Page 17 of Silent as Sin
Venom came instead. His hand closed around my neck, squeezing until the scream died in my chest. He let go only when I gasped, desperate, silent. His smile was thin, cruel. “Better,” he said. “You’re learning.”
He barely fed me. Leftovers scraped into a dish. Always tossed like I was something lower than an animal.
The days blurred, unmarked, endless. Sometimes he left me in silence so deep it screamed louder than any noise. Other timeshe came with questions, with his obsessions. He wanted me pliant. Wanted me quiet. Wanted me only his.
When I cried, he laughed. When I begged, he tightened his grip until begging was impossible.
Over time, my voice slipped away from me. Not all at once, but piece by piece. Every punishment carved it smaller. Every threat sealed it tighter. Until one day I tried to scream, and nothing came. My throat locked. My chest burned. The sound stayed trapped inside me.
That was the day I stopped trying.
Better to fold paper birds in silence than risk his hands again. Better to watch. To remember.
Because Venom never stopped talking when he thought I wasn’t listening. His men whispered names, deals, shipments. He thought keeping me caged meant keeping me harmless. But silence isn’t empty—it listens.
And I listened to everything.
Venom’s shadow leaned closer in the dream now, his hand ghosting over my throat, fingers pressing until the phantom ache returned. His voice curled into my ear, low and poisonous.
“You’re mine, forever, little puppy. No voice means no escape. No one will ever hear you.”
The dark closed in tighter. My chest seized, lungs refusing air. The closet walls around me blurred into the crawlspace he kept me in, the air sour with rot and dust. My hands curled into fists, nails biting my palms, but I couldn’t move.
I couldn’t scream.
The silence wrapped around me like chains, heavy and unbreakable.
And Venom’s laughter filled the dark.
The dark carried me back.
Back to those first days when Venom kept me near like a pet. When I was still new, still raw, still foolish enough to believe someone might come looking.
He didn’t lock me away then. He paraded me like a dog on show.
I sat at his feet in rooms choked with smoke, men gathered around tables stained with blood and whiskey. His hand stayed heavy in my hair or hooked tight around my arm, reminding me with every squeeze that I wasn’t free.
“You sit quiet, puppy,” he’d murmur, his voice a knife’s edge.
And I watched. I watched as he laughed while men begged for their lives and women pleaded for them to stop. Watched the way he smiled while ordering their deaths. Watched knives flash, fists break bone, blood pooling across the floor.
He wanted me to see. Wanted me to understand that power meant cruelty, that silence meant survival.
But the dream shifted, sharper now, dragging me to one night that never left me.
A man was on his knees in front of Venom, face split open, one eye swollen shut. His hands shook where they clutched at his chest. “Please,” he rasped. “I’ll pay it back. I swear it.”
Venom’s laugh rolled out, cruel and easy. His arm curled around my shoulders, pulling me tighter against him, forcing my eyes up. “You hear that, puppy? Promises. Always promises.”
The man sobbed. Blood dripped down his chin. Venom pressed the barrel of a gun to the man’s forehead and stroked my hair with his other hand, as if both acts belonged together.
“Watch,” he whispered. “Feel it.”
I tried to look away. His fingers dug into my scalp, jerking me back. The gun went off. The man crumpled forward, blood spilling hot across the floorboards, seeping toward me.
It touched my bare knees, sticky, metallic, warm.
And Venom laughed. “Good puppy. You see it all.”
