WIP: Where They Can’t Hear You
“What was remorse worth anyway when there was nothing to do about it other than regret? Time all but pauses when you become affixed to the past whether in yearning or mourning. The ever-trudging onward clock was all that I had to look forward to. Time heals all wounds, or so they say.”
Details
Genre: Adult Psychological Thriller/Dystopian
Status: Editing
Length: Just under 100k
Includes: A morally gray cast with complex and unhealthy dynamics. A non-binary protagonist. Unreliable narrator. Conversations around ableism, mental illness, and neglect. A claustrophic prison setting in a battle for personal freedom. An exploration of power dynamics and how it is often the powerful who get to control who is powerless.
Content Warnings: Violence, abuse, references to drug-use, death, ableist themes, neglect, mature content and language
Synopsis
To Paige, a 20-year-old and reputable troublemaker, no matter how luxurious the city-state appeared to be it was always no better than a gilded cage. Little did they know that following a mysterious arrest they'd be shoved into an even smaller, less attractive, encasing. Their sentence is a 40-year lock-up in a covert underground prison known as no more than “Inertia”, robbing everyone who enters of their sense of self down to stripping them of their own name. Paige isn’t alone, however, when they are shipped off alongside a complete stranger mistakenly tried as their accomplice named Jay. Having to navigate the malicious intent of their new home and the complicated alliances of other inmates, Paige begins to uncover the truth behind their imprisonment while struggling not to be overcome by its depraved interpretations of justice.
Artwork commissioned from @/fujfjio on Twitter
