jackie 💗

"Well, this is nice."

Oliver’s voice is a flat stone skipping across the stagnant surface of the room as he sets the boxes down with a grunt, dusting his hands.

The apartment is, in truth, a festering wound of a place. Necrotic could be more fitting. The walls are bruised with water damage, blooming in patches of mold. Two bedrooms, a bathroom akin to a cell, and a kitchen that is uncomfortably close to the living area. The architecture possesses an asphyxiating geometry and everything is gray and depressing.  

But it is the air that makes the hair on your arms stand in a prickly salute. The atmosphere is heavy not with the dust of disuse, but with the chemical scent of chlorine that burns the back of your throat. It pulses with a very dark energy, whispering that something terrible happened here that time hasn't yet managed to forget. 

Silver Lake, Utah, was never your dream. It was a city inside your state, inside the cage you were born in, disguised as a landscape. You hold no reverence for the mountains that wall you in, they are merely the teeth of the jaw that holds you. Nor had you dreamt of this domestic confinement, of playing house in a box with Oliver.

Your gaze drifts to the closed door of the spare room. At least there is a separate bedroom to paint, you think. At least Silver Lake has panoramic views. 

Art was the only time you held the pen, the only violence you were allowed to inflict upon the world, the only control you possessed.  You will paint the view, certainly. But you won’t paint the scenery. You will paint the suffocation. You will paint the rot. 

“Yeah. It is.” You lie. "I'll go for the other boxes.”

You leave him, stepping out into the hallway to retrieve the rest of your life from the car, and descend the stairwell. This building is a fossil, perhaps the last in the city without an elevator, forcing a spiraling descent into the belly of the complex.

As you reach the foyer, your hand extends to push the heavy steel door outward but the door swings in.

Impact is immediate, a collision of bodies, a dull thud of bone against unexpected softness. A brown paper bag crumples, surrendering its contents, oranges and tins scatter across the dirty floor.

"Oh, God," the words fumble out of your mouth, breathless. "Sorry! God, I’m so sorry!"

You drop to your knees to help but your eyes betray you. They drift from the bruised fruit on the floor, traveling up the denim-clad legs, past the boyish flannel, to the face of the stranger you have just assaulted.

Your heart seizes, arresting the blood in your veins.

The girl standing in front of you is a striking slash of color against the grey world. Her hair is cut short, a jagged halo of copper and rust that frames a face of pale beauty and delicate features. Her skin is a canvas spattered with freckles—earthen constellations, as if a paintbrush loaded with river mud had been flicked across her cheeks and bridge of her nose.

She has pink lips that look bitten, and moles mapped out across her neck. Her eyes are a specific tone of stagnant water, deep and murky, hiding things that should stay drowned.

You are struck by her. It feels like a threat. A dangerous, forbidden threat.

"Don't worry," she murmurs, her voice a low scrape that burns your insides.

She reaches for a tin can and only then lifts her head. Her eyes lock onto yours, and you can see the apology dying in her throat. 

She is stricken, paralyzed by the same brutality that has pinned you to the floor. For a second, language is extinct. You watch as her pupils dilate, swallowing the green until her eyes are black voids. The air punches out of her chest, an audible exhale, as if you have just sucked all the oxygen out of the room.

You hang there, suspended in the amber of the moment. It is a paralysis born of recognition of a disaster you have been waiting for. A connection that feels archaic, inevitability written in the code of your DNA. A curse finally finding its target.

You sever eye contact first. Scrambling, fingers clawing at the dirty floor as you snatch up the tins and fruit. You force them back into the paper of the bag, moving with jerky motions, doing anything to keep your hands busy, anything to avoid looking directly into the sun again.

"You're new here?"

Her voice again. It is a rough texture that drags against your nerves. A sound that vibrates in the marrow of your bones, a sonic brand searing itself into your auditory cortex. You know that you will remember the exact frequency of that question for the rest of your life.

"Yes," you breathe, staring fixedly at her boots, unable to lift your head. "I just moved in this morning."

She descends to the floor to help you, her movements calm and silent, a stark contrast to your frantic scrambling. Her fingers are long and pale as they snatch up a rolling tin of soup.

"I figured you were new."

She reaches for a bruised orange at the same moment you do. Your fingers brush, sending a shockwave of absolute zero up your arm. Your skin burns with a phantom frost that makes you recoil, but she doesn't. She simply watches your hand retreat, her gaze dissecting.

"How?" The word is a whisper, barely escaping your constricted throat. 

She picks up the fruit and offers it to you. Held in her pale palm, the orange looks incredibly bright.

"I've been living here for a while," Her irises drill into your prefrontal cortex, seemingly peeling back your skin to evaluate the meat beneath. "It's all filled with old people, never saw a girl my age.”

She places another orange in the bag, her knuckles grazing the back of your hand again. 

"Honestly, this place is ass," she says, her voice devoid of the polite filters usually applied to strangers. "Why the hell did you move here?"

You let out a fragile laugh. "Well, it wasn't exactly my ideal plan, but here we are."

"Here we are…" she echoes, "At least the misery photographs well."

"You're a photographer?"

"Yes, I am." Her eyes snap back to you, pinning you in place. "You?"

"Artist," you breathe out, "Painter."

A corner of her mouth lifts, a sharp hook. 

"Oh. So we both have a thing for the arts."

The bag is full now so you hand it to her, your fingers brushing against the rough paper, frightened to touch her skin again. 

"Well, it was nice to meet you..." 

You trail off, realizing you are desperate for a noun to attach to this face, a word to summon her in the dark of your mind.

"Ellie." 

Ellie.

Ellie, Ellie, Ellie.

“And you?”

"Y/N," you return. The syllables of your own name feel foreign in this new air, reinvented just by her hearing them. "I have to pick up the other boxes," you gesture vaguely to the door behind you.

"Want me to help?" Ellie asks.

The offer hangs there, casual. Your soul is already screaming yes. You want five minutes. You want five hours. You want five lives. You want to carry boxes up and down these stairs until your legs give out just to keep this beautiful stranger in your orbit for a little longer.

"Babe! The boxes, what happened?"

Oliver’s voice booms from the top of the stairs like a hammer destroying a hand, shattering the world you had just built. You flinch, physically recoiling from the sound of his voice.

Ellie’s gaze goes to the stairs, then back to you. The warmth evaporates from her face, replaced by a wall of cool, impenetrable glass. But there isn't any surprise in her features. Like she already… knew about his existence?

"It's okay," you say quickly, stepping back and putting physical distance between you and the danger, retreating toward the door. "Don't worry."

"You sure?" 

She stands there, holding the paper bag, her head tilted to the side. She is dissecting the micro-tremor in your hands, the way your shoulders have hiked up toward your ears at the sound of his voice. She senses the slight, acrid scent of fear that blooms on your skin—a fear of violence, a fear of him.

"Yes," you breathe, forcing air into your lungs. "It's okay."

"Coming!" You scream the words up the stairwell, desperate for him to hear you so he doesn't come down. "See you around, Ellie."

You turn and shove your weight against the heavy door, stumbling out into the biting cold wind of the street. Gulping the freezing air does nothing to cool the heat in your face and your hands are shaking, a tremor that rattles your bones. 

Inside, the door clicks shut and Ellie begins her ascent. Her boots strike the stairs with a heavy thud as she reaches the fourth floor.

Her door is 4B. 

And there, open, is the door to 4A.

The apartment that has sat waiting exactly for you and only you, is now breathing. She stares at the open door, then at her own. They are separated by nothing but a thin membrane of plaster and wood, so thin you could hear a heartbeat through it. 

You will be sleeping inches away from her head.

Perfect.

Night has colonized the room, swallowing the corners in oppressive shadows. You sit on the sofa colored in a maroon velvet, limbs with the exhaustion of a pack mule. You have dragged up weighty boxes for four flights of stairs alone while Oliver did absolutely nothing.

"You gonna cook dinner, or what?" he demands.

You look at him. 

Oliver is not a bad man in the way a war is bad. He is a bad man in the way venom is bad. Invisible until it is too late. The human equivalent of static—a relentless, eroding force that wears down the sharp edges of your soul until you are smooth, round, and easy to swallow.

But there are cracks in the static where the monster bleeds through.

It started in high school, when he was the golden boy, the boyfriend every girl envied and every parent praised. Back then, his love felt true, and he was all about grand gestures. Bouquets of peonies left in your locker, long letters written in a script that seemed too thoughtful for a teenage boy. He would drive forty minutes just to bring you your favorite tea when you had a cold, defend you against every perceived slight with a chivalry that seemed heroic. It was a slow-burn seduction, a masterful fantasy of a "perfect" man.

But perfection is a performance, and the flowers became apologies for his "passion." The acts of care morphed into a meticulous surveillance of your time. He isolated you from your family and friends, meticulously brainwashing you to cut contact with everyone that wasn't him. And by the time you realized his love was actually a cage, the bars had already been painted gold and bolted to the floor.

It is the shifts in his temper that have trained you to walk on broken glass, the way his benevolence can snap into a serrated cruelty over a spilled drink or a wrong look. You remember the first grip of his fingers on your bicep squeezing just shy of a bruise, but deep enough to leave a memory in the muscle. The way his voice drops an octave, stripping away the affection to reveal the steel skeleton beneath. You have learned to read the barometer of his silences and flinch internally before the thunder even rolls.

He waited for you to finish art school as a spider waits for a butterfly to tire itself out against the glass. The moment the diploma was in your hand, he snapped the trap shut. 

A job in Silver Lake, he had announced, his eyes devoid of negotiation. A new start. Us.

Us as a singular organism, a parasite looking for a host. He speaks of a family—of children—in a way that makes your stomach turn over. To him, it is the American Dream. To you, it is body horror. He wants to plant roots in this dead soil, to bind you here with heavy hands and the chains of biology, trapping you where his volatility is the only law.

"Sure." 

You stand, moving toward the kitchen like a marionette with tangled strings. Chopping vegetables and meat, the knife rhythmically striking the board with practiced obedience. 

First day, and the walls are already closing in. Your mind, desperate for escape, flees the room. It runs straight back to the stairwell. 

Ellie. The stranger with the rust colored hair and the eyes akin to stagnant water. The questions begin to spiral, a feverish force that takes over your mind. 

A photographer. How interesting. In which apartment does she live? your mind whispers, craving the intimacy of the specifics. How did she end up in this building?

You replay the conversation on a loop, dissecting it frame by frame. The exact scrape of her voice. The way the light caught the moles on her neck. Her personality, so honest, so mysteriously devoid of the social performance everyone else seems trapped in.

She is too beautiful to be lonely. Does she have a someone? The thought is a jagged splinter. Or does she live alone? What is she doing right now? Is she on the other side of the wall, breathing the same air?

Your mind is suddenly flooded with her, a sensory invasion. You remember her scent with clarity, pine and cheap laundry detergent, clean and earthy. 

I wish I could bottle it. I wish I could drink it. I wish I could—

Fuck!

The scream tears out of your throat.

The knife has slipped and a bright line of crimson opens up on your index finger. Blood wells up instantly, fat drops splashing onto the chopped onions, violating the scene. You rapidly place your hand under the faucet, the cold water turning pink as it swirls down the drain, the blood evaporating into the stream.

"What happened?" Oliver asks. He doesn't move from the couch and there is no concern in his voice, only irritation at the interruption of his football match.

"Nothing, nothing," you stammer, clutching your hand. "I just cut my finger."

"Are you fucking stupid?"

"I—"

"Just get it ready," he snaps, his face twisting into that familiar mask. "And do it quick."

You stay looking at the blood running in the water, at the vermillion ribbon unspooling into the drain. The pain in your finger is a grounding wire in a house that feels like a hallucination. 

The static in your mind rises to a deafening roar as a thought, traitorous and sweet, blooms in the center of it.

What would happen if one day I could simply… get rid of him?

It is a thought you snuff out immediately, scared that he might read it on the back of your retinas.

Later that night, torture begins.

There is a specific tang to Oliver’s desire: it is a land where no is unpronounceable and punishable. You cannot remember the exact date the silence started, but the memory of the first time you tried to deny him is branded on you—a lesson taught in bruised skin and the weight of his disappointment, which felt heavier than his fists ever could.

So you lie back and become the mattress, become the sheets. You detach your soul from your skin and float somewhere near the ceiling, watching the body that belongs to you serve its purpose as a vessel.

On the other side of the wall, the world is bathed in red.

Ellie stands in the claustrophobic embrace of her darkroom, the safe light casting the space in the color of a developing bruise. She is rocking a tray of chemicals, coaxing an image out of the void, when the sound begins.

The repetitive assault of a headboard against the shared wall.

The sound is an auditory intrusion, a gross violation of her sanctuary. She huffs, sharply expelling the air, and closes her eyes. But she cannot close her ears.

Static floods her mind, mirroring yours. She stands there in the dark, listening to the cadence of your submission. She wonders what you are thinking, wonders if you are staring at the ceiling, counting cracks in the plaster. She wonders if you are feeling anything other than the weight of a man who sounds as if he is trying to break you rather than please you.

Her memory summons you—your beauty, stark and terrified in the hallway. The way you looked like a prey animal waiting for the teeth to sink in. You looked helpless, waiting to be saved.

The chemicals lap against the sides of the tray. Ellie’s mind drifts, unmoored by the rhythm next door as a dark fantasy begins to uncoil in her chest.

She imagines kicking down the door. She imagines peeling him off you. She imagines being the one to pin you down. To be the one who makes those sounds leave your throat for the right reasons. To be the wall you are pressed against. To be the only one.

She feels a possessive, dangerous heat rising in her gut. 

Mine, the shadows whisper. 

She could be mine. She should be mine. She will be—

Fuck!

She curses as the tray slips in her hands and liquid sloshes over the edge. Her mind had drifted too far, and looking down and the photo in the bath had turned entirely black. Overexposed, ruined. 

Staring at the dark square of paper, it is a perfect reflection of the thoughts rotting her brain.

The morning sun bleeds through the blinds, casting bars that feel like prison across the floor. Oliver is gone, his absence the only mercy the universe grants you. The place is silent, save for the ringing in your ears that hasn't stopped since yesterday.

You move through the ritual of waking up as a ghost haunting its own life. Coffee, black and bitter. You set up the easel in the spare room, the “studio”.

You don't really have a plan on what to paint, yet you need the motion, need your hands to do something other than shake. The charcoal scratches the grain of the canvas, a frantic transcription of your subconscious. You lose time as the world narrows down to the friction of carbon on fabric, art being the only time your mind doesn't drift to horrendous places.

When you finally step back to look, the face staring back at you stops your heart.

Ellie.

Your hand has memorized the stranger before your mind gave it permission to. The charcoal has captured the soft slope of her nose, the scattering of freckles that look like dust kicked up by a storm. You remembered the exact moles in her skin, the one tucked near the hairline, the one guarding the corner of her mouth, a punctuation mark to her words and silences.

You reach for the paints, desiring the face in color.

Mixing burnt umber and alizarin crimson, a search for the color of her hair. Cooper. Rusty cooper, left in the rain to oxidize. Not brown, not red, but a dark auburn. Lay it down in thick, aggressive strokes. Her skin. Titanium white with a drop of yellow ochre and a touch of violet to capture that translucent pallor.

But when you reach the eyes, the spell begins to curdle.

You need green, but not the green of grass, or spring, or life. You need that stagnant water green. A pond that has swallowed things and never given them back. Deep olive but strangely light, illuminated from within by a cold hunger.

You mix sap green with a touch of black. Too dark. You add chrome yellow. Too bright. You try to dull it with red. Too intense.

Panic begins to rise in your chest as you scrape the palette knife against the wood, mixing, blending. You need the color of algae, or the color of a bruise when it's healing. The color of the look she gave you that peeled back your skin but made something inside you light up in fire.

You mix and the color ends up being a muddy brown. You fucked it up. It's not here. You cannot capture it.

You cannot possess it.

A scream rips through your throat, animalistic. You lunge forward, your fist connecting to the canvas. The wood cracks in the sickening but satisfying sound of a bone snapping. The fabric tears, bisecting the face, destroying the image before you could finally see it in all of its glory. 

The easel topples over across the floor, paint splattering everywhere, leaving you standing there. Heaving, your knuckles throbbing, staring at the ruin of the only thing you wanted to keep.

And across the window, your muse is watching you back.

Ellie knew this would be perfect. She had calculated the distance of her obsession long before you signed the lease. She knew the layout of 4A intimately, the way light created a spotlight in the spare room, the window faced the north and made it the only logical choice for an artist. She had predicted your movements.

The apartment was a cage for you, but it was a theatre for her. 

Her having the only seat, logically.

She stands in the shadows of her own bedroom, the lens an extension of her eye. The glass on her window is open a bit, enough for the barrel of the camera to protrude, staring right at you. Through the viewfinder, you are her composition.

Adjusting the focus, the world blurs and sharpens until you're crystallized in the center of the frame. She cannot see what you are painting, the canvas turned to her, a teasing wall of white fabric hiding your secrets. She cannot see that you are currently butchering her own likeness in a fit of colorful rage.

