White rings.
I’ve seen those before, haven’t I?
Earlier, around my wrists. I’d almost remembered. Rough fibers digging into my skin, the shape it left behind.
I fight through it, piecing the puzzle together.
Rope.
Like the one he bound me with, but there’s more. An image pushes forward, uninvited but insistent. It spreads like a weed, a disease. A pit opens in my stomach, and bile climbs the back of my throat as horror takes over.
White circles.
I remember now. Not skin. Wood.
The bed posts.
White rings on his wrists.Rope.
White circles on the bed posts.His father’s room.
Rope.
Carrson.
The bed posts.
I sit up like a bolt, twist to him, the wordstumbling out.
“He tied you up,” I say, my voice breaking around it. “To his bed. Your father.”
To say Carrson goes still would be wrong. Still implies something natural. Resting. Paused. This isn’t that. It’s as if something inside him…stops.
Mid-motion. Mid-breath.
Gone.
The change is immediate and total. The warmth drains from his face, as though I’m watching it reverse, blood pulling back, leaving him hollowed out, carved clean from the inside. His cheeks sink; his mouth slackens, not open, not closed.
I don’t realize I’ve stopped breathing too until my chest starts to burn.
His eyes slam shut, and this time it’s not a flinch or a reaction.
It’s a refusal.
Like if he shuts me out hard enough, I won’t know.
A better person would let it go. Pretend they didn’t understand. Let this crawl back into whatever place it came from.
I’m not that person.
“I’m right, aren’t I?” Tears wet my cheeks, though I don’t remember when they started.
He nods. Eyes closed.
“He liked me on my knees,” he says. The words come out robotic, stripped of anything human. As if they don’t belong to him anymore. “Would push me down. Tie my hands to the bed posts.”
Oh my God.
