Excerpt:
The room is dim, shadows casting sinister shapes as Violet hangs suspended from the ceiling beam. The air is sharp, metallic. Her upper back is pierced by two thick, curved steel hooks, twisting cruelly into her flesh, skin stretched unnaturally taut. The thick rope threaded through the hooks connects her to the beam. Blood seeps in thin rivulets down her sides, creating jagged streaks that pool at her underwear’s waistband, before dropping to the cold concrete below.
Her legs are submerged in a steel basin, the stool beneath it unsteady. The water, tainted with rust and streaks of her blood, ripples faintly. Her arms dangle, hands still bound together. Her head tilts slightly forward, chin resting against her chest. She forces each breath to remain slow, even.
Erik crouches beside a car battery, his clean, collared flannel shirt tucked into dark jeans, sleeves rolled to the elbows. He tightens the clamps on the terminals, sparks leaping at the contact.
“You know, I’ve read every page of your life.” He lifts the jumper cables, taps them together, causing a spark to ignite. “Medical files, police reports, case manager notes. Every sad word.” He shakes his head, disgust feigned, setting the cables aside momentarily. “When you have money, nothing’s off limits, it’s sick really.” He moves to the basin, adjusting it beneath her feet. “I know exactly where you’ve been, what was done to you, who did it.” Leaning in, his voice drops, almost intimate. “Nothing about you is hidden from me.”
Violet’s lips curl in a half-smile, eyes sharp despite the pain. “Then you must know how all this will end.”
Erik holds her gaze for a beat, then lowers both jumper cables into the basin. Violet’s body seizes violently, legs kicking, sending ripples through the bloody water. The jolt rips through her, every nerve set on fire. Her jaw snaps shut, teeth grinding. There’s a rush of static in her ears, then nothing but blinding white. She bites her tongue to keep from crying out. In the haze, she thinks she hears Erik counting under his breath. Her back arches against the hooks, fresh blood weeping from the wounds. The water bubbles and hisses as the current surges.
As smoke fills the Cage and the pain recedes, Violet’s awareness drifts. For Erik, each session in the Cage is a key, unlocking a different memory he has constructed from her files. He pictures another house, another set of wounds, another day when everything was already broken.
He sees it as clearly as the files he read. She would have been younger then, thinner, eyes already trained on disaster. He pictures her entering a silent house, feeling the weight of what waits inside. It is not guesswork anymore. The details are always the same.
***
Twenty-One Years Ago
The house door creaks open. Violet steps inside, fifteen and all sharp angles, her backpack slipping from one shoulder. She doesn’t bother fixing it. The air inside is heavy with stillness, as if the house knew what it held and decided to stop breathing.
She does not call out. The house would not answer.
Dust drapes the furniture like snow. The living room is quiet, dark in places it never used to be. A coffee mug lies on its side beside the couch, cracked and forgotten. The blinds are crooked. No breeze. No motion.
Nothing waits to greet her.
Fifteen years old. She walks into a nightmare.
She steps further in, sneakers whispering across the worn floorboards. Her eyes scan the room like she’s been here before and expects what’s coming. Maybe she does. Girls like Violet don’t walk through life with surprises. They walk through patterns.
In the center of the room, her mother hangs.
The ceiling fan turns slowly, each rotation jerking her body just enough to keep the sound going.
Creak.
Creak.
Her legs are stiff, toes pointed downward. A bruise rings her throat, buried beneath the cord. Her dress has slipped from one shoulder. Her mouth is open.
The smell is subtle: sweet rot, sour perfume.
Her mother, tangled in her own mess.
Violet doesn’t cry. She doesn’t cover her mouth or run. She just watches the sway of the body. The way the fan keeps spinning, mechanical and obedient. Then, without a word, she walks past it. No glance back.
The kitchen has its own secrets.
Her father slouches in a chair by the table, neck limp, jaw slack. A bullet hole marks the center of his forehead like a forgotten dot on a test paper. The blood beneath him has dried into maroon shadows, seeping into the wood grain.
The table is chaos. A burned spoon. A twisted tourniquet. A cheap yellow lighter.
He never cleaned up. Never thought she’d come home early.
Her mother finally snapped. Maybe she couldn’t take the guilt anymore.
Violet crouches beside the body. She looks at his hands, still dirty beneath the nails. At the way one boot stayed on while the other sits overturned by the fridge. At the stubble that never grew evenly.
She doesn’t touch him.
Maybe Daddy spent too much money on junk.
She rises again.
Moves down the hall, light as breath, like she doesn’t want to wake whatever still lives in the walls. At the end of the hallway, she lowers herself to the floor. Her back presses against the floral wallpaper, now peeling. Knees drawn tight. Arms locked around them.
She doesn’t shake.
She doesn’t blink.
Or maybe she realized her main source of income was drying up.
The older the girl got, the less she was worth. Mommy shot Daddy dead, then strung herself up.
The house is still now, except for the soft tick of a clock and the distant, endless turn of the fan.
Violet breathes evenly. Her face is blank. Not numb. Blank. Numbness implies a feeling that once existed.
This is not grief. It is recognition.
A girl walks into a house and finds herself orphaned. And somewhere inside her, she knew it was coming.
Some part of her always knew.
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