Page 74 of Pick Me Up On Tuesdays

I squeezed my eyes shut, gripping the edge of the rooftop so tightly my knuckles turned white. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.

1, 2, 3, 4—breathe. But it didn’t work.

I thought about it.

I thought about every moment. Every nightmare. Every sickening second of that life.

I thought about waking up in that pitch-black cellar, stomach twisted in knots from hunger, limbs sore from the bruises that never had time to heal before new ones took their place.

I thought about my mother. Trapped in her room. Forced to listen. Never able to help.

I thought about his voice—low, guttural, distorted beyond recognition. That growl that sent chills down my spine every time he spoke. The way he leaned in close, eyes burning like embers, whispering threats that were never empty.

He always followed through.

And then, there were the numbers.

The equations scrawled in chalk on the cold stone walls. The pages upon pages of unsolved problems, scattered across the floor like discarded puzzle pieces. The way he would loomover me, expectant, watching as I solved them. No mistakes. No hesitation.

"Brilliant," he would murmur, ruffling my hair with a hand too heavy to be gentle. "You could be a professor one day. Smarter than all of them. Smarter than me."

But the praise never felt like praise. It was a leash, a shackle. A way to keep me there. A way to keep me for himself.

Because if I didn’t solve them fast enough, if I ever faltered—

Pain.

No food. No light. No voice, only silence.

“If you ever try to escape,” he told me once, voice eerily calm, “I’ll make sure she suffers first.”

And I believed him.

Because I had no choice.

I lived in fear. I lived with the pain. It became normal. Expected. The bruises, the hunger, the isolation—it was my reality.

Until, suddenly, it wasn’t.

One day, he left.

One day, it was over.

A car crash. A fire. His death all over the news. “One of the most glorified professors is gone.”

The world called it tragic.

I called it relief.

Rescue teams found me first—half-starved, barely conscious in the basement. My mother was upstairs, alive but barely holding on. They called it a miracle. They called us lucky.

Lucky.

I laughed bitterly at the word.

There was nothing lucky about it.

He was dead.

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