Page 26 of Breaking Ophelia
The other students come and go. They orbit her like she’s radioactive. Even the staff avoid the center aisle. She notices, of course. She watches it all, the way the world shrinks when she enters it. She’s learning her value in negative space.
I let the hour drag, watching every tic and tremor. When she finally stands, the chair shrieks, and every eye in the roomflinches her way. She stacks her pages, squares the corners, then turns and looks straight up at me.
She knows I’ve been watching. She wants me to see her not-broken.
I tilt my head, slow, and smile. Not the practiced one, but the one that says:Run, if you want. I’ll enjoy it.
She flinches, barely, and walks out.
I stay a full ten minutes longer, replaying her every movement before pulling out my phone and telling the cooks to prep dinner for her and take it to her room.
She’s thinning out and I realize that I prefer her full. Chunky.
I want to grab onto her and slide her up and down my cock, her soft skin rubbing against me.
So… she needs to eat.
And I’ll know if she does because while she was here, I had Bam install some cameras in her room. Can’t have my future wife making terrible decisions when it comes to her care, now can I?
With a smile, I head to my wing and settle on a quick shower before I enact the next part of making her mine.
The security feed stutters once, then stabilizes. I have a direct line into her room: low-res, grainy, but good enough to see the sweat at her hairline and the fine tremor in her hand as she keys open the lock. I watch her through four angles. It’s almost too much power; but I want to see her.
She enters, glancing over her shoulder, almost like she feels herself being watched. The room is as empty as I left it—the bed, desk with a single lamp, closet still ajar from her morning rush. But she stops cold in the doorway, keys frozen mid-spin.
She knows. Even before her eyes land on it.
There’s a white rose on the pillow. Nothing else. The petals are open, obscene, and the stem has been shorn of every thorn except the last one, right near the bloom.
She doesn’t move for a full minute.
Then she sets her bag down, soft, careful, like she thinks the air might break, and approaches the bed. Her fingers hover over the flower. She won’t touch it yet. She sniffs, brow furrowed, like she can’t decide if it’s a trap or a joke.
She lifts the bloom at last. Rolls it in her palm. The thorn draws a dot of blood at the tip of her finger, but she only stares at it, transfixed. She brings the rose to her nose, breathes deep. The scent is cheap perfume and for a moment, I hate that the florist sprayed it. Her mouth twists, but she doesn’t drop it.
I want to see if she’ll cry. She doesn’t.
Instead, she laughs—dry, hollow, and maybe a little crazy.
She paces. The cam above the door catches her muttering to herself. “Fucking psycho. Of course he leaves a flower. Next time it’ll be a fucking head.”
She sets the rose on the edge of the desk. Sits. Stares at it.
A long pause. Then she rifles through the bottom drawer, shoves aside the notebook, and comes up with a squat glass bottle. Whiskey, half-gone. I watch the tremor in her wrist as she unscrews the cap, pours a shot into a coffee mug, and downs it. She grimaces, wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, and pours another.
The whiskey works fast—she hasn’t eaten all day, and her metabolism is wired for flight, not digestion. The cooks didn’t bring up her meal and I’d have to deal with them for that. Her cheeks flush pink, then red. She talks to herself more now, her voice slurred at the edges.
“Should have smashed the fucking book over his head,” she mutters, half to the rose, half to the camera she thinks she’soutsmarted. “Should have… should have bit his fucking finger off.”
I lean closer, watching the way her tongue trips over the syllables. I record the audio for later.
She paces again, then sits on the edge of her bed, staring at her own reflection in the window. The landscape outside is just a smear of wet light, nothing worth seeing. She starts to undress—buttons, zipper, blouse over the head—but gives up halfway through, letting the shirt hang open.
She pours a third shot. This one she doesn’t finish. She just holds the mug to her lips, breathing in the vapor.
Then, softer, “Why did it feel so good?”
She drops her head to her hands. Her hair falls like a curtain, hiding her face, but I can see her shoulders shudder. She’s not crying. Not exactly. Just letting the heat drain out.
