knew I’d be spending time indoors, close to a window, in a place where comfort mattered more than appearances.
My fingers brush the sleeve of the first sweater. The material is soft, almost weightless. When I hold it up against myself, the length is right. The shoulders sit where they should. Not tailored. But close. Close enough that my stomach tightens.
I push the thought away and snatch the first stack of clothing. I step into black tights, pull the beige turtleneck over my head, and tug on thick socks. My movements are hurried, almost frantic, like I’m racing against some invisible clock, but I pause long enough to curl my fingers into the sleeves, noticing how perfectly it fits.
What if all this is some twisted mind-game?
What if this is nothing but some sick psychopath who gets off on harming women?
Shit. I need to stop thinking or I’ll drive myself crazy before he gets the chance to.
I’m about to go back downstairs when I glance left, in the direction he always goes. At the end of it stands a door that looks like all the others. Same wood. Same trim. Same brushed brass handle. There’s nothing remarkable about it. And yet…I can’t look away.
It’s not the door itself. It’s the feeling around it. The faint sense that something sits behind it, waiting. The air in that direction feels different. Thicker. Quieter.
I bite the inside of my cheek, rubbing my palm down the side of my thigh as I approach. My pulse ticks hard at the base of my throat as I stop two steps away.
This is stupid. I’ve tried every other door in this house, and they were locked. This one will be too. Despite that logic, I reach out anyway, the beige wool bunching at my wrist, then cascading over my knuckles as my palm meets the doorknob.
The brass chills my skin, and I twist right, then left, the lock not giving in. My shoulder tenses as I lean into it, applying more pressure, but the door remains unmovable as stone.
“That’s what I thought,” I mutter to myself before heading back downstairs.
By the fifth evening, the house feels less like a trap and more like something I haven’t yet learned how to use. I move through it differently. More aware of the rhythm of the rooms, the shift in the light through the windows, the beat of silence between the breaths of the house. The fear hasn’t left, but I carry it differently now. I wear it under my skin instead of around my shoulders.
But it’s the silence that’s beginning to get to me. It has teeth. It gnaws at the edges of my thoughts, follows me from room to room like something alive. Five days alone, and I’ve started talking to myself just to hear a voice break through the thick blanket of nothing. Last night I dropped a spoon in the kitchen, and the clatter made me jump, not because it was loud, but because it felt like trespassing.
Now, I’m sitting on the floor in front of the door that somehow lures me back every few hours. For some reason, the space here, it feels less empty. Maybe it’s the hallway that’s more confinedthan the wide-open space downstairs that makes me feel less…alone.
Oh God, I’m losing my mind.
I rough my fingers through my hair, raking it all the way to the ends, then stand and walk away.
An hour later, I’m back, staring at the same damn door. Is this what it feels like when boredom slowly drives a person insane?
I exhale slowly and leave again.
That night, after the kitchen has cooled and the sky outside is bleeding into the last colors of sunset, I find myself in front of it a third time. Hair still damp from the shower, sweater sleeves pushed up to my elbows. The house dark except for the low lamps downstairs.
I don’t reach for the handle. I just stand there, listening to the soft, steady tick of the house. The subtle creak of beams cooling. Glass whispering in its frame as wind presses against it. It’s strange how a house can feel like a living thing when you listen closely—breathing, settling, waiting.
With a sigh, I lean forward, pressing my cheek and both palms flat against the wood, like I’m listening for something, some clue of what’s on the other side.
A soft click.
I go very still.