All she sees is you. You, and the delightfully agonizing tension in your shoulders. You, and the morning light that filters through the dirty glass, dancing around your head akin a halo of debris. She zooms in, encroaching on your personal space from thirty feet away.

She focuses on the furrow of your eyebrows—beautiful, focused, etched with a frustration she aches to understand. The slope of your nose, the bite of your lip as you mix colors. You look divine in your distress, as a martyr waiting for the first stone. 

Her finger hovers over the shutter, and air in her lungs suspends. It is a moment of predatory intimacy, pure in its feelings yet immoral in its manners. You are alone, you think. You are safe, you think.

Click.

The shutter snaps, a guillotine that severs the moment from time, and now she owns this second of your life forever. And as your fist connects with the canvas, burying itself in the fabric, she captures it too.

She presses the shutter with fervor. Click. Click. Click. A rapid fire, an applause for your breakdown. To anyone else, the sight of you destroying your own creation would be alarming. But to Ellie, peering through the eye of her lens, it is the most thrilling moment she has ever witnessed.

She watches the images freeze on her digital display; the blur of your arm, the snarl contorting your lips, the raw energy of your frustration. 

Not even in the most feverish of her lucid dreams or in the sickest of her fantasies did she imagine that having your presence so close would be this visceral, this exciting. She expected to steal glimpses of you painting, doing normal things around the house, to hear you talk and breathe through the wall, yes. 

But she also knew, she didn't get fixated on you because you were a normal girl. The violence you suppress inside is what raptured her, months, months ago. And seeing it now, displayed before her eyes, is a gift.

Lowering the camera slightly, her breath hitches, her pupils blow wide in the dim room. An electric shiver cascades down her spine.

She wants it all. The hunger in her chest only expands, a black hole demanding to be fed. She wants to archive the entire spectrum of your existence. Capture the way your features shatter in grief, soften in their sleep, contort in hatred. To document the tectonics of your face, how the skin stretches over the bone when you scream, how your eyelashes flutter when you are confused, how your eyes gloss over when you are subjected to violence.

Ellie finds herself unable to look away. She focuses on your hands, those enchanting instruments. She wants to study the anatomy of their grip, the way your knuckles whiten around a brush, the way the veins in your wrist pulse with blood.

Tracing the outline of your silhouette in the viewfinder, her thumb strokes the camera body as if it were your skin.

Weeks bleed into a singular timeline. In the meantime, Ellie passes her days with a hunger that has been metabolizing her insides for much longer than yours. 

You have been her muse for longer than you could even imagine.

It began three hundred and sixty-five days ago in your hometown. She was there visiting a friend, the ones she used to have, a fleeting trip to a place she didn't care for. 

She saw you in a grocery store—mundane, domestic, boring. You were reaching for a carton of milk. But when she looked at you, her world collapsed. 

She felt something primal awaken in her chest, filling her senses with a frequency she had never tuned into before. She saw something inside you. A soul trapped under your skin, a repressed fire that attracted her the way light attracts moths.

But she didn't speak to you that day, or the three hundred and sixty-five days that followed.

Her plan started as an attempt to let you go, to treat you as a stranger she found enrapturing but fleeting. But when she returned to the gray slush of Silver Lake, her mind refused to release the negative. She thought of you. Over, and over, and over again.

That led to the hunt.

The internet is a vast vein, and Ellie knows exactly how to bleed it. She found you after some weeks of deep searching. She remembered the smudge of cerulean blue on your knuckle in the store, so she scoured the university art rosters. She looked up at every face until, finally, finally, the screen glowed with yours.

She almost cried. The name was the key that unlocked the vault to become the historian of your life. She found your birth records, the hospital, the exact minute you entered the world. She found your primary school, your high school, your family members, your friends, your embarrassing Facebook photos from 2012, your likes, your dislikes. She consumed your digital footprint until she knew you better than you knew yourself.

And, inevitably, she found Oliver.

She didn't pay him much mind at first—he was just statically interfering with the signal. But she scrutinized the photos and in seconds, she saw what your mother, your father, and your friends were too oblivious to see.

The timeline of decay. The high school sweetheart phase, all puppy love and soft focus. Then, the slow change. Your eyes devoid of happiness and their past glow, the long sleeves in summer, the turtlenecks in spring, the fake smiles that didn't reach the crinkles of your eyes.

She saw his hands, always too tight on your waist. Always possessing, never holding. She saw your hands, always soft and fragile around him.

She realized then that he was violent. And she realized, with a surge of holy purpose, that she was a miracle. She was not a stalker, she was a savior. She was here to pull you from the nightmare and bring you into a dream of bliss by her side.

But she couldn't just go to you. The prey has to come to the trap.

So, she orchestrated your destiny.

She found Oliver’s LinkedIn. Hacked, manipulated, pulled strings and ended up recommending him to a headhunter for a business firm in Silver Lake—her city. Handing him the job on a silver platter, she knew his greed would do the rest.

And the apartment?

4A had been occupied for forty years. Edgar and Marta. They were sweet, in the way rotting fruit is sweet. A quiet elderly couple with no children to check on them, no grandchildren to miss their birthday calls. They were languid in a world Ellie needed to be dynamic. A bump in the road, an error in the grand design of your future that needed correcting.

The eviction was supposed to be a whisper, Ellie had designed it to be a mercy. A loose valve on the stove and a long night where carbon monoxide would gently escort them out of existence. Elegant and undetectable, a drift into an endless sleep.

But insomnia is the curse of the aged and at 3:00 AM, the kitchen light flickered on. Through the thin wall, Ellie heard the shuffle of slippers, the rattle of a glass, and the confused, rasping cough of Edgar smelling the gas. The hiss of a window being forced open shattered her carefully constructed scheme.

The plan dissolved and necessity took its place.

She had to do it herself.

Killing them wasn't the clean silence she had hoped for. Real life is cumbersome and the human body, even one nearing its end, clings to survival with stubborn panic. 

Edgar had tried to fight, his strength surprisingly wiry, born of terror. But he was brittle. When she stabbed him, he fell, the sound of his bones hitting the floor startling. It echoed too loudly. Marta woke up and tried to scream, a high wail that Ellie had to smother with a pillow, pressing down until her own triceps burned, watching the life thrash and fade beneath her weight.

The cleanup took the rest of the night. It required three bottles of industrial bleach and a wire brush. She scrubbed until the sun threatened to rise, scouring the floorboards until the smell of iron was replaced by the sterile scent of chlorine. She didn’t stop until her own hands were raw, the chemicals eating into her cuticles, leaving her skin burning.

Getting them out was a labor of grim necessity. Dead weight is heavier than anything living, and extremely uncooperative. She dragged them down the four flights of stairs in the dead hour before dawn, their bodies thumping softly against the steps, sounds she prayed the sleeping building would mistake for a dream.

Silver Lake was waiting under the cover of a moonless sky, an indifferent mouth. She walked into the freezing water until it lapped at her waist, numbing her legs, soaking her jeans.

After weighting their pockets with stones from their own plants—a poetic touch, she thought, she pushed them out into the drop-off. Watched as the dark shapes bobbed for a moment, indecisive, before the water accepted the offering. They slipped beneath the surface with a sucking sound. 

The water washed away the blood, the sweat, and the guilt. It swallowed the past so the future could begin. She stood there for a long time, shivering violently as the ripples smoothed out, restoring the lake to an innocent glass. 

But looking at it now? Looking at the empty space where you now paint, unaware of the history beneath your feet? 

It was a small price to pay.

She would kill the entire building, every single beating heart in this complex, from the crying baby in 2B to the insomniac in 5C, if that’s what it took to keep this proximity. To keep you close. Close enough to hear you breathe. Close enough to save you.

And after the first, comes the second part, the phase where she steps out of the shadows and into the light of your life. But Ellie has learned that patience is not just a virtue—it is a weapon. 

You do not rush a frightened animal, you do not sprint toward a deer. You wait. You let them graze, you let them think they are safe.

So in the meantime, she has constructed a shrine.

Her own spare room, the one mirroring your studio, becomes a kaleidoscope of your existence. The walls are no longer visible because now they are papered in glossy, high-contrast prints, taped up with the meticulous care of a detective or a fanatic.

There are hundreds of them. You painting, mostly, because those are her favorites. She knows you are in your element when you are holding the brush—the only time your shoulders drop, the only time the haunted look in your eyes is replaced by a creative divinity.

Then there are the domestic tragedies. You cooking, the knife glinting in the harsh kitchen light. You cleaning, wiping down counters with a lethargy that breaks her heart. 

But Oliver is never in the frame, since she has surgically removed him. He is a disembodied hand on your shoulder, a shadow looming over you, a blur at the edge of the photograph. In Ellie’s world, he does not exist as a person, he is merely the negative space around your light.

She has recordings, too. Hours of silence punctuated by the rare, precious sound of your voice. You are so, so quiet. Quiet in the same way prey animals learn to be to avoid attracting the predator's attention. She listens to the intake of your breath, the hum of a song you don't realize you're singing, the stifled sob when he yells or sleeps.

You. You. You. You and only you.

The obsession has become tactile. She has bought your perfume—a floral scent with vanilla undertones—and splashed it in every corner of her room. It soaks her pillows, it stains her sheets. An olfactory hallucination that makes it feel as though you have just left the room.

Every night, surrounded by the mosaic of your face and the scent of your skin, she touches herself. Her hand slides down her stomach, her mind feverish. She imagines they are your hands, imagines it is your mouth. She imagines opening the door between your apartments and simply taking you, dragging you out of the fire and into her cold, dark water.

She has followed you, too. On the rare occasions you were allowed to leave the apartment for groceries, she was there. She photographed you under the buzzing fluorescent lights, looking at cereal boxes with a devastating sadness. She photographed you in the parking lot, sitting in your car for ten minutes before starting the engine, your head on the steering wheel, shoulders shaking. Crying.

Those photos are the hardest to look at, and yet, she stares at them the longest. They are the proof of your pain. They are the justification for what she is about to do. They fuel the rage that will eventually liberate you. 

As for you, oblivious to it all, the days do not pass so much as they get eaten away by a hunger that has taken up residence in your bones. While Ellie is swimming in the deep currents of a year long obsession, you are starting to dip your feet in the water of a newfound infatuation.

It is a rapture, a growing tidal wave that swallows logic and reason, leaving only this visceral need in its wake. The spare room has metamorphosed into a reliquary.

You have started to paint her, every day. A compulsive liturgy of oil and turpentine. You paint her hand holding that bruised fruit, obsessing over the contrast—the brightness of the orange against the alabaster of her skin. You paint the defiance of her jawline, the curve of her neck, a study in vulnerability.

The walls are beginning to disappear beneath the papers and canvases. All of the different parts of her, a gallery of a stranger.

You keep the door locked, the deadbolt the only privacy you have left. It is the only territory Oliver cannot conquer. His prying hands, which touch your body with such careless ownership, are barred from this sanctuary. He would never understand. He would see it as madness, you know it is the only thing keeping you sane.

At night, when the suffocating weight of him presses you into the mattress, you escape.

He claims the flesh, but she has colonized the mind.

As his breath—hot and smelling of stale routine—hitches against your neck, you squeeze your eyes shut and summon her. You excise him from the narrative. It is not his rough palms bruising your hips, it is her long, pale fingers tracing your spine. It is not his stubble grazing your cheek, it is the phantom touch of her bitten pinkish lips. It is the scent of pine and cheap laundry detergent filling your lungs, drowning out his musk.

Her. Her. Her. Her and only her.

You cannot hold this intensity anymore; it has breached the levees of your soul. Ellie is the only thing filling your world, a dark sun around which your shattered life orbits. You haven't seen her since that collision in the hallway—a fact that causes an agony so sharp it feels like swallowing glass. You feel ridiculous, pathetic even, for building an obsession this intense around a stranger, but this obsession is exactly what your soul has been starving for your entire life.

She fills your days with bliss. She is the anesthetic that allows you to endure Oliver’s violence. She is the muse that guides your hand, your technique getting better under your devotion.

You don’t know what to name this pathology. Infatuation feels too small, too teenage. Limerence implies a fading. Passion is too messy.

Haunting could be more fitting, but you don't care about the labels. You only know the feeling is a living thing, feeding on your isolation. The desire to see her again is a desperation that borders on physical pain, so you draw her to keep her real. You trace the memory of her voice, the copper fire of her hair, the specific geometry of her body, frightened that if you stop, she will vanish and leave you alone with him and yourself. 

But in every portrait, the eyes remain blank.

They are twin voids of white, staring back at you with an accusation you cannot answer. You have mixed every variation of viridian, sap green, and raw umber, but the alchemy always fails. You cannot replicate the depth of that stagnant water, the bioluminescence of her gaze. They say eyes are the window of the soul, and having to leave them empty is a testament to the one thing you cannot possess.

And the search for the color had become a sickness. You have spent all these weeks looking for it in the local supply stores, standing on aisles for longer than usual, staring at tubes until your vision blurred. You have bought them all. Sap Green, Viridian, Terre Verte, Chromium Oxide. You have mixed them in every ratio conceivable, wasting ounces of expensive pigment on the palette.

It was never right. Too grassy, too chemical, too dead. Her eyes weren't just green, they were a submerged world. They are the color of moss under ice, of a lake bed seen through silt, ancient and preserved. 

Late last night, scrolling through art forums, you found a specialty supplier, a shop that imports pigments from Germany. They had two shades—Volterra Green and a specific, rare Malachite grind. In your mind, you saw them swirl together, and you knew. That was it.

The catch? The store is in a mall three hours away. Three hours there, three hours back which results in six hours of unaccounted time. How do you make a man like Oliver let you drive three hours just for paint supplies? 

Short answer, you don't. You ordeal a plan. 

You woke up at 4:30 AM, slipping out of bed while Oliver still snored. Creeping out to the freezing driveway, the concrete bites through your socks as you pop the hood of his old sedan, hands shaking so violently you drop the wrench twice.

You disconnected the negative battery terminal, enough so the connection severed yet was a small fixable paralysis. Your uncle taught you that one.

And at 7:00 AM, the performance began.

"Come on, you piece of shit!"

His voice booms through the parking lot, followed by the sound of the ignition failing to turn over. He slams the steering wheel, the horn letting out a pathetic bleat.

You appear in the doorway, clutching your robe tight, feigning sleepiness. "What's wrong?"

"The fucking battery!" he spits, raking a hand through his hair. He looks at his watch, his face reddening with that heat you know too well. "I have a presentation with the regional manager in forty minutes. I can't be late!"

"Maybe I can jump it?" you offer, making your voice small, knowing he will reject it.

"You?" He laughs, a sharp, barking sound devoid of humor. "You’d probably blow the engine. No. I don't have time for this."

He gets out, slamming the door so hard the windows rattle. He kicks the tire.

"I can call an Uber," you say quickly, already holding your phone up, the app open. "It says there's one three minutes away. You’ll make it."

He glares at you, then at the car, then back at you. He is weighing his anger against his ambition. Ambition wins.

"Fine," he snaps. "And deal with this piece of junk later. Call a mechanic or whatever, just fix it."

"I will," you promise. "I'll handle it."

You watch him get into the Uber, his posture rigid with irritation. You wave until the taillights disappear around the curve of the complex. The moment he is gone, the act ends.

Sprint back to the car, wrench in hand, and in thirty seconds, the terminal is tightened. The engine roars to life on the first turn. You grab your purse, check the road, and peel out of the driveway.

It is crazy what lengths obsession drives you to.

You push the sedan to eighty on the highway, the mountains of Utah rushing past like gray ghosts. Usually, these peaks make you feel claustrophobic, trapped. But today, with the engine humming and Oliver three cities away, they feel weirdly freeing.

You check the time obsessively. 10:15 AM. You have to be back by 4:00 PM to ensure the car is cool in the driveway and dinner is started before he returns. The math is tight. One traffic jam, one flat tire, and your life is over. 

But fear is secondary to hunger. When you finally reach the store—a dusty, unassuming storefront sandwiched between a dry cleaner and a vape shop—you almost weep. You run inside, ignoring the bell that chimes above the door.

"Hi. The German oils." you breathe to the old man behind the counter. 

He looks at you, startled by your intensity, by the wind-blown hair and the wild look in your eyes as he points to a glass case in the back.

And there they are. Tiny, expensive tubes of pigment. You buy them all. You don't look at the price. You would pay in blood if they asked.

You hold the tubes in your hands as you walk back to the car. Volterra. Malachite. Opening the cap of one and squeezing a tiny bead onto your thumb, it looks exactly like you pictured it. Perfect. 

You get back in the car, your heart hammering a frantic rhythm against your ribs. Three hours to get back. You have to speed, lie, pretend this car never moved. But as you merge back onto the interstate, clutching the plastic bag like it contains the cure for a plague, you smile. A genuine smile that feels foreign to your lips.

You have her eyes in your pocket.

When you finally arrive at the complex, the heavy steel door swings open, and for a fleeting, delusional second, you think you’ve won. You step into the foyer, already reaching to kick the door shut, planning the lies you’ll tell about the mechanic who came and went.

But the world turns sideways.

The shadows in the hallway coalesce into a nightmare. A hand, heavy and calloused, grabs your throat. The force hurls you backward, your skull rebounding off the solid oak of the door with a force that sends a white-hot spike of lightning through your vision. The plastic bag falls from your hand.

"Where," Oliver’s voice is a low vibration, "the fuck were you?"

He doesn't actually want an answer. His fingers sink into the tissue of your neck, his thumb pressing directly onto your windpipe. The world begins to narrow, the edges of your sight fraying into static. 

"I—Oli—" You wheeze, but the oxygen is cut off at the source. Your lungs burn, panic expanding in your chest.

You claw at his wrists, your nails digging into his skin, but it’s like trying to move stone. You can't breathe at all, and his grip is painful.

"The meeting ended early," he snarls, his face inches from yours, his pupils blown wide with the dopamine hit of total control. "I walk in, and my car is gone. The car I was told was dead. And here you come, sneaking in like a goddamn thief."

He leans in closer, his forehead pressing against yours, forcing you to look at him.

"I asked you a question. Where. Were. You?"

"Paint," you wheeze, the word barely a rasp. "...paint."

"Paint?" He lets out a condescending laugh that makes your skin crawl. His thumb presses harder into your carotid artery, and the edges of your vision begin to blur even harder. "You disappeared for six hours... for paint?"

He looks down at the tubes on the floor, then back at you. His expression shifts from anger to a twisted pity.

"You really are pathetic. You’re obsessed with this little hobby, aren’t you? This little fantasy world where you’re an artist and not just my bitch."

He releases his grip on your throat just long enough for you to draw one sobbing breath, only to grab a handful of your hair and yank your head forward. The pain is a sharp scream in your scalp.

"I gave you this place, and this is how you thank me? By lying? By playing games?" His voice drops to a serrated whisper. "Don't ever think you can outsmart me. You belong in this house. You belong to me. You're not an artist, you're a pathetic, lying little bitch."

He throws you, a full body heave. You fly across the narrow hallway, your shoulder hitting the doorframe of the kitchen before you collapse onto the floor. The impact knocks the wind out of you, leaving you gasping, curled in a fetal position on the cold tile.

Oliver stalks toward you. He picks up one of the tubes—the Malachite, the one that looked like her eyes—and crushes it under the heel of his shoe. The metal tube pops, and the expensive pigment oozes out across the floor like blood.

He looms over you, the light from the kitchen casting him in a monstrous silhouette. He reaches down, grabbing your face and squeezing it to force you to look at the ruined paint. "Look at it. That’s your 'life.'. Garbage. Just like you."

He then grips your face harder to make you look at him, your skin burning with his ferocious hand.

"If I find out you’ve been out there meeting someone, or if you ever touch that car again without my say-so, I’ll break your fucking hands. Do you understand me?"

"Yes," you sob, the word a shattered thing. "Yes."

¨Good, now clean this shit up," he says, his voice returning to that terrifyingly calm monotone. "And get dinner started. You have an hour before I’m hungry. Don’t make me ask twice."

He lets go, standing up and wiping his hand on his trousers as if you were something foul he’d accidentally touched. He walks into the living room, the floorboards groaning under his weight, leaving you alone in the dim light of the kitchen.

You stay there for a long time, your throat throbbing with the panicked rhythm of your pulse, staring at the smear of Malachite on the floor. 

It’s precious. 

Even crushed, even ruined, the color is perfect. 

The laundry room of the building is as grey and depressing as the rest of it. A subterranean concrete box, smelling of humid lint and the chemical bite of bleach. The fluorescent lights overhead hum with a migraine inducing frequency.

You are standing by a row of churning machines in the morning, the vibrations rattling through the soles of your sneakers. You chose the maroon turtleneck specifically to hide the handprint—the yellowish-purple ghost of fingers that now decorates your throat like a morbid necklace.

The heavy door opens, and you turn because of the sound.

Your heart stutters. 

Her.

Ellie stands in the doorway. She looks different than the goddess in your paintings, more grounded but no less lethal to your senses. She’s wearing an oversized shirt and a pair of reading glasses perched on the bridge of her nose. Her hair is tied up in that same loose, copper half-knot you’ve memorized, strands of it escaping to frame her face.

She’s holding a plastic laundry basket. It’s empty, save for a single black hoodie she threw in for the sake of the performance. She has known for months that you are here at 9:00 AM every Sunday. She has watched the schedule of your domesticity from the shadows, but today, the air between you is different. She has decided that she needs to start slowly approaching the deer.

The tension in the room is a physical weight, a pressurized vacuum that makes it hard to swallow. For a moment, you don't believe she's real. You think the trauma of last night finally cracked your psyche and you’ve conjured a hallucination out of her scent.

Her eyes—that impossible, stagnant water green—lock onto yours. They track the way you're holding your breath, the way your fingers are white knuckled against the towels.

"Hey," 

Her voice is a low rasp that vibrates in the pit of your stomach. It’s the first time you’ve heard her speak since the stairwell, and the reality of it hits you like a physical blow.

"Hi," you whisper. Your voice is thin, cracked from the pressure of Oliver’s grip the night before.

The silence stretches, filled only by the mechanical sloshing of the washers and the occasional hiss of steam. You turn back to your machine, movements nervous and uncoordinated. Ellie moves to the machine directly next to yours, setting down her basket. She moves with a slow and calm grace, tossing her single black hoodie into the drum as if it were a full load.

"Stupid machines," she mutters, as she fumbles with a coin, dropping it. It rolls toward your feet, silver flashing under the light.

You look at the coin, then up at her, heart a drum in your ears. As you reach down, your fingers brush the cold floor, picking it up. When you hand it to her, your fingertips graze her palm. It’s a spark—an electric jolt that makes your breath hitch. Her skin is cool, but her gaze is a furnace.

"Thanks," she says, her eyes lingering on yours for a second too long before she turns to the dial. "I'm Ellie. 4B. We... bumped into each other a few weeks ago in the hall."

"I remember," you say, your voice sounding foreign to your own ears. "I'm in 4A."

"I know," she says. She catches herself, a small, subtle shift in her expression. "I mean, I've seen you around. Coming and going."

She leans against the machine, crossing her arms. Through her reading glasses, those greens look more analytical. 

"The light in this building is shit," she says, shifting the conversation so seamlessly it makes your head spin. "But the morning sun hits your side of the floor perfectly, I bet it’s good for painting."

Your heart hammers against your ribs. "How did you know I paint?"

"You told me so," she replies simply, pouring the liquid into the machine. "And I saw you carrying a canvas in last week. Or someone was. I assumed it was yours."

It’s a logical explanation, but the way she says it—as if she’s been cataloging the details of your life—makes the air feel thin.

"I do," you whisper. "I mean, I try to."

"You should keep at it," Ellie says. She turns the dial on her machine, the water beginning to hiss into the drum.

The machine beside you enters its spin cycle, the floor vibrating under your feet. The noise is a wall of sound, giving you an excuse not to speak, but the eye contact remains unbroken. She is looking at you with a terrifying sort of devotion, a look that says she sees the artist, the victim, and the stranger all at once.

She offers a small, crooked smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes. It’s a look of unsettling understanding.

"If you ever need to borrow some sugar... or a better lightbulb..." she says, picking up her empty basket. 

"I'm right beside you."

She starts toward the door, then stops, looking back over her shoulder.

"See you around, neighbor."

The door snaps shut, the steel frame echoing in the small concrete room as a final punctuation. You are left standing in the silence, your heart thundering against your ribs with a violence that makes your vision swim. The wounded bird of your heart is beating loudly, threatening to escape your chest and chase after her, following that scent of pine into the hallway.

You feel a strange, hollow lightness, but you attribute it to the adrenaline. The sheer thrill of being seen by her. You even let out an enamored sigh, those ones teenagers let out in movies.

Ellie slips into 4B. She doesn't turn on the lights, she doesn't need them as she leans back against the door, her breath coming in shallow hitches. Her hand reaches into the backpocket of her jeans.

She pulls it out, a scrap of thin, black and lacy fabric. Your panties.

The theft had been a masterpiece of sleight-of-hand. While she had distracted you with the coin, crowded your personal space and forced you to focus on the intensity of her eyes, her fingers had moved with the invisible speed of a career pickpocket. Fished them from the top of your laundry basket, a silent snatch and grab executed in the seconds of your distraction.

She holds the fabric up to the light filtering through the blinds. It’s dirty, unwashed. It carries the intimate biological signature of your body—the scent of your sweat, the chemistry of your skin, the lingering ghost of the person that has filled all the corners of her life.

To Ellie, it is the most precious thing she has ever held. 

She closes her eyes and brings the fabric to her face, inhaling deeply. Her nostrils flare, drinking you in. With a reverent fervor that borders on the religious, she presses the fabric against her lips, eventually pulling it into her mouth. Her tongue tracing the weave of the fibers, tasting the reality of your body.

A guttural moan vibrates in her throat—a purr of pure, unadulterated possession. It is the first piece of you that she has successfully torn away from the world, and from him.

In the dark of her living room, surrounded by the hundreds of photos of you taped to her walls, Ellie stands with your essence between her teeth, a predator savoring the first real taste of the prize.

You are still paralyzed in the laundry room as your gaze, unbidden and magnetic, drifts to the machine next to yours. Inside the glass porthole, the lone black hoodie was being tossed in a violent aquatic ritual. You watched it tumble. It was the only thing she had brought. A decoy, perhaps, or a sacrifice. To you, it was a piece of her left behind in the tall grass.

The final spin cycle died with a high-pitched sound.

You didn't think. Logic had been a casualty of this house long ago, replaced by the primitive instinct to possess. You reached out, desperate, your hand trembling as you yanked open the door of the machine.

The heat hit you first—a humid gust that smelled of the detergent she used. You reached into the drum, your fingers sinking into the heavy fabric. It was warm. Startlingly, unnervingly warm, as if it had retained her body heat despite the cold rinse.

You couldn't help but pull it to your chest, burying your face in the steaming fibers. You inhaled until your lungs burned, catching the sharp, top note of her detergent and, beneath that, a deeper, more elusive scent, clean air of a forest.

With a frantic motion, you shoved the wet hoodie into the very bottom of your own laundry basket, burying it beneath your dry towels. You piled the rest of your clothes on top of it, patting them down until the bulge was invisible.

When you finally reached 4A, you didn't go to the kitchen to start dinner. You ran straight to your studio, the room where her face stared back at you from a dozen canvases.

The fabric was dripping, staining your carpet with circles of water. You didn't care. You sat on the floor, surrounded by your art and your obsession, and draped the wet hoodie over your shoulders. 

You closed your eyes, feeling the weight of her presence pressing down on you, a shroud that offered more protection than anything ever could. You had a piece of her. You held it to your heart, a silent prayer in the dark.

The next morning, the ritual resumes, but the air in the apartment has changed. Today, the world will stop being a sketch. Today, you will finally color the eyes that haunt you, granting sight to the hollow irises that have stared at you from the void of the canvas for months. You are about to exhume the soul you could never possess.

You begin the moment the door clicks shut behind Oliver. You haven't spoken a word to him since the violence of two days ago; you have existed as a ghost in your own home, drifting through a Sunday spent under his surveillance. But now, the silence is yours.

Across the shaft, Ellie is already at her station. She is a cartographer of your habits, a scholar of your routine. She knows the exact sound of your floorboards, the precise minute the kettle whistles, and the sound of Oliver’s departure. She readies her camera with the precision of a sniper, settling behind the lens.

In the studio, you approach the altar of your easel. You retrieve the tubes of Volterra Green and Malachite—the ones he tried to crush, the ones that cost you the skin on your neck. You squeeze the wounded tubes, and as the pigments swirl together on the palette, the miracle occurs.

It is the color of a forest floor after a torrential rain. It is the color of stagnant water. It is her.

Your eyes ignite with bliss. The brush becomes an extension of your pulse, darting from palette to canvas with hunger. As you work, your mind is a sanctuary. You think of the black hoodie, now dry and hidden, a heavy secret draped in the back of your closet. You think of the rasping music of her voice—“If you need me, I’m right beside you.”

How kind. How divine. How perfect. You imagine a life where the universe finally grants you a truce, where the hands on your neck are hers—gentle, creative, understanding—and not the leaden weight of his possession. You smile at the canvas, a genuine, fractured expression of love, even as your bruised limbs ache with every stroke.

Ellie watches through the glass, her heart a hammer. She zooms in, her knuckles white against the camera body. She sees you smiling—a look she has never seen you have and the frantic movement of your hand, the green smear on the palette.

For a moment, a jagged jealousy pierces her. She can’t see the image, only your devotion to it. She wonders, with a sickening dread, who or what you are painting. Is it a memory? A past lover? Another person she failed to erase? 

But a sudden cloud rolls over Silver Lake, plunging the room into a gray gloom. Frustrated, you stop. You need the light to see the nuance of the colors. Grabbing the heavy wooden frame and flipping the canvas, you turn it toward the window to catch the last dying rays of the sun.

Ellie’s finger freezes on the shutter. Through the lens, the image snaps into a high definition clarity. It isn't a muse. It isn't a memory.

It is her.

Her face, rendered with a level of intimacy that feels as a physical touch. She sees the exact tilt of her own nose, the constellation of freckles she hides with her hair, the specific, defiant curve of her lips. And the eyes. The green is so accurate, so vibrantly alive, that she feels as if she is looking into her own soul through your hands.

The camera nearly slips from her grasp. A hundred new feelings—raw, violent, and holy—erupt in her chest at once. This is why you locked the door. This is why you scoured the earth for pigment. 

She retreats into the shadows of 4B, her back hitting the wall, her breath coming in ragged gasps. She thinks of the hoodie she thought she’d lost to some random thief in the laundry room. A predatory realization dawns on her. It wasn't a stranger.

It was you. You took her, just as she took you.

In the dark, Ellie begins to laugh—half-sob and half-triumph. 

She always knew you were extraordinary, but she had certainly underestimated how deep your shared connection actually was meant to be. You have been building a shrine for her in the dark, just as she has been building one for you.

The original timeline of her plan was incinerated the moment she saw her own green eyes staring back from your canvas.

For the next forty-eight hours following the sighting, Ellie does not sleep. Her apartment becomes a cathedral of divine justification. The guilt that should accompany the snapping of brittle bones or the disposal of human cargo in a freezing lake dissolves completely, washed away by the holy water of destiny. She is absolved. 

Everything sin her hands have commited—every lock picked, every life ruined, every boundary shattered—has been forgiven by the sheer, undeniable gravity of your union. Washed clean in the holy waters of this shared madness.

She always knew. She knew from the grocery store aisle a year ago that there was a galaxy inside you that the rest of the world was too blind to see. A world that Oliver only wanted to possess and that your parents only saw as a quiet daughter. She was the only one who could truly understand you. 

She was no longer your savior, nor just a sick stalker. She was a collaborator in a masterpiece of destiny.

The deer is no longer just grazing near the trap. The deer has put its teeth on the wire, and it is time to pull it taut. The haunt is over, and the union has begun.

The acceleration begins on a Tuesday.

You opened your door to find a package. Inside, nestled in black velvet, was a set of professional-grade brushes made of the finest Kolinsky sable. The handles are polished, midnight-blue wood, perfectly weighted, cool to the touch. They are breathtakingly expensive, and tucked between them, a cream-colored card. The handwriting is pressed so deeply into the paper you can feel the indentations of the pen.

A soul like yours shouldn't have to work with blunt tools. I see you.

Your heart drops into your stomach. I see you. You have no idea who left it which makes your mind race through impossible scenarios. Did the art store owner track you down? Did Oliver find out and is playing some twisted psychological game to break you? Or is it a stranger? You touch the bristles of the brushes and a terrified thrill shoots up your arm.

You stood in the hallway looking left, then right. The hallway was a canyon of closed doors and carpet, yet you felt a prickle of heat on the back of your neck, the unmistakable weight of a gaze.

Over the next fourteen days, the world outside your apartment begins to shrink.

You begin to feel the weight of a pair of eyes on you wherever you go.

Everywhere you went, the perimeter of your safety felt breached by an invisible, benevolent pressure. On Thursday, you were at the local market, reaching for a carton of eggs, when you saw a flash of copper hair at the end of the aisle. By the time you turned, there was only the rattle of a shopping cart and an elderly woman.

Three days later, you are walking to take the trash out. The concrete echoes with your footsteps as you hear a second set of footsteps that perfectly match your cadence. You stop. They stop. You look over your shoulder into the gloom of the concrete pillars, seeing nothing but the shadows. The darkness feels alive. Someone is standing just beyond the veil, breathing your air, watching the fast rise and fall of your chest.

Ellie is closing the distance, no longer satisfied with the view from her window. 

You became a creature of pure nerves. At home, Oliver was a dull roar of irritation, his presence a gray fog you drifted through, but the "other" presence was an electric ghost. You felt her when you brushed your teeth, you felt her when you lay in bed, staring at the ceiling while Oliver slept his entitled sleep.

The paranoia began to bloom like a dark flower. You started checking the locks twice, then three times, not out of fear of a break-in, but because the boundary between your apartment and hers felt increasingly porous, as if the walls were made of gauze. You would catch your own reflection in the window and for a split second, you wouldn't see your face—you would see her eyes, green and stagnant, watching you from the glass.

Isolation only amplifies terror, but underneath the terror, something darker is taking root. When Oliver yells at you for a spot on the glassware, his voice sounds hollow. His static is being overpowered by the invisible current of your watcher.

You find yourself wearing the stolen black hoodie every time you are alone. You find yourself using the anonymous sable brushes, the strokes on the canvas feeling like an intimate conversation with an entity. You are terrified that you are being hunted, but for the first time in your life, you are utterly, entirely the center of someone’s universe. You are frightened, but you are finally, truly seen.

Ellie had moved from the shadows to the periphery, and now she was standing on the very edge of the light. She had watched you unwrap her gifts, she had watched you smell her clothes, she had watched you flinch at every shadow, and her heart had swelled with a kind of motherly pride.

You were being caught. 

Over the next three weeks, the escalation is immediate. The space outside your door becomes an altar, and you are its sole deity.

The gifts start to evolve from the practical to the intimate. A vintage copy of a poetry book you had only briefly thumbed through at a secondhand bookstore . You hadn't bought it, or mentioned it to anyone, yet there it was on your mat. A fer marking the exact poem you have been reading. A week later, on a morning he had grabbed your wrist to have left a bracelet of bruises, you found a glass vial of linseed oil sitting by the door frame. 

You stop fearing the watcher. A sick, beautiful dependency takes root in the dead soil of your heart. You crave that surveillance. When Oliver's temper flares, when he backs you into the kitchen counter and spits his venom, you no longer dissociate. You look at the wall shared with 4B and imagine her standing on the other side, her ear pressed to the plaster and her hands turning into fists. You survive his cruelty by wrapping yourself in the invisible armor of care. 

You are no longer a victim, you are a prized possession being temporarily and unjustly held by a thief. 

After finishing the biggest portrait of her face, her colored irises stare back at you with omniscient love.

And the final act of the plan breaks.

The sky over Silver Lake has turned into a torrential purple, and rain is lashing against the windows. Oliver is gone, an overnight conference in Denver. The apartment is entirely yours. You are standing in the kitchen, listening to the storm, when you hear it. 

A sound coming from the foyer. There, resting on the tile just inside your threshold, is a black envelope. It has been slid under the door, a breach of the boundary you have guarded.

Your hands shake as you pick it up. The paper is textured and thick, smelling faintly of chemicals and your own perfume. You break the wax seal.

Inside is a single photograph that has been developed just now. It takes your breath away. A picture of you, taken through the crack of the blind some minutes ago. But it doesn't look predatory or wrong, it is a masterpiece of lighting and shadow. You don't look broken, or bruised, or afraid. Framed by the lens of absolute devotion, you look like a saint. Ethereal. You look loved. Behind it, is a handwriting the same as the other notes that accompanied the gifts. 

The storm is too loud to weather alone, your sanctuary is right beside you. The door is unlocked. Come to me.

You stand frozen for a long time. Looking back at the apartment, the cage built around you, the walls that have absorbed your sorrow and echoed with his screams and your apologies. Then, you look at the door that separates you from the abyss.

The answer is simple. After living with the devil, you don't fear anything else. You don't put on shoes, or grab your keys as you unlock your door. The hallway is empty, illuminated by the flickering and jaundiced light of the dying bulb. And right beside you, the door to 4B is slightly ajar, a sliver of absolute darkness calling your name.

The hinge makes no sound and it yields as you push the oiled silence of a vault. The air inside is different from the sterile purgatory of your place, it is amniotic and thick with the scent of fixative chemicals, pine needles and storm.

The door clicks shut behind you.

“You came.”

The voice comes from the immediate darkness to your right. It is the tectonic murmur that bypasses your ears and vibrates directly in the ribs caging your heart. She was waiting right beside the door, standing in the pitch black, listening to the erratic rhythm of your breathing.

Before you can turn, or gasp, resounds the click of the light switch.

The light flickers to life, a series of warm, targeted gallery track lights. They do not illuminate the furniture or decoration, they illuminate the walls. Your stomach drops out of your body, falling into a bottomless pit. The breath is violently punched from your lungs.

The walls do not exist. They have been entirely eradicated and replaced with a floor to ceiling mosaic of your existence. There is no blank space or visible plaster visible between the hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of photographs taped edge to edge. A panopticon of your like, a taxonomy of your captivity in Silver Lake.

You stagger backwards, your shoulders hitting the solid wood of the closed door. 

You are everywhere.

There is a glossy eight by ten of you on the day the moving truck arrived, looking small and defeated holding a box of silver kitchenware. A candid shot of you in the laundry room, your head tilted back as if praying for an escape. An intimate sequence of you painting, the progression of the malachite green, the exact moment the light hit your face as you smiled at her portrait.

Darker photos that make your knees threaten to buckle, she has documented the violence. Zoomed in, high definition captures of bruises blooming on your body, a picture of you crying on the kitchen floor while a blurred silhouette stands over you. In every photo where Oliver appears, his face has been scratched out with a ballpoint pen, his existence reduced to a black boid, leaving only you in agonizing sharp focus.

“I know it's a lot to process.” Ellie finally says.

She steps into your line of sight. Wearing a simple white tank top with dark jeans, her copper hair falling loose around her the face of your paintings. She doesn't look ashamed, or a monster caught in the act. She looks like a devout priestess welcoming a pilgrim into her temple.

“I…” your voice is broken, a reedy whisper. You can't tear your eyes away from a photo of yourself sleeping, taken through the sliver of your bedroom window. “How… how long…?”

“Since the first day,” she answers softly. Her feet make no sound as she closes the distance between you, moving with the grace of a predator. “Even before we met.”

“You have been watching me…” you choke out. A tear hot with terror and awe spills over your eyelashes, stretching down your cheek. “Every day.”

“I haven't been just watching you,” she corrects, her voice a serrated grasp. She stops inches from you and the heat that radiates from her body is pressure in itself. “I have been learning from you, bearing witness. I see the god nobody else but me can see in you.”

You tremble, pressing yourself harder against the door. Ellie reaches out, and you flinch, expecting the bone bruising grip of him.

But her touch is revelation. Her fingertips, calloused from the camera dial, brush lightly against the fabric of your turtle neck. Her hand traces the line of your arm, her eyes transfixed.

A smile curves her lips, a one of total awe.

“You are so, so beautiful,” she whispers, her gaze now meeting yours, the green of her irises shining with hunger. 

She steps into your space, her chest almost brushing yours as she lifts her palm to your face, her thumb gently wiping away the tear on your cheek.

“You don't have to be afraid anymore,” Her lips are so close to yours that you breathe in her words. “He’s never going to touch you again.”

The expected reaction of any logical human being would be to scream. To claw at the door, run into the stormy night, to find a police officer and stutter out a tale of stalking and madness. To scream at Ellie that she is a sick monster freak.

But as you stand against the door, surrounded by the dizzying evidence of your own stalking, you  realize with a cold crystalline clarity that logic abandoned you years, years ago.

It is the most terrifying thing you have ever seen. Yet, underneath the icy spike of fear, a wretched flower of relief blossoms in your chest. You are not invisible. You have never been invisible. Every tear, stroke of a brush, and silent scream in the dark—she has caught it all. And she has kept it, and deemed it worthy of a museum.

You look at the photos with a profound and wretched awe. In the amber glow of those lights, the pictures do not feel like a violation to you. For the first time in your life, you aren't a background character in some else's sterile American Dream. You are the absolute center of a universe. You feel necrotic safety in the predator's touch. The warmth of her thumb against your skin is the most loved you have felt in years. 

Nobody has loved you, not as much as Ellie, in her own twisted but divine kind of way.

“I´ve been painting you, Ellie,” you whisper, and the confession tastes bitter and sweet against your tongue. You have nothing to hide anymore. “Every day.”

“I know,” she murmurs, stepping even closer. Her scent envelops you, drowning out the sterile memory of 4A. “I saw.”

She reaches up and her hands, gentle as if touching the most precious of things, cup your face. She looks at you as if you were holy, delicate yet incomprehensibly powerful. 

“There is something so… extraordinary about you. I knew you would understand me the same way I understand you. We’re meant to be. And he…”

Her face changes, a violent sparkle crossing her eyes. Her thumb brushes lightly over the fading yellowish bruise she knows hides under your turtleneck. 

“...he would never understand the beauty that is within you. He is a parasite that feeds on you.” Her gaze drops to your lips, then to your eyes. “But he’ll be gone. You just have to say yes, and we can be together. I’ll handle everything."

The room is silent save for the drumming of the storm outside that rattles against the windows. You stare into those stagnant water depths, feeling the sheer gravity of what she is offering you.

“What…” Your voice trembles, a fragile thread in the intense air. “What do you mean?”

Ellie offers a smile that is devoid of light. It is a promise written in blood.

“I know you know what I mean,” she murmurs, her forehead coming to rest against your own. The intimacy of it makes your heart almost stop beating. “I know you want the same as I do. You want him dead and buried. And I would do that for you, I´ll make sure to wipe him from the earth. You don't have to move a single finger.”

She is offering you salvation. She is offering to absorb the sin, to become the monster so you can remain her muse. It is the ultimate act of twisted absolute devotion.

But surrounded by the shire of your suffering and sorrow, something ancient and dormant snaps awake within you. You think of his hands on your throat, of the sleepless nights, on the years long torture he has put you through, shrinking yourself until you were nothing but a ghost. He stripped you of everything you were, only to make you a dead woman inside a living body that no longer belonged to any soul.

You look at the wall of photos, specifically the ones where Oliver's face has been scratched into  a black void.

An unfamiliar sensation floods your veins. It isn't fear, or terror, or pain. It is absolute power.

“No.” 

The word is soft, but it cuts through the air akin to a guillotine cutting a head. Ellie's eyes widen slightly, a flicker of confusion breaking the perfect and calm stillness of her features. She pulls back just an inch to look at you, her hands still cradling your face.

You reach up and place your hands over hers. Your fingers interlock, and you feel the sudden spike of her pulse against your palms.

“I want to do it myself.” 

The silence that follows is deafening. She stares at you, your gazes almost forming sparkles in the air with an electric and unholy communion. The confusion of her eyes fades away only to be replaced by profound and staggering worship. She hasn't just captured a muse, she has awakened a partner.

Gravity is what follows after. Ellie surges forward, her hands sliding from your cheeks to tangle fiercely in your hair, pulling you flush against her. The kiss isn't tender, or sweet, it's the collision of two starving animals. It tastes of saltwater, adrenaline and the tang of absolute ruin. She kisses you, pulling the breath out your lungs and the blood out your veins as if trying to fuse your bodies together. You kiss her back, your fingers gripping the worn cotton of her tank top, anchoring yourself to the only real thing in this fucked up world.

When you finally pull away, her chest is heaving, your forehead rests against hers, and you both breathe into the murder in the space between you.

What happens then is that she outlines the plan. It was originally designed to be sterile. For months, Ellie had tracked the telemetry of Oliver's life, mapping his blind spots, his strengths and weaknesses. The scheme relied on his arrogance and his routine. She had charted the treacherous, winding crayon roads he took through the hills to bypass traffic. The concept was clean, an untraceable puncture to the brake lines of his sedan coupled with sedatives slipped into his morning travel mug to blur his reflexes.

He would plunge over the guardrail in a haze, the impact spontaneous. To his family, to the local police, it would be framed as a pedestrian tragedy. An overworked, stressed executive who took a curve too fast.

But as you listen to her scheme, the cold power inside you beats. A quick death is a privilege Oliver hasn't earned. You don't want a sudden plunge in the dark, you don't want just a knife slipped quickly under his back in a fleeting burst of rage. 

“No.” you say, your voice breaking the hypnotic rhythm of her explanation. Your tone sounds foreign to your ears, steady and calm. “I don't want it to be an accident, I want him to feel it. I want to take him apart just like he took me apart, to watch his eyes when he realizes he has no power left. I want to torture him.”

Ellie looks at you, her breath quickening. A tremor of awe crosses her features and her green gleam with euphoric pride.

The plan evolves instantly, warping from a clean assassination into a chef d'oeuvre of cruelty. You will use the very apartment he paid for, the cage he built to trap you, as the slaughterhouse. The sedative Ellie procured will still be used, but not to kill him. It will be used to paralyze him. And for hours, in the plastic sheeting of your studio, you will dismantle his arrogance piece by piece.

When the vengeance is finally executed, when there is nothing left but his ruined meat and silence, the fire will hide your sins.

Under the cover of the 3:00AM dead hour, you will dress the remains and drag him into the trunk of his sedan. You will drive to the deepest, most desolate ridge of the forest, a place where the ravines swallow light. Place him in the driver's seat, douse the upholstery in gasoline, and leave a half empty bottle of his expensive bourbon. A pushed car, a steep drop, and a single match.

The ensuing inferno will burn with the ferocity of a cremation. The heat will obliterate the ligature marks, incinerate the lacerations, and melt away his suffering. By the time the fire deparment extinguishes the smoking metal at the bottom of the canyon, there will be no forensic evidence of torture, only charred bone and dental records.

His family, cold and status obsessed people, will readily accept the narrative of a man who cracked under corporate pressure. The police will see the skid marks, the whiskey bottle, and the fiery wreck, and close the file as a tragic suicide. They won't dig deeper. They won't look for conspiracy. They will only see a grieving widow in black, weeping tears that the world will mistake for sorrow, completely.

Ellie traces your lower lip with her thumb, a proud smile blooming across her face.

“My beautiful girl,” she whispers, “Your wishes are my commands.”

And just like you planned, by next Friday the trap is laid with the mundane precision of his routine. You and Ellie have been meeting every day that followed, planning the murder and falling more twistedly in love with each other. The studio is prepped, the floor lined with translucent painter’s plastic. The Kolinsky sable brushes rest on a silver tray.

At 6:15 PM, the door of 4A opens.

Oliver steps into the apartment. He drops his leather briefcase, and doesn't even look at you as he walks into the kitchen, his tie already loosened. 

“Pour me a drink,” he demands, rubbing the back of his neck. “The meeting was a nightmare.”

You move to the crystal decanter with the calmness of someone who knows everything will end soon. You pour three fingers of his favorite whiskey, swirling it over a single cube of ice. Into the liquid, lays stirred the colorless and tasteless paralytic Ellie produced. A chemical designed to sever the brain's commands to the muscles while leaving the sensory nervous system entirely and agonically intact.

He takes the glass without a thank you, throwing back half the liquid in a single swallow.

“Dinner ready?”

“Almost.”

It takes exactly four minutes.

You watch his dominance collapse with delight. First, there was a slight tremor in his hand. The crystal glass slips from his grip, shattering against the hardwood and splashing the amber venom across the rug. Oliver looks down, his eyebrows furrowing in irritation, and tries to step forward. His knee buckles.

A painful sound escapes his throat as he crashes to the floor, dead weight pulling him down. Trying to push himself up, he realizes his arms are leaden, useless meat.

“What... What have you done to me?! You fucking—help me!” The words are slurred, his tongue suddenly thick and uncooperative in his mouth. He thrashes his head, the only part of him that still freely moves, his eyes wide. “Call an ambulance! Are you deaf, you stupid bitch? I’m having a stroke!”

You stand completely still, looking down at him from an immense, unbridgeable height. 

“Why the fuck would I help you?” 

Your voice is cold and final. 

“I’ll kill you,” he spits, saliva bubbling at the corner of his lips as the chemical begins to sever the connection to his diaphragm. “If you don’t call an ambulance right now... I swear to God, I will break your fucking neck.”

“You already tried that,” you whisper, your fingers grazing the high collar of your turtleneck, tracing the ghost of his handprint. “You’ve been breaking my neck for years.”

“Please...” The threat suddenly dissolves into a wet gasp. The arrogance is draining out of him, replaced by the realization of his own mortality. He is a king suddenly exiled from his own nervous system. “Please. My heart... I can't feel my hands. Please!”

“I know,” you answer, the absolute calm in your voice acting as a mirror to his panic. “You’re not having a stroke. You’re just finally experiencing what it feels like to be completely powerless.”

You take a single step closer. The toe of your shoe stops inches from his paralyzed fingertips.

“You took my soul, you took my life, you took my will,” you say, the words falling like stones into the quiet room. “So now, I will take everything else.”

Oliver’s breathing is shallow. A single tear of pure fear tracks down his cheek.

“I´m not only going to kill you, Oliver,” you state, delivering the verdict with the finality of a death sentence. “I´m going to take you apart. And I want you to know, in this last time you still have, that it was me. The one you thought was too weak to fight back. You are going to suffer all the pain I´ve suffered for years, all at once. And there is nothing, nothing you can do to stop it.”

He tries to scream your name, to scream for help, for mercy, to beg to a god he never believed in, but his jaw goes completely slack. His vocal cords are paralyzed, the final thread of his sovereignty cut by the poison in his whiskey. 

And that is when Ellie steps out from the shadows of the hallway, a heavy iron hammer in her hand, her green eyes fixed on the man she is about to help you erase.

She moves without a sound, a dark angel in her jeans and shirt. Stepping over the spilled drink, his eyes lock onto her, dilating with absolute panic. He realized right then he had stepped into a snare.

Together, you drag him. His heavy body sliders uselessly across the floor, heels leaving marks on the wood. You pull him into the room he mocked and heave him onto the center of the plastic sheeting. The lights overhead snap on, casting him in a harsh interrogation glare.

Oliver is a statue made of flesh. He can't scream, or twitch, but the terror in his pupils tells you he feels everything. 

“What would you like to start with, darling?” Ellie asks, kneeling gracefully beside his paralyzed form. She holds the heavy iron hammer loosely in her grip. It is a brutal and unrefined tool, a stark contrast to the delicate brushes resting on the tray nearby.

“I don't know…” you murmur, “So many possibilities… so many things I would like to do. I can't even decide what I want to do first.”

You look down at the man who curated your misery. You look at the body that used its sheer mass to intimidate you, the anatomy he wielded as a weapon to enforce his laws. You lift your feet, wearing the combat boots he always hated—the ones he said made you look "unrefined."

You kick the heel of it directly over his groin with a force that you didn't even know you had inside. Then slowly stand over it, shifting your weight, pressing down into the soft tissue, letting gravity and the rubber sole do the work of a thousand needles.

Oliver’s eyes bulge until the blood vessels in his sclera threaten to burst. The muscles in his neck strain against the chains of the paralytic. A single, agonizing tear of torment spills over the bridge of his nose. 

A sound bubbles up from the very bottom of your chest. It bypasses the filter of the woman Oliver trained you to be. It starts as a ragged gasp and blooms into a laugh.

It is an unhinged, beautiful sound. It echoes off the plastic sheeting and the canvases, rich and melodious. A sound that has never, ever left your mouth. A laugh that shakes the walls in pure entertainment. You look down at him, your heel grinding down an inch more, and you howl right into his suffocating face. You have never felt such a profound, intoxicating rush of bliss. You are utterly and completely alive.

“You wanted a family so badly, didn't you, Oliver?” you whisper, your laughter tapering into a breathless smile. “Three little kids and a stupid fucking dog.”

You lean forward, resting your hands on your knees, bringing your face inches from his. The smell of his fear is a potent perfume.

“How does it feel now, huh?” you ask, your voice dropping to a mocking whisper. “Does it feel like a cage? Does it feel like you can’t fucking breathe?”

Ellie watches you from across his body, her chest heaving, her green eyes dark with an unspeakable, reverent hunger. She is intoxicated by your cruelty. She shifts her grip on the iron hammer, the metal handle warming against her palm.

“His hands, I think,” Ellie suggests. “He shouldn't be allowed to have hands anymore. Not after what they did to you.”

“Good idea. Give me the hammer.” you say.

She hands you the tool in less than a second. And without any warning, without the dramatic pause he would have demanded or a one liner, you bring it down on his right hand. 

The sound of it shattering is a wet and sickening crack that echoes off the canvases.

His body arches violently, a biological spasm of unadulterated agony but no sound escapes his slack mouth. A silent scream rips at his paralyzed vocal cords, his face contorting into a mask of absolute horror.

The hammer strikes again.

“Does it hurt, Oliver? Do you want me to fucking stop?!” You scream as you destroy the knuckles that bruised you, pulverize the fingers that squeezed you. “I asked you a fucking question! Why so quiet now?!”

You bring the hammer down, over and over, finding a hypnotic rhythm in the destruction. You absorb his pain as parched earth absorbing torrential rain. Your eyes go completely dark, pupil swallowing iris, dilated with the narcotic high of vengeance.

You then go for the other hand, the hammer turning it into gore and bone dust. Blood splashes across the plastic sheeting. It splatters onto the silver tray and hits the toe of your heavy boots. A crimson mist mists the air, the metallic scent of iron violently colliding with the smells of linseed oil and pine. You are dismantling your abuser, turning the hands that built your cage into unrecognizable ruined meat.

You swing harder, going for his right knee. His eyes are rolling back from the pain. The iron head of the hammer becomes an extension of your own soul, completely devoid of mercy.

Vermillion droplets hit the pristine white of the canvases stacked nearby. It looks like art. It looks like the birth of an entirely new you.

You stop only when your arms can’t go any further, your chest heaving, your hair clinging to your damp forehead. Your breath comes in blissed out gasps. You look down at the wreckage of his limbs, then trace the line of his arm up to his face.

Oliver’s eyes are rolling in their sockets, completely unmoored by the shock and the trauma. He is weeping silently, a steady stream of tears cutting through the sweat on his temples. The arrogance is entirely gone. He is nothing but a fragile, dying animal caught in a trap he funded with his own bank account.

You let the bloody hammer drop. 

Ellie is still kneeling there, blood droplets have sprayed her, illuminated by the harsh lights. She is looking at you with an admiration that borders on the fanatical. She sees a goddess who has finally stepped off her pedestal to wage war.

She reaches out, her clean hand capturing yours—the hand that just shattered bones. She brings your knuckles to her lips and kisses the skin just above the splatters of his blood.

"Perfect," she whispers. "You are magnificent."

"And it is only starting, my love," you reply. "Hand me the knife."

Ellie’s smile widens, a curve of pure veneration. She reaches into the heavy leather roll she brought across the hall. She bypasses the delicate sable brushes and withdraws a heavy, steel hunting knife and places the hilt into your bloody palm. The exchange feels as intimate as a wedding ring slipped onto your finger.

You violently separate him from his armor. The shears bite into the expensive Italian wool of his suit, the crisp cotton of his tailored shirt. You cut away the fabric of his ego, exposing the vulnerable skin beneath. He tries to arch away from the cold metal scraping against his chest, but the paralytic holds him pinned to the floor. The only movement is the bird-like fluttering of his heart and his pupils, moving.

You raise the knife.

You do not butcher him. Butchery is mindless; butchery is what he did to your spirit. What you do is a meticulous dissection. You treat the blade like a palette knife, making slow, deliberate strokes. You carve away the perfection he prized so highly. The steel parts his skin with a whispered hiss.

Oliver’s eyes dilate until the irises are entirely swallowed by black, tears all over his face and the ground. 

Blood wells up from the precise, shallow cuts, bright red under the lights. It spills over his collarbones, pooling in the hollows of his chest, dripping onto the plastic sheeting. 

"You are garbage" you murmur, the blade tracing a very, very slow crimson line down his sternum. "You´re a pathetic little bitch. You are a useless, stupid, piece of shit. You are nothing. You are dumb, worthless, just my bitch. Those were all things you’ve said to me. But look at you now, Oliver. You are my bitch now."

You lean in, your face inches from his, letting him see the merciless void in your eyes, and laugh. You are a mirror reflecting his own cruelty back at him magnified a thousand times.

Dropping the knife, you pick up the heavy wooden palette. Dip the thickest sable brush directly into the pool of blood and open tissue resting in the hollow of his chest. You mix his life force directly into the heavy mound of Volterra Green and Malachite.

The color morphs into something entirely new—a dark, bruised, necrotic shade of green.

"Dont cry," you say, your voice a soothing lullaby as you raise the dripping brush to his face. "I’m going to make you into art. And then, I’m going to light your body on fire."

You press the brush against his forehead. The mixture of cold oil paint and hot blood smears across his skin. You paint over his brow, down the bridge of his nose, sealing his fate behind a mask of wet pigment. 

“Don’t you look so, so pretty Oliver dearest?” you mock, smiling with evil.

Ellie watches from the periphery, her breathing shallow and ragged with a dark high, her hands resting on your shoulders like a guardian angel of vengeance.

The floor is a sea of red and green. Oliver’s breathing grows incredibly shallow, his unblinking eyes tracking the brush until the bloody paint is dragged directly over his vision, finally plunging him into total, agonizing darkness.

And only now, the real work begins. 

The clock in the wall ticks, making the passage of six hours. Outside, the storm raging over Silver Lake mirrors the tempest inside 4A. Lighting flashes through the blinds, illuminating a scene that has transcended murder and became an avant grade complete ruin of a human body.

You don't stop, not even for a minute. The initial rush of adrenaline settles into a cold and methodical take down. You turn mundane objects into the instruments of his unmaking.

You return to the kitchen, leaving bloody footprints in the floorboards and the beige carpet he loved so much. You open the drawers, and bring back the silver forks from the dining set he bought to impress his colleagues. You bring back the paring knives, and the kitchen scissors.

For six hours, you take him apart.

The sounds in the studio become a symphony of destruction. The sharp snip of the shears, the heavy thud of the hammer, the metallic clatter of the silverware dropped onto the blood soaked plastic. You carve your pain in his skin, use the forks to stab him, to drag the viscous mixture of paint and blood across his butchered chest.

You punish the muscles that cage you. Ruin the throat that yelled at you. Reduce the man who thought he was a god into a ruined mass of weeping flesh, bone, and blood.

Every time your arms grow heavy, every time the physical exhaustion threatens to slow you down, Ellie is there. She steps into the red sea, and takes the tool of your hands to do her own work. She whispers validating litanies into your ear. She wipes the sweat from your brow with the hem of her shirt. She feeds you the instruments, placid the cold handles into your slippery crimson hands, a surgical assistant in a theater of absolute madness.

“Kepp going,” She murmurs, her lips brushing your temple as you drive a blade down. “You are doing perfect, my muse.”

You do not recognize yourself anymore, and you adore it. The timid and shrinking woman died hours ago, the creature that remains is a feral and starving deity finally gorging herself on justice.

By the time the clock marks 3:00AM, the room is unrecognizable. 

Oliver is barely a landscape of a human being. The paralytic has long since merged with the catastrophic shock of the intense trauma and his chest, buried under layers of destroyed tissue and dark green oil paint, barely stutters.

You are standing over him, the iron knife gripped loosely in your hand, your chest heaving. You watch his pathetic struggle to survive. His mouth, smeared with the Volterra green, opens slightly. A wet, rattling sound vibrates in his throat. Honestly, it's impressive that he is not dead.

Not yet.

The final thread of his existence hangs there still. You look down at the man that hit you, traumatized you, bruised you, raped you, lobotomized you, violated you, turned you into a ghost on your own life. The fear in his unblinking eyes has finally glazed over into an uncomprehending void.

“Goodbye, Oliver.” you say, final. “Have fun burning in hell.”

Your grip tightens on the hilt as you stab him. You unleash every tear you have shred caused by him.

The first strike sinks deep into his chest, burying the blade to the hilt. The second tears through his ribs. The third, the fourth, the fifth. You lose count within seconds. The artistic torture of the past hours dissolves into a frenzeid crescendo of rage. Ten times. Twenty. 

His blood splashes upward in arcs. It hits your face, painting your cheeks with crimson freckles. It spatters against your eyelashes, blurring your vision in a red haze. It completely soaks your clothes. But you don't care. You welcome the warmth of it against your skin, feeling like a baptism. 

You keep stabbing long after the rattling in his throat stops. You keep stabbing until the muscles in your shoulders burn and your wrist aches from the force of it. 

When your arm finally gives out, you collapse back onto your heels, gasping for air in the center of the red and green sea. The knife slips from your blood slicked fingers, clattering against the floor.

The silence is absolute. The trap has snapped shut. The cage is broken. The monster is dead.

From the periphery of the shadows, Ellie moves.

She steps over the threshold of the plastic sheeting.The dark red liquid curls around her toes, staining her pale skin, but she walks through it with the serene grace, like wading into a river.

Before she reaches you, she stops. Her hands, steady and purposeful, rise to her face. She is holding the camera—the exact same lens that documented your misery, your bruising, and your quiet weeping through the crack in the blinds for months. But she is no longer photographing a victim.

She raises the viewfinder to her eye.

The mechanical whine of the flash charging cuts through the air of the slaughterhouse. You do not look away, do not hide your face. You kneel there in the sea of red and green, your hair matted to your forehead, your cheeks painted with the splatter of your liberation. Proud.

Click.

The blinding white light explodes in the dark studio, freezing the violence, the paint, and your hollowed-out, obsidian eyes into a single fraction of a second. 

Ellie lowers the camera slowly as the digital image reveals itself. Her green eyes are wide, glassy with fanatical amazement. She looks at you the way a mortal looks at a miracle. You are no longer just her obsession, you are the masterpiece she helped chisel out of marble.

She lets the expensive camera drop from her hands. It hits the blood-soaked plastic, forgotten.

Falling to her knees right in front of you, she reaches out, her trembling hands framing your bloody face. Her thumbs gently stroke your cheekbones, smearing his blood across your skin.

"I love you," 

An oath of fealty. 

She pulls you forward, capturing your lips in a bruising kiss. It tastes of the intoxicating adrenaline of murder. It is a violent, sealing covenant between two predators who have finally claimed their shared territory. You kiss her back, your bloody hands coming up to grip her white tank top. 

The drive to the forest is a silent and suspended purgatory. The storm that battered Silver Lake has stopped, leaving the mountain air freezing and thick with the scent of wet soil. The heavy trunk of Oliver's pristine sedan sags with the weight of his carnaged corpse.

When you reach the desolate overlook—a place where the road crumbles into a lightless ravine—the world feels entirely empty. It is just you, Ellie, and the ghost you're about to burn.

You drag him into the driver's seat, his body already stiff, the canvas of green and dried blood hidden beneath a suit you hastily dressed him in. The chemical fumes burn your eyes as you splash the leather upholstery he loved, over the dashboard and his lap. You toss the half empty bottle of bourbon onto the passenger seat.

Ellie stands beside you as you step back, her shoulder brushing yours. She hands you a single, wooden match. 

Without a word, you strike the match. The sulfurous hiss is the loudest sound in the forest. A tiny, fragile teardrop of orange flame dances at your fingertips, illuminating the smeared blood drying on your knuckles. You look at the spark realizing it is the final period at the end of Oliver's sentence.

You flick it through the open driver's side window. 

The ignition is instantaneous. Fire sucks the oxygen from the air as the gasoline catches.

It detonates into a ravenous and blinding inferno. The flames leap up the upholstery, curling hungrily around the steering wheel, licking at the roof of the cabin. The heat melts away the suffering, burning the paint, turning the shredded tissue into ash and reducing the monster to nothing but an anonymous charred bone.

The heat pushes out in waves, forcing you to take multiple steps back. 

Ellie reaches out in the dark, and her fingers find yours. You interlock your hands, her palm sliding perfectly against yours. The grip is ironclad, a start to your new lives.

You stand there, transfixed. The orange and yellow light reflects brilliantly in Ellie's stagnant water eyes. You don't look away from the burning cage. The fire crackles and spits, the leather seats popping violently under the intense thermal pressure.

And then, an explosion tears through the quiet of the canyon. A boom that sends a geyser of sparks and metal shooting up the black sky. The force of it vibrates in the soles of your heavy boots and a plume of thick and oily smoke billows upwards, eclipsing the stars.

You don't flinch at the sound. You lean into Ellie's side, her thumb stroking the back of your hand. The heat of the roaring wreckage warms your face, drying the sweat and blood still clinging to it. 

A funeral pyre, a crematorious, and a beacon of absolute absolution. The most beautiful thing you have ever witnessed. 

And now, you are anchored to her, entirely and forever, in the slaughter.

Five years is enough time for a world to end and another to be built entirely from its ashes.

That night is nothing but a scorched memory, a far away graveyard where you left your sins, your sorrow, and the burnt remnants of a man who thought he could own you. 

4A and 4B remain as just stories now. The frantic hours before dawn when you and Ellie worked shoulder to shoulder in a fugue state of lunacy, scrubbing the beige carpets with bleach and ammonia, erasing every microscopic drop of his existence from the floorboards, are remembered only akin a fever dream

You remember the knock on the door at noon, the somber faces of the detectives holding their hats, breaking the "tragic news" of Oliver's own ending in the fiery forest. You played the role of the grieving widow with the grace of an A-lister actress, collapsing while the officers looked away in respectful pity. 

You wore a heavy black lace veil to the funeral, hiding the blissed smile that threatened to break your composure as his aristocratic family wept over a sealed urn of ashes. They never dug deeper. The police never looked past the skid marks and the melted whiskey bottle. 

That life, that bruising and treacherous life, is now entirely gone. Buried, or rather scorched from the earth, leaving no trace behind but smoke. 

Now, the perpetual rain of Seattle, Washington, washes against the high reinforced glass windows of your sanctuary, a constant, soothing rhythm that keeps the evil outside world at bay.

You live in the subterranean basement beneath Ellie’s isolated, mid-century modern home in the heavily wooded hills of the Pacific Northwest. It is a gilded reliquary, a voluntary kidnapping that you surrendered to with absolute and starving joy. 

You are her muse, and in return, she is yours, locked in a perpetual orbit of worship.

The walls of your sprawling underground studio are the testament to this eternal pact. The original and first canvas of Ellie's face—the one you painted with the crushed tube of Malachite and Volterra green while he still breathed—dominates the eastern wall, the date frozen in the corner.

Beside it, framed in ornate Victorian gold, hangs the original picture Ellie took of you kneeling in the sea of blood and paint beside his ruined corpse, your face splattered in scarlet. It is treated with the reverence of a Renaissance painting. 

You do not paint with cheap pigments anymore, since Ellie only buys you the highest, most luxurious products. But there is a special pigment that no seller would offer. The ultimate medium stored in the temperature controlled iron safe in the corner. You kept his blood. Siphoned from the floor before the bleach could ruin it, stored in dozens of wax sealed vials, it has oxidized over the years into a rich garnet.

You crush the dried, rusted flakes with a marble mortar and pestle, mixing with linseed oil to paint visceral, breathtaking landscapes of hell and rebirth. Every stroke is a continuation of your vengeance, an eternal desecration. 

You never step foot outside, since you have no desire to, and Ellie doesn't have that desire either. The world beyond the door at the top of the basement is chaotic, loud, and a brutal place that once allowed you to be bruised and silenced. Ellie is your absolute shield against it, a fiercely territorial guardian who provides everything you could ever need. Fine canvases, imported teas, silk garments, and a love so heavy and total it feels like being wrapped in a blanket. 

She claims she keeps you here because you are divine, too precious to be exposed to the dull, uncomprehending eyes of ordinary mortals. And you agree. You don't want to be seen by anyone else that isn't her.

And in the five years since Silver Lake, Ellie's somber artistic vision has propelled her into the stratosphere of the international art world. She is a renowned, highly sought after photographer, celebrated for her haunting and intimate portraits. What the critics call a macabre genius, you know it's simply the truth—the art world showers her with accolades, completely blind to the fact that the shadow in her work is real, and that the trail of missing people she has quietly removed will never, ever be discovered. 

But while Ellie is the public face, the celebrated provocateur of the lens, you are the secret heartbeat of the household, the phantom architect of a legacy built on the ruins of your former life.

She has become your gatekeeper in every sense. Occasionally, you allow her to select a painting for the market. Never the ones containing the darker pigments of your history, or the dozens of portraits of her features, but the works born from your new obsidian peace. 

These few, rare canvases are released into the world and fetching astronomical sums from collectors who are drawn to the "unsettling, divine stillness" they claim to find in your brushstrokes. They pay hundreds of thousands for a glimpse into your sanctuary, entirely unaware that the high prices are simply the tax Ellie demands for letting a piece of your soul leave the house.

The arrangement is a symbiotic masterpiece, a closed circuit of creation and consumption that the outside world can only observe through a glass.

It is only tonight that the deadbolt at the top of the stairs is unlocked for you to leave, after half a decade. Ellie’s new gallery exposition—an exclusive, invite only retrospective in downtown Seattle—is opening, and it is dedicated entirely to you. It is a sprawling, panoramic exhibition of her obsession, featuring every photograph she has ever taken of you, curated to tell the story of a goddess rising from the dark. 

You sit at your mahogany vanity, wearing a floor-length gown of heavy black silk that pools around your feet, as Ellie stands behind you, her cool hands gently fastening a choker of emeralds around your neck.

“You don't have to tremble, my love” she murmurs, her lips pressing a soft kiss to the scarred skin just below your ear. Her eyes meet yours in the reflection of the mirror, flashing with that familiar hunger “They are only allowed to look, and to worship from a distance. You belong entirely to me.”

“I know,” you whisper, leaning back into the grounding heat of her chest. The smell of her is the only oxygen you need. "It's just strange to let them see me. To let them see how you look at me.”

“They need to see it,” she says, her hands sliding down to your waist, “They need to understand what a true masterpiece is. I have spent years turning my lens into a shire for you, and tonight, the rest of the world gets to bow down. But at midnight, I am the only one who gets to bring the god back to her temple.”

You turn your head, capturing her lips in a deep kiss that seals absolute and victorious possession. When you finally ascend the stairs together, stepping out into the misty Seattle night and slipping into the back of the waiting car, you feel no fear. As you walk into the brightly lit, crowded gallery, the flashbulbs erupting in a blinding storm, you do not shrink. 

You glide through the room with your hand firmly locked on Ellie´s, surrounded by massive, towering portraits of your own face.

You walk through the treacherous world completely untouchable, bathed in the blood of your past and the beautiful light of her eternal infatuation.

︱𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑚 𝑡𝑎𝑔𝑙𝑖𝑠𝑡 @wahterlemon @reneeisadyke @andieprincessofpower @isabelckl @sunflowerwinds @coastalwilliams @thinkingabtellie @gigibeex @musingsfromtheflowers @liifeunwritten @d1catwhisperer @the-sick-habit @elliescoquettegirl @elliewilliams-wife @yueluv3rrrr @your-eternal-muse @ellies-real-wife @katherinesmirnova @ellies-moth-to-a-flame @thxtmarvelchick @natscloset @lesbiansreverywhere @satellitespinner @yunaversalluv @ilahrawr @harmonib @piastorys @azteriarizz @starincarnated @natssgf @ukissmyfaceinacrowdedroom @iadorefineshyt @claudiajacobs @urmomssideh0e @kingofeyeliner @womenlover0 @ferxanda @elliewilliamsloverrrrrrrr @bambi-luvs @maru0uu @mikellie @gold-dustwomxn @liztreez @eriiwaiii2 @les4elliewilliams @elliewilliamskisser2000 @azxteria @elliecoochieeater @doodl3b3ans @savagestarlight28 @incog-nizo @ssijht ⎤

“do me a favour, and make it quick,” she adds, teeth clattering from the cold. “the fiery depths of hell seem very appealing right now.”

“pretty sure we’re already there, twelve,” you mumble, kneeling down next to her to inspect her wound. 

your throat is still hoarse from crying. the scream that tore from rell canwell, the other half of your district pairing, when your spear hit her a moment too late, a millisecond after she’d managed to shoot an arrow through isha’s heart, still rings in your ears. there is still dirt beneath your nails from when you moved isha’s body and laid her to rest amongst flowers. and, no matter how many times you scrub them, blood still stains your hands. 

it felt eerily poetic, how quickly spring rolled into winter after the hovercraft took isha away. amongst the chaos, amongst the violence, she had brought warmth and light, a youthful innocence that many of the tributes, yourself included, had long since grown out of.

there is nothing poetic about it, though. the gamemakers take pleasure in playing god: they can manipulate the weather on a whim, send in genetically engineered nightmares just to get the audience’s heart racing, and change the rules whenever they get bored.

eleven tributes are still alive. 

as of a few hours ago, the remaining two tributes will be crowned victors.

violet coughs, a fresh bout of crimson splattering against the snow. you swipe a thumb underneath her lip to clean stray drops of blood. her skin is now flushed, almost burning underneath your palm. 

“at least be gentle with me, beautiful,” violet slurs, eyelids fluttering closed. the blood loss isn’t fatal, at least not yet, but you can’t imagine she has the tightest grip on reality right now. “it’s my first time.”

despite the new scars on your body, the ache in your bones, and the cold air burrowing underneath your skin, you can’t help but laugh at her innuendo. 

“somehow, i doubt that,” you quip, adding fuel to the fire. 

“slut-shaming a dying woman,” she half-groans, half-laughs. “you’re ruthless, l/n.” 

you pretend that violet’s comment, though teasing and lighthearted in tone, doesn’t pierce through your chest like a rusty arrow. 

as soon as your name was called at the reaping, all you could think about was the path to victory. this was your chance to show your mother that you are not the same girl with the bleeding heart she banished to district two all those years ago. 

your initial strategy in the arena was to be ruthless — because, as your mother would try to instill in you, a wolf has no mercy. you planned on foregoing any sort of allyship, and instead hunting down every other tribute, and killing them without hesitation. you’d win the game, receive all the glory and riches, and, most importantly, prove your mother wrong.

you could be a wolf; you could be a warrior. 

then, isha, only twelve years old and the youngest tribute this year, looked to you for protection. and none of that seemed to matter anymore.

the truth is, everything’s dark and cold and unpredictable and —

and, well. it would be nice to not have to face it all alone, and violet’s the closest person to a friend you have.

you help violet to her feet. instantly, she slumps her weight against your body and you wrap a strong arm against her waist to keep her upright. 

“what’re you waitin’ for?” her breath is hot against your neck, making you shiver in more ways than one. “just get it over with ‘n kill me here.” 

“if i wanted to kill you, warwick,” you say. “you’d already be dead.” you take a few more steps and pick up her fallen bow and arrow.

“just leave me, then. if i don’t bleed to death, one of the other tributes will get me.”

“i’m not leaving you,” you grit through your teeth, taking a few steps forward despite the exhaustion wearing down your muscles.

this close to her, you can smell firewood and pine needles underneath the sharp, coppery scent of blood. her heart beats erratically, thumping against your own ribcage. 

“seriously, princess. i’ll just get in your way.”

“no. you won’t.”

“it’s too late for me —”

“don’t say that —”

“why do you even care —”

you kiss vi before she can even finish the question; before you can even think about the consequences, about what it might mean for the audience, for the sponsors, for the game. 

she hesitates at first, then seems reinvigorated, chasing your lips as soon as you move away to take a breath. your knees start to grow weak, so you brace yourself with a hand on her abdomen, right next to her wound. she groans into your mouth, deepens the kiss, and you swallow it all down eagerly.

it’s a kiss unlike any you’d had before: rushed, desperate, tasting like copper and melting away to something undeniably sweet the more vi licks into your mouth. you can’t help but whine, and vi chuckles, a deep rumble that echoes from her body to yours and burrows somewhere deep inside you, like a knife to the gut. if vi were to pull away, you’d surely bleed out.

it wouldn’t be the most glorious death, but at least you’d die happy.  

how many warriors could claim that?

you find shelter from the storm, in a damp little cave tucked away behind the trees. you managed to stop the bleeding, cauterized the wound with one hand while clasping one of vi’s in the other. she didn’t scream or cry, just squeezed so hard you were worried a bone or two might crack.

vi starts running a fever, floating in and out of consciousness as you try to figure out ways to keep both of you, to keep her, alive. 

while she’s no less than a breath away from death’s door, vi dreams of her family. her mother, coming home from the mines, smelling like axle grease, humming songs about hope and rebellion. her father, taking her outside the fence so they could hunt and forage and scrape together something good for dinner, like deer and katniss root soup that kept them warm even in the coldest winter days. vander, teaching her how to throw a punch, laughing at their kitchen table, holding her and powder in his arms to protect them from the fire and smoke and limp bodies of their parents after a failed uprising. ekko, gifting her a firelight ring he’d made before she got on the train towards the capitol, the two of them holding back tears. and powder, tinkering with scrap metal at all hours of the day, looking up to her with stars in her eyes, screaming and crying when vi volunteered to take her place in the games.

vi dreams of home. the area beyond her house where flowers bloom through rubble and ash; the people who barter with her at the hob, tough but fair and deep down, truly kind; the firelights that illuminate an otherwise hopeless, void-like sky. 

vi dreams of you, too, and the first time you met.

it was about seven years ago. vi, only sixteen years old, was restless and angry — at the system, at the so-called peacekeepers who upheld it, but mostly at herself. 

mylo and claggor, friends from childhood — her brothers, really — had died in the hunger games a few months prior. they had put up a good fight, just like she taught them to, but it wasn’t enough to bring them back home.

the current of restlessness that always ran through her only became more intense as she grew up and lost more loved ones — all while knowing that some people never had to scavenge for scraps or deal with the cruelty of a system that never wanted them to survive. 

vi knew her place in the world, but she refused to accept it. sometimes, that meant stealing from peacekeepers to help pay for dinner. usually, she wouldn’t get caught, but when she did….

well, vi refused to go down without a fight, even if it meant going up against three military-trained and well-armed officers. 

when you first intervened, vi assumed you were one of them. you were around her age, and though you weren’t wearing a peacekeeper’s uniform, you had on metallic clothing that shimmered and protected you like armour and a dagger strapped to your belt. you spoke with such calculated indifference towards her that suggested you were from one of the upper districts, maybe even the capitol.

but after you sent the peacekeepers away — arguing that your mother would not be too happy with them wasting time and energy on nothing more than an insolent child — you stayed.

vi was still on the ground, assessing her own injuries — slightly bruised ribs, possibly twisted ankle, cut cheek, hands still bound by plastic handcuffs — when you sat down next to her and asked: 

“are you okay?”

and vi almost had to add whiplash to her list because you sounded so sincere.

“you expecting a thank you?” vi countered, still not trusting you. 

you let out something between a scoff and a laugh. “no, warwick.”

“how do you know who i am?”

“violet warwick, age 16. noted troublemaker: general disdain for authority that manifests in petty crimes and violent outbursts,” you recited like you’d memorised from a textbook. then, you cleared your throat. “war department keeps files on people with, uh, rebel tendencies.”

vi had only heard whispers, but the capitol had sent one of their best generals to extinguish sparks of rebellion, as is routine every few years. this general, apparently, had brought her daughter this time.

a daughter who had been trained in lethal combat and military techniques since she was 11 years old, in hopes that she’d continue her mother’s legacy. you were essentially capitol royalty, and yet —

“you just interfered with peacekeepers,” vi pointed out. “pretty sure that would fall under rebel tendencies, princess. maybe they should start a file on you.”

you hummed and the corner of your mouth quirked up. “you’re assuming they don’t already have one.”

vi clicked her tongue, impressed, eyeing you with newfound curiosity.

“so, you’re a bit of a troublemaker yourself.”

“technically, i’m meant to be reforming my childish ways.” you mimicked air quotes for those last two words, punctuating the gesture with an indignant eyeroll. 

“well…” vi shuffled closer and nudged your shoulder gently in an act of solidarity. “once a troublemaker, always a troublemaker.”

you unsheathed your dagger, then, and on instinct vi flinched, figuring she had said something out of line. 

instead, you raised your hands up in surrender.

“i’m not gonna hurt you,” you promised, gesturing towards the plastic restraints around vi’s wrists. “i just noticed your hands. figured you’d wanna get rid of those.” 

“oh. right.” she was just gonna ask ekko to cut them off, but if you were offering…

vi nodded, and you got to work, your blade slicing through the material like butter.

“don’t worry — i’m not expecting a thank you or anything,” you quipped, and vi laughed, just as blood started dripping from your nose. “shit,” you groaned, playfulness fading away. you tilted your chin up in an attempt to quell the bleeding. 

“you’re hurt,” vi realized.

“it’s fine. i’m fine. took a pretty nasty punch to the face earlier during training. i should’ve dodged it,” you huffed as though recounting the story of a child misbehaving. “and here i am now, making a mess. i’m sorry.”

vi blinked at you, a pang of sympathy ringing through her chest.

“you’re apologizing for….bleeding?”

you didn’t respond; you just angled your head down so you were staring at the concrete beneath your feet, seemingly weighed down by a sudden cloud of shame.

“isn’t there a doctor or something at that fancy training facility of yours?”

“i, uh.” you swallowed thickly. “didn’t want my mother finding out.”

vi frowned. maybe she was too used to people throughout district twelve walking around with injuries, from fights or accidents in the mines or run-ins with peacekeepers. sometimes there were tears, maybe some angry rants, but never a sense of needing to be ashamed. and, there’s would always be someone there to patch them up with whatever’s around and offer some comfort for the pain, whether it be a swig of whiskey or a sympathetic ear.

before she could think better of it, vi reached out to you. you flinched away just as her fingers brushed your skin, and bared your teeth slightly like a wounded animal. 

“i’ll be gentle,” vi assured. 

she waited until you softened, offering her a firm nod before trying again. you exhaled softly when she wiped away the blood with her thumb, and vi felt the warmth of your breath on her palm.

“thank you,” you whispered once she pulled away. “it’s getting late; i should probably head back.”

“okay. it was nice, um, meeting you. despite, you know, the circumstances.”

“yeah. you too.” 

when you were just about to leave, vi realized that the dagger was still on the ground next to her. 

“wait —” vi got up and extended the dagger to you. “don’t forget this.”

“oh.” you looked down at the empty sheath attached to your belt, then back at vi. “keep it.”

“really?”

you shrugged. “i’ll just make another one.”

“you made this?”

“mhm. it’s made from imperial gold. probably worth something on the black market.”

vi hadn’t gotten a good look at it before, but the dagger was just as much a work of art as it was a weapon. the hilt was golden, the blade itself steel, and when tilted just right, the light illuminated an engraving of a rose.

it would be worth something at the hob. like, feed her family for at least three months worth something. 

“are you sure?”

you smiled wistfully before planting a goodbye kiss on her cheekbone, right where vi had been cut. when you pulled away, you licked your lips. 

“i’m sure.”

as she watched you disappear into the sunset, you turned back to give vi one last wave. 

vi held your dagger tight in her hand, her heart aching in a way she was too afraid to name.

if vi hadn’t been gravely ill, she would have probably killed you for going to the cornucopia. the gamemakers had set up a ‘feast,’ providing what every remaining tribute needed as a way to lure them in and ensure bloodshed. 

you promised not to go, but your plan changed when vi got much, much worse, mumbling nonsense in her sleep and running a dangerously high fever. 

so, you waited until she fell asleep again, did what you had to do, and returned with a silver giftbox labelled twelve and a fresh gash across your cheek, just as she woke up. 

the medicine works fast — it’s one of those cure-anything salves that could probably save lives, if the capitol weren’t so intent on keeping it from the districts. vi insists on swiping some over your new cut, but not before she presses her lips to the area to soothe the sting.

when vi kisses you after, her lips are still warm and taste like metal.

it had been a dangerously quiet few days. snow has melted, giving way to another spring, and any sense of time you had is now unbelievably warped.

you didn’t realize, not until you were sent a silver parachute with a full picnic basket and complete set of fine cutlery, and vi made some sarcastic comment about how romantic it was, that the audience was probably having quite a time following your blossoming relationship with vi. 

you can almost picture viewers swooning when vi picks fresh flowers for you (violets, of course. “for the record, black roses are my favourite,” you tease, just so you can kiss away her pout. “but i have to admit violets are growing on me.”); viewers clutching their racing hearts when you’re both washing up in the recently thawed river (“like what you see?” vi teases, chest still wrapped in gauze but the plains of her abdomen shining in the sunlight. you bite your lip and turn away before doing something that would most certainly violate the show’s pg-13 rating); viewers holding back tears when you braid vi’s hair, passing the time by imagining better futures (“maybe one day, we’ll be able to spend time together without one of us bleeding,” vi muses.)

ultimately, though, the gamemakers are cruel. they’ll give you time together, give you peace, with the looming threat that it’ll be ripped away in the blink of an eye.

there are only four tributes left. the arena has been growing scarce, so the only ‘food’ you and vi had managed to find were nightlock berries, which she informed you were poisonous. you stuffed some in your pocket as a contingency, long forgotten once you and vi were indulging in the fresh rolls, goat cheese, and fruit that had been sent. though by your estimation, it would be mid afternoon, the sun was already setting, casting everything in an eerie yet romantic golden light.

you realize that these moments are only fabricated for viewer entertainment — to give them something to root for, as mel said — but sometimes you catch yourself forgetting that none of it is real. you’re too mesmerized by violet’s powder blue eyes as they shift darker at night and almost sparkle in the morning; the heart-shaped curves of her lips that meld perfectly into yours; the deep, soothing timber of her voice when she hums without realizing.

gods. you aren’t here to fall in love. and people did not watch the hunger games for romance — at least, not exclusively.

night falls unnaturally quick, and that’s when the barking starts. in the distance, at first, followed by a piercing scream, then the boom of a cannon. 

you and vi are already armed — you with a spear, her with a bow and quiver — and jump up to your feet, to prepare for what horrors are inevitably coming your way. her eyes meet yours; panicked, heartbroken, and terrified all at once, masked with a determined sort of courage.

you’ve reached the finale. 

the next thing you know, you’re sprinting through the forest with vi keeping pace next to you as a chaos of barks and growls trails closer and closer. you reach the clearing and, opting for higher ground, you head towards the cornucopia. 

“you first,” you demand once the two of you reach the structure.

“but —”

“now, vi!” 

she doesn’t put up any more fight, and climbs onto the structure as you use your spear to keep the creatures away from her, but there are just so many. as you soon as vi has reached the top safely, you start to climb and one of the creatures jumps after you. vi shoots it down with an arrow, but not before its teeth manage to sink into the meat of your thigh. 

you snarl just as the animal falls back with a whine and you pull the rest of your weight up, your body sending a dull thud through the metal when you collapse onto the structure. you realize that in all the chaos, you’d lost your spear.

“fuck, you’re hurt,” vi worries, helping you to your feet. 

“it’s fine. i’m fine,” you insist, though adrenaline leaks from the fresh bite, and you do everything in your power to keep yourself in the fight. you don’t have time to worry about the thick, crimson puddle forming at your feet, not when there are horribly mutated monsters jumping and clawing at you and vi.

wolves. not like any you’d ever seen before, but their eyes are terribly human and vaguely familiar. 

“that one….that one looks like….” vi chokes on the rest of her sentence. she points to a wolf, slimmer than the rest, with dark blonde fur and blue eyes so pale they look like glass. it’s uncanny how the creature resembles deckard, the other tribute from vi’s district.

uncanny and horrifically deliberate. 

you swallow down fear as best you can, looking at the scene below and digging your nails into your palms as everything shifts into sharper focus.

each wolf, it seems, has been designed to resemble a fallen tribute. 

one has deep brown eyes, a scar on its upper lip, and two silver hoops pierced through its ear. gert from eleven. she had just spared your life the other day, killing steb from district one at the feast before he could kill you. she was one of the final four, so it must have been her scream in the forest earlier. was this wolf late to join the pack? how on earth could the gamemakers create such monstrosities so quickly?

another wolf has amber eyes, no doubt modelled after isha. once upon a time, those eyes, now devoid of their characteristic warmth, looked to you for comfort, for safety, and now…..

it had been the one who bit you, evident by the pieces of fabric hanging from its bloody teeth and one of vi’s arrows embedded in its neck. your stomach twists, wondering if the gamemakers have programmed each wolf to carry memories of its corresponding tribute and twisted their emotions in the process; if wolf-isha is angry at you because all she can remember is that you did not save her. 

you count twenty-one wolves in total. three tributes left. you, vi, and —

maddie nolen from district one lunges at vi, who screams and drops to her knees when maddie’s sword slashes across her abdomen. maddie rears up for another attack, but you tackle her before she gets the chance. she stabs you underneath your ribcage before you can disarm her; the sword releases from her grasp and you kick it out of reach. you land a few good punches, but maddie digs her fingers into your fresh wound. you cry out in agony, though it comes out garbled due to the strong chokehold she quickly locks you in. had you been at your strongest, you would’ve been able to wriggle out of her hold, but you can’t fathom how much blood you’ve lost.

meanwhile, vi regains her footing, picking up her bow and instantly threatening maddie with an arrow pointed directly at the centre of her forehead. 

“shoot me now, twelve, and we both go down,” maddie growls. “at the end of the day, all they want is a good show, right? and there’s nothing people love more than a plot twist. show them that a poor little girl from district twelve can play their game and beat the odds. let that arrow fly, and you’ll be the winner.”

you’re starting to feel dizzy, your vision going fuzzy at the edges, and all you can focus on is vi. though she’s undoubtedly in pain from maddie’s initial attack, vi stands her ground. 

she could just let that arrow fly, and maddie would fall back, descend into that pack of wolves vying for their next meal. 

guilt twists in your chest, knowing that the only reason she hasn’t is because you’re in the way, and would fall to your death with maddie. 

maddie tightens her chokehold on you, and a strategy emerges in your mind. hazy at best, but perhaps your only hope now. 

the clock is ticking. 

you tap on the hand that’s strangling you, and you pray that vi gets the message. 

it takes a second, but soon vi widens her eyes ever so slightly, and you know — you know — that she’s figured it out.

“i’m sick of playing this game,” vi finally declares.

“aren’t we all?” maddie laughs humourlessly, tightening the chokehold she has you in. “but that’s just the way it always goes: someone has to win, and someone has to lose.”

“you’re right.”

in a flash, vi repositions her bow and lets the arrow fly. 

maddie howls as it pierces through her hand, and instantly she releases you. taking the opportunity, you slam your elbow into her, hard, and send her tumbling down into the wolves. she screams and cries until vi walks to the edge of the cornucopia where you’re standing, and sends another arrow out of mercy. maddie falls silent.

the last cannon booms throughout the arena; the wolves calm down and disappear into the woods just as the sun starts to rise.

“it’s over,” vi exhales, dropping her bow. she brings you into her arms, holding you tight to your chest while careful to avoid any injuries. your leg is still bleeding, as is your side, but for a moment, everything melts away, except for the thump of her heart against your chest, how it eases now that the games are over. 

except….it’s quiet. suspiciously quiet. 

“why haven’t they announced it?” you vocalize your concern. you untangle yourself from vi to pick up maddie’s sword, anticipating more wolves, or something worse, on the horizon. 

vi shakes her head in disbelief.

“no, it’s over,” she insists. “it has to be over. we’re safe, now. maybe the gamemakers are just —”

“greetings, tributes.” allira salo’s voice echoes through the arena. “the previous rule change allowing for two victors has been overturned. there can now only be one winner. best of luck, and may the odds be ever in your favour.”

neither of you say anything for a moment. you just stand there: bleeding, bruised, exhausted, having reached the finish line only for the gamemakers to introduce another impossible, cruel plot twist.

“finding new ways to fuck us over,” you finish vi’s sentence, bitterness hardening your chest. you glance over at vi.

she doesn’t react. she doesn’t move. just stares at the sunrise in the distance.

for a second, you can picture it. 

just one more kill, and it’s over. you’d have it: the victory, the glory. your mother would apologize for underestimating you. she might even be proud, perhaps welcome you back home (a home that never felt like yours), and you’d reclaim the legacy she’d carved for you (a legacy you never really wanted: drenched in blood and painted over with gold).

all you have to do is stab this sword through vi’s already wounded body.

the thought causes bile to rise to your throat.

when vi turns to look at you, her cheeks are flushed with anger.

“what do they want — for us to fight each other to the death? after everything we’ve already been through?” 

you bite your lip to stop yourself from crying, so hard that you taste blood.

“seems like it,” you manage, gripping the sword even tighter as you try to steady your frenzied heartbeat.

“well, i’m not fighting you.” vi turns up to the sky. “i’m not fighting her! and i’m not letting one of your mutts get me, either.” 

and that’s when vi picks up her bow again, breaks it, and throws it down to the ground along with her quiver, arrows spilling across the bloodied grass. 

before you can register the weight of her words, vi crashes her lips to yours. 

you release the sword and it lands on the cornucopia with a clatter. you almost lose yourself in the kiss, in her, then you feel something slip onto your ring finger. 

you jolt away.

“what are you —”

“i kept your dagger,” vi tells you while catching her breath. “it’s beautiful, you know? always reminded me of you.”

nostalgia crashes into, recalling the first time you met. neither of you had really spoken about it. not in a way that mattered; not like this. 

you can’t believe she remembered. 

your heart aches. “vi….”

“so i want you to have this. it’s from my district,” she explains, while catching her breath. she holds your hand, swipes her thumb over the metal ring. “if you get a chance to visit, tell my family that i love them, and that….that i’m sorry.”

you look down at where your hands connect, dirty with blood and grime and gods know what. your throat tightens seeing how the silver ring, shaped like a firelight, glows against your skin. 

it’s beautiful. she’s beautiful, watching you with those gentle but fierce eyes, now rimmed with tears.

“you have nothing to be sorry about,” you mumble, unsure what else to say. you’re stalling for time, at this point, trying to figure out how to keep vi alive.

“i’m bleeding, y/n.” she gestures to her stab wound. 

“i’m bleeding, too!” you hiss. “so, what? why do you get to be the one to make the sacrifice play?”

vi gives you a sad, regretful smile. she places her hands on your cheeks, steadying you. “because you’re the one who should be crowned victor. the odds were never in my favour.”

“since when do you give a fuck about any of that?” you meant to sound commanding, but your voice wavers. you rip away from her grasp, and almost stumble, but vi catches your wrist before you fall.

“just — let me do this for you, okay?” vi soothes, thumb rubbing circles into your skin. “you’re the reason i’m still here, anyways.”

“vi —”

“look, say what you will about maddie nolen, but she was right. they want a good show —”

“we’ve already given them a good show.”

“ — someone has to lose, and someone has to win; that’s just the way it always goes,” she exhales, moving her hand to the wound on your thigh and pressing down in an attempt to slow down the bleeding. “you’re running out of time. so, take that sword, finish me off, and win the game, like you were supposed to.”

like you were supposed to. 

in a better, kinder world, none of this was supposed to happen.

you think about isha, too young and too gentle, yet still forced into the arena. you think about vi, feverish, bleeding out in the snow and on the brink of death, while sponsors surely already had the money to send medicine that could have saved her so much pain. hell — you even think about maddie, the wild desperation in her eyes and the bitterness laced through her words, because no matter how much blood she spilled, in the end, she was nothing more than a pawn. 

that’s just the way it always goes.

no. 

you’d rather die than accept that.

“i don’t care about winning their game,” you whisper. with a deep breath, you reach into your pocket and present the nightlock berries to her.

vi blinks at the berries, then at you, skeptically at first, but you don’t falter. 

“you’re serious?”

“yes,” you declare. “fuck their odds. fuck their rules. either they’re getting two victors….”

“or none at all,” vi finishes.

she takes a second to consider before muttering a soft yet determined okay. your heart beats anxiously against your chest as you divide the berries between you, trying to keep your hand from trembling.

“it was nice being with you,” you whisper, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. your vision blurs with tears you refuse to let fall. “you know….despite the circumstances.”

“you too, princess. you too.” 

she kisses you again, gently on your cheek. vi pulls away for the last time, licking her cracked, bloody lips.

“on the count of three?” she asks.

you nod. “one….”

“two….”

“....three.”

you each bring the berries to your mouth; you can already taste the bitter, acidic poison, when —

“wait! wait!” it’s allira salo again, voice undeniably panicked. he clears his throat. “may i present the winners of the 74th hunger games. from district two, y/n l/n. and from district twelve, violet warwick.”

when you wake up in the tribute centre, your first thought is that it was all a terrible dream.

the air smells like anti-sceptic, and the only sounds are soft beeps from the hospital monitor you’re hooked up to. it’s dark outside, and there’s no one in the room with you.

your thigh is wrapped in thick gauze; underneath your clothes there are bandages on various parts of your body, and an iv in your arm. when you try to take a deep breath, sharp pain emanates from underneath your ribs. though you have no idea how long you’ve been sleeping, exhaustion has settled deep into your bones.

vi’s firelight ring is still on your finger, and another thought takes over: 

you need to find her. 

tentatively, you get out of bed and detach the cords from your body. the tile floor is cold underneath your feet; you wince at the slight pain in your side as you shuffle towards the door to check if there’s anyone in the hallway. it’s empty, save for an armed guard outside your door who’d fallen asleep. as quietly as you can, you slip out of your room and carefully swipe their key card before rushing over to the elevator. you scan the card and press the button for floor twelve — the penthouse. 

you’re lucky that the guards on this floor have the tv on, so they can’t hear you. they’re watching the finale, of all things. the wolves barking, vi’s scream, maddie’s monologue — it all sends a shiver down your spine as you shuffle past the living room, in search of the room vi must have been confined to.

the first door you open leads to a bathroom.

the next, an unoccupied bedroom. 

and the third…..

you find her tangled in silk sheets and snoring softly. you close the door behind you and tiptoe to the edge of the bed. the moonlight illuminates every one of her freckles, softens the cut of her jawline. she has a bandage on her nosebridge and the scar on her upper lip twitches every time she exhales. 

it’s almost overwhelming, watching her sleep so peacefully. you can’t help but reach out and touch her cheek to make sure that she’s real —

just as your fingers brush against her cheek, vi jolts awake and before you know it, you’re locked underneath her body. 

“it’s just me,” you soothe, though your voice is sandpaper rough, your throat sore. her knee digs into your side, but you bite back your pain, instead keeping quiet and still as to not further alarm her, or alert the guards that something is awry.

vi blinks at you slowly, like she might still be dreaming. “it’s….you?” 

“yeah. it’s me.”

you watch as the fight leaves her body, her survival instincts fading away. she loosens her grip, shuffles back on her knees so you can sit up before she wordlessly engulfs you in her arms. 

seconds pass, though it could be minutes. maybe hours. time moves around you like you’re frozen in amber. all you care about is the butterfly-wing rhythm of her heart against your chest, grounding you in the reality that you’ve both made it out alive.

“i was so worried,” vi finally mumbles into your shoulder. her breath warms your skin. “sevika told me that the doctors didn’t even know if you’d ever wake up —”

“i’m awake.” you bury your face in the crook of her neck, and inhale her scent. roses, from the standard issue body wash in the tribute center, but underneath something more personal, more her. pine trees and firewood and burnt sugar. 

“you’re awake,” vi echoes. she pulls away, hands firm on your shoulders as she gazes at you, still a bit dazed. “i’m awake, too, right? this isn’t some nightmare where i start to kiss you, then you turn into a killer wolf who wants to devour me?”

you lean in and press a tentative kiss to her lips, then pull away just as quick. her eyelids had fluttered closed, and vi takes a deep breath before opening them again.

“see? still me,” you say, hoping to reassure her. you reach a hand up to caress her cheek, brushing your thumb over her tattoo. her eyes shine brighter than the full moon and every single star in the sky, her pupils blown wide with possibility at your delicate touch. 

for the first time, you’re both alone. no cameras, no audience, no games. 

just….the two of you.  

the realization awakens a desire in your gut, clawing at you for release. 

“as for the part where i want to devour you…..” you continue, trailing your hand down until you reach the waistband of her pants. you tease your fingers underneath, and vi lets out something of a whimper when you brush against her flushed skin. “well…..maybe if you ask nicely.”

you watch as her eyes darken to the shade of midnight’s sky and she leans in so she’s no more than a breath away.

“i’d rather taste you, first,” she murmurs, voice deep and low, the words vibrating against your lips and igniting every nerve in your body. 

she kisses you before you can respond — tender and slow and sweet, honey drizzled into a warm cup of tea. you groan when her tongue slips into your mouth, wandering over every corner and crevice as she tries to savour every part of you. vi presses forward slowly, until your back rests against the mattress, her body once again hovering over yours. one of vi’s calloused hands wanders underneath your medical gown; you inhale sharply when she reaches your thigh, the sudden pain knocking you out of your reverie. vi freezes, brows furrowed and eyes searching yours.

“baby,” vi whispers. the nickname makes your stomach tighten. “we don’t have to, if you’re not up to it —”

“i’m not made of porcelain,” you can’t help but scoff, ignoring the twinge in your thigh. “i can handle it.”

a soft chuckle slips from vi’s lips, and your skin grows warm. “i know. it’s just — if you prefer to wait until you’re better, we can. there’s no rush now. it’s over. we’re safe and soon enough, we’ll heal. we have all the time in the world.”

suddenly, you feel untethered. you think about what she's said, so impossibly loving and unbelievably tender. 

could she be right? 

you certainly hope she is, but you aren’t so optimistic.

it’s over. 

we’re safe.

you’ve heard her say that before, not too long ago. though you’ve both made it out alive, you fear that you might not be so lucky a second time. 

vi calls your name, and the sound of her voice grounds you back to reality. you focus on the present, on her, and everything else fades away. she brushes her thumb over your lips and you graze your tongue over the digit. vi tries to bite back a groan, but you catch it. you can feel her above you, muscles tensing as she waits patiently for you to respond.

“i don’t wanna wait,” you finally say, swallowing down your last bit of dread. 

“hm, okay.” she smiles slyly, presses her lips underneath your ear and promises: “i’ll be gentle.” 

and gods, it makes your heart ache, how gentle she is with you: undressing you with such reverence, paying attention to every scar and injury, every birthmark and bruise like she wants to commit your body to memory. the room is cold, but warmth blooms wherever she touches you, whether it be with her lips or hands or tongue. occasionally, she’ll tease a bit, lean a bit rougher, and lightly nip at your skin or suck a bruise of her own or flick her tongue over your perked nipple; you whimper in pleasure, tangle your fingers into her hair, and tug so that she meets your eyes. vi winks at you before continuing, like she wants you to know that, as gentle as she can be, there’s another side to her that you’ll one day discover.

eventually, she reaches the heat between your legs, wide-eyed and on her knees like she’s found her own personal altar. 

“you’re so fucking unreal,” she murmurs, wet lips against your uninjured inner thigh. 

“f-fuck, vi,” your breath hitches when she finally runs her tongue through your folds. she’s eager, but patient; she takes her time, sucks your clit into her mouth, and groans against you when you pull at her hair, the vibrations making you dizzy. 

she nuzzles in impossibly closer, licking into you with such hunger and devotion, that you feel yourself melting into the soft, silk sheets. you gnaw on your bottom lip, hoping to keep your moans from slipping past your lips, but it’s just too much. just as you start to taste blood, vi presses her tongue into you, and you can’t help the groan that rumbles through you. 

“sweetheart,” vi warns delicately. you almost sob as she pulls her mouth away, though she makes up for it by plunging two fingers into your cunt. she times it perfectly so that she catches your moan with her own lush, honey-coated lips. you moan again as you taste yourself on her tongue, sweet musk mixed with the tang of copper from your bitten lips. “you’re gonna have to be quieter for me.”

“it just —” vi’s digits reach that gummy spot deep within you, and you suck in air, canines puncturing your bottom lip. vi brings a hand up to your jaw, prompting you to meet her gaze, dark and lustful, as you let out a shaky breath. “y-you just feel so fuckin’ good, vi.”

“i know, baby. i know,” she coos, sympathetic even though she continues thrusting her fingers inside you. “but they can’t know that you’re here, okay? i don’t want us to get into any more trouble,” vi adds with a wink. 

you laugh, a sound that evaporates into a sigh of pleasure when vi starts to lick down your neck, sucks a hickey onto your collarbone. you reach for something to ground yourself, wanting to feel her bare skin underneath your nails, and that’s when you realize that vi is very much still clothed. you tug at her shirt impatiently, and she gets the message, pausing to remove all her clothes and reveal her body in all its glory. she’s about to get back to it, but you reach out your hand to stop her. you need a second to drink in the sight of her: all her gorgeous curves and muscles that must’ve been carved by the gods themselves; the piercings in her nipples that sparkle like two fallen stars; the pink curls that frame her cunt perfectly, already wet with her arousal, her folds glistening under the moonlight; and the tattoos that have been so beautifully etched in her skin, begging for your tongue to trace them over. there are scars from your time in the arena, of course, and a bandage underneath her left ribs, mirroring your own. 

“you’re so beautiful,” you whisper, more to yourself than her, but her cheeks bloom red nonetheless. you kiss her on the lips once before flipping your positions, slotting your leg between hers so that your cunts brush against each other.

“this okay?” you ask, rolling your hips forward experimentally.

“yeah, fuck.”

vi throws her head back against the pillow, groaning when you bite at the gear tattoo on her neck. her skin is salty-sweet, and you want more, so you reach down to collect some wetness from between her legs. you run your fingers over her lips, glazing them with her own arousal, before vi takes it a step further, sucking your digits into her mouth.

“fuck,” you groan, watching as her tongue swirls and laps everything up, and she looks back at you with dark, eyes. a string of spit follows as you remove your fingers and press your mouth against vi’s kiss-swollen, cum-covered lips. you savour it — her spit, her sweat, her arousal — mixed with everything of yours she’d tasted. the combination is so intoxicating, it might just be deadly enough to send you over the edge.

vi grabs hold of your hips, grinds up to match your slow, deliberate thrusts. fever or not, vi’s always run warm, but her cunt is particularly molten, and it’s electric, the way her clit catches on yours. all it takes is a few more seconds until you reach your peak, and vi’s right there with you. 

“you’re amazing,” she sighs, breathless. “i can’t fucking believe you’re real.”

exhausted and lust-drunk, the only way you can think to reassure her that you are real is to keep kissing her, to keep fucking her, even though your bones ache and your muscles burn. she moans into your mouth, whispers sweet nothings, begs you to continue; you swallow each sound down as eagerly as the last, and imagine violets blooming between your ribs.

the rising sun wakes you the next morning, and you feel more rested than you have in years. 

you and vi had showered before sleeping — though, admittedly not all of your time was spent showering — but either way, your skin is nice and soft, smelling like roses.

more importantly, smelling like her. 

vi is next to you, on her stomach, displaying her back tattoo in all its glory. her hair is a mess, covering most of her face, and you can spot evidence from last night: delicate bruises on her neck, bitemarks down her torso, etc. etc. 

you shift slightly and feel a dull ache between your legs, so you'd call it even.

a quick glance at the clock prompts you to get up, search for some clothing to throw on before sneaking away. 

as you get dressed, vi's eyes flutter open, ever so slightly. 

"don’t leave,” she groans, still half-asleep. “i wanted to have you for breakfast."

you laugh, heat pooling in your belly. “you mean you wanted to make me breakfast?”

a lazy smile blooms across vi’s face. “i said what i said.” 

you walk back over to the bed, press your hand to her shoulder blade as she tries to get up; there’s barely any pressure, but in her daze, it's enough to keep her between the sheets. vi moves to her side, facing you. you bring your hand up to brush some hair away from her eyes, as her icy blue orbs greet you.

"i should get back to my room. i don’t want us to get into any more trouble," you recall her sarcastic words from last night.

the corners of her mouth curl upwards. 

"you're such a troublemaker," she mumbles.

you lean forward, plant a kiss underneath vi’s chin. “once a troublemaker, always a troublemaker,” you quip. 

“damn right.” she reaches up to return the favour, pressing a kiss to your cheek. “i’ll see you later?”

you nod, giving her another quick peck before heading to the door. you glance back at her one more time, the sun casting her skin in a golden light, and she smiles at you, pure sunlight and sugar. 

you carry that warmth with you as you sneak across the apartment, only for someone to clear their voice. you’ve been caught — but not by one of the guards.

“vi still sleeping?” sevika asks from her place at the dining table.

“yeah….” you gesture towards the elevator. “i was just gonna —”

“sit,” sevika orders, already lighting her cigar. “i already called mel. should be here any minute.”

the two of you sit in silence. you watch as she smokes as if she has no care in the world, drumming her metal fingers on the table, a prosthetic replacing her arm after her own games. she’d won the last quarter quell and she’s the mentor for district twelve, though that responsibility will be bestowed onto vi, now.

you suppose you’ll be a mentor now for district two, the mantle passed down from mel, who walks into the room with her usual grace. 

“told ya she’d be here, sweetheart,” sevika drawls, sending a flirty wink towards mel. “when’re you gonna accept that i’m always right?”

“when hell freezes over,” mel deadpans. she sits down on the chair across from you, next to sevika. “they’re furious with you.”

frankly, mel does not look too happy with you, either, so of course, she jumps right to the point. no pleasantries, just politics. 

“well, i think we have more than enough reasons to be furious with them, too —”

“it’s not just the berries,” mel continues, ignoring your comment. “they don’t like it — you and violet together.” 

“what?” you scoff. “don’t people want to root for the star-crossed lovers?”

“maybe, in theory,” sevika explains, taking a puff of her cigar, smoke billowing from her mouth as she speaks. “but, let’s put it this way: we’re not supposed to break their rules, for anything, or anyone. and, if a former capitol princess is willing to risk it all for a coal miner’s daughter….” sevika clicks her tongue, pointing to vi’s bedroom and back to you, then imitating an explosion with her hands. “then the system that has been so carefully maintained is starting to crumble. on national television, no less.” 

“must be a pretty fragile system if it can be brought down by a handful of berries,” you grumble.

sevika barks out a laugh. “let’s hope so.”

“this is serious,” mel seethes. 

“the romance between me and vi — that was part of your strategy,” you can’t help but point out the irony, which mel certainly does not appreciate. 

“i still expected you to play by the rules of the game.”

“the rules were changing every two seconds,” you huff, crossing your arms over your chest. “part of that was your doing, wasn’t it? so, are you mad because i didn’t kill her, or because she didn’t kill me?”

mel falters, amber eyes softening ever so slightly before she composes herself again.

“i didn’t plan for it to unfold that way,” mel admits. “or, for you to actually commit to the strategy.”

“if anything, i committed to her,” you confess, the words slipping past before you can stop them.

mel and sevika exchange a look you’d place somewhere between pity and empathy. you feel too exposed, and it makes your stomach twist.

“it was your strategy, mel,” is all you can think to say to fill the vulnerable silence.

“i was wrong, then. is that what you want me to admit? i was wrong,” mel snaps, pushing up from the table, her voice echoing throughout the apartment. “it was my strategy that got all of us into this mess, and i have no idea how to get us out of it,” she sighs, bone-deep, and you don’t think you’ve ever seen your sister look so….so defeated. 

regret bubbles in your stomach. you want to take it back, to tell mel that she’s wrong, but for a different reason — that it really wasn’t her, or any, strategy that dictated your actions in the arena; that if this mess is anyone’s fault, it’s yours — but, to your surprise, sevika steps in. 

she takes mel’s hand, tugs it gently so she’ll sit back down. their hands stay intertwined, and mel relaxes while sevika turns to you. 

“why don’t you go check on vi?” sevika suggests. “we’ll talk to you both in a little bit, get our story straight before the victor’s ceremony tonight.”

you nod, barely registering their whispers as you walk away.

when you get back to the bedroom, vi is awake and the dread you’re feeling evaporates as soon as you see her. she’s fully clothed, sitting on the edge of the bed, which has been hastily made up.

“so, i think our mentors are secretly fucking,” you quip, sitting down next to her. you expect her to laugh, or at least express surprise, but instead she just hums, refusing to meet your eyes. “what’s wrong — did you have a nightmare?”

vi flinches away when you try to touch her shoulder.  

“so this was all a strategy,” vi clips, emotionless, and gets up from the bed to distance herself from you. 

“shit,” you sigh, running a hand down your face. “how much of that did you hear?”

“enough.”

“look, vi, baby —” 

“don’t,” vi scoffs. she begins pacing the floor. “they got a good show; you got your victory and a good fuck. it’s over, now.”

“gods, would you just —” you stand up and grab her wrist to stop her, and she snatches it away just as quickly. “let me explain. don’t we owe each other that much?”

vi crosses her arms over her chest. “fine.”

so, you explain. 

it came about after that incident, first day of training. you had gotten into a bit of an argument with maddie that quickly escalated, and of course it was vi, of all people, who decided to step in, though you were perfectly capable of handling it yourself. after that rumours spread like wildfire: that you and a certain tribute from district twelve had a particularly close connection. 

from there, mel’s strategy clicked into place. something cliched and saccharine: star-crossed lovers fighting against impossible odds.

you refused to play along.

“don’t be so stubborn.”

“i’m not stubborn,” you huffed, and mel rolled her eyes.

“mother’s way might work out in the districts, but the capitol is different,” mel pointed out, voice edged with frustration. “the games are different. people want something to root for. the more audience support you get, the more appealing you are to sponsors —”  

“i won’t pretend to be in love with her,” you snapped.

mel tightened her jaw, and she looked at you so sharply that you had to turn away. 

“fine, then,” she clipped after a beat of silence. “it’ll be your funeral.”

“guess that’s why we’re still alive,” vi deadpans now. “thanks for pretending to be in love with me.”

“i’m not pretending,” you insist, and it’s the closest i love you you’ve ever said to anyone.

“would you be able to tell the difference?” vi counters. “between what was part of the game, and what was real?”

you’re about to reply with a definitive yes, but you bite your tongue.

you think back to that one second in the arena, right after the rule changed to declare there would only be one victor. 

that one sickening second, when you thought about vi as the last kill on your path to victory, rather than the woman you fell in love with. 

“i don’t know,” you finally admit.

Wife!Ellie who refuses to let you drive if you don’t have to, she prefers to drive you around even when you go parting with your friends. She’d rather drive at 3am to pick you up from a club then let you uber home. 

Wife!Ellie who pampers you during your period, I'm talking chocolate, hot water bottle, blankets and bubble baths.

Wife!Ellie who loves working out with you, sometimes she uses you as equipment, squatting with you on her back or making you sit on her back while she does her push ups.

Wife!Ellie who helps you wash your hair, shampooing and conditioning with care. Giving small head massages in between and admiring how beautiful your hair is, which always makes me blush.

Wife!Ellie who constantly hypes you up on your Instagram posts because you are just that damn gorgeous and she can’t resist but compliment you.

Wife!Ellie who still believes in chivalry, so she’s constantly opening doors for you, making you walk on the inner side of the sidewalk. She once insisted to let you walk on her jacket because there was a puddle in the way, of course you wouldn’t let her because it was just ridiculous.

Wife!Ellie who constantly texts you whenever you're out, what can i say she’s extremely clingy and always checks in on you.

Wife!Ellie who loves spoiling you, taking you to as many stores as you want. Her favourite part of shopping with you is she gets to watch you dress and undress into cute outfits that hug your figure so well. 

Wife!Ellie loves when you sit on her lap, it’s actually gotten to the point where she’ll constantly say “babe why don't you sit on my lap instead?” even when you two are in public…

Wife!Ellie who listens to your endless rambles about your special interests or random internet drama you hear about to fall asleep, of course she’s listening to you but she mostly loves listening to your voice. 

Suddenly you understood why people fancy uniforms. She was of average height and around your age. Her blonde hair was all messed up in a way most hairdressers could only dream of achieving purposefully, with baby pink streaks near the bottom around her shoulders. You could see her white top and suspenders through her zipped down uniform jacket. A huge grin warmed her face as she set her eyes on you, jumping down from the truck while it was still slowing down and smoothly striding up to you. 

You became acutely aware that you almost had your thumb in your mouth and promptly dropped it, staring at her.

“Evening, ma’am. You called?” The firefighter asked as she came up to you, teeth showing as she smiled.

It took you a minute to register that you were the ma’am in question. “Yes! I did- uh, we did.” You stumbled over your words, pointing over at Mary who was getting up from the curb with an entertained expression. 

The goddess herself lifted an eyebrow as she looked at you, crossing her arms over her chest. You couldn’t see much through the uniform, but you could see from the way she carried it and herself that she was strong.

“And?” She asked, words coated with a small laugh.

You could kick yourself.

“Sorry, sorry,” you laughed nervously, looking past your firefighter to where her colleagues were clambering out of the truck – four are too many to send for this, right? “Sorry, I’m just a bit stressed. Uh, my name is Y/N, over there is my roommate Mary. We live in flat 101 up there and unfortunately managed to get locked out while cooking dinner. Could we use your ladder to climb up through the opened window or something? We don’t want to be a bother.”

Her gaze never left you, a certain mirth dancing in her striking blue eyes. “Right, lovely to meet you, darling. Name’s Marlene, over there we have my crew James, Sirius and Remus. We’ll get this right sorted for you, you're no bother.”

She turned ever so slightly to wave and shout something to the boys by the truck as they started stretching out the ladder to reach the window. Meanwhile you looked at Mary with an expression you hoped read “HELP”. The absolute menace of a girl that she was had the audacity to laugh at you, pulling her phone up to type furiously, presumably updating Lily on the situation.

You were startled out of feeling sorry for yourself as Marlene came back up to you. “What is it you’re cooking up there?”

You turned to Mary, glad to be able to defer the question as your face became increasingly warmer beneath her gaze.

“I was just starting on some biryani