Page 45 of Her Soul to Own

I hesitate, my thumb hovering over the play button like it’s a detonator.

Then I press it. There’s static and a sharp crackle. And then her voice comes through.

Soft and lyrical. The voice that used to sing me lullabies through fevers and night terrors. But now it’s fractured, like she’s speaking from a place between worlds.

“They told me I was imagining things. That the cameras were for my protection.”

I freeze. The static flutters in and out, warping her voice like a warped lullaby. My chest squeezes.

“But protection feels like chains. And chains feel like love if you’re tired enough.”

I clutch my chest.

Those words hit harder than they should.

I bite my bottom lip until I taste blood, trying to stay still, trying not to crumble.

She goes on about my father and her frustrations that I was never aware of. I listen in a daze until she says,“The man your father trusts… Creed… he doesn’t blink. He watches.”

My breath catches. My hand shoots to my mouth, my fingers trembling. There’s a metallic ringing in my ears now. Like my pulse is screaming.

She saidhisname.

Sheknewhim.

All this time, this attachment I couldn’t explain, this dread lodged beneath my ribs, it wasn’t just mine. It was inherited.

It was fucking generational.

“I hope you never meet him. Because if you do, you’ll know things are not okay.”

And then nothing.

No click. No ending jingle. Just the sound of my own ragged breathing.What does that mean? Can I trust him or not?

“No… no… wait. What? I don’t understand…” I can barely speak.Who am I even talking to?

The room spins. I sit down hard on the floor with my knees pulled to my chest. My fingers curl into the frayed carpet. I want to scream. I want to claw something. But all I can do is whisper…

“But I have already met him.”

I already have. And he’s in the goddamn walls. In the shadows. In my fucking bloodstream now.

The video doesn’t end like a story. It ends like a warning.

And suddenly, every time he touched me, every time his breath slid too close to my skin, and every time he cornered me against a wall or said something that made me tremble, I now know it wasn’t new.

It was a ritual. One that I was born into.

I stay there for what feels like hours. Just me, the ghost of my mother’s voice, and the knowledge that nothing, absolutelynothing, in this house is what it seems.

The man I thought I could outplay? He already beat her.

And now he’s playing a new game. With me. I just don’t know if I’m his partner or prey in this game.

The sky outside the nursery windows has cracked open into pale blue. Dawn bleeds into the horizon in streaks of lavender and bruised gold. My fingers tremble as I shut off the tape, the machine clicking with finality like a judge’s gavel. My mother’s voice still echoes in my skull, trailing down my back like the ghost of a nightmare that didn’t end when I woke up.

I clutch my phone and glance at the lock screen. Saturday. Of fucking course.

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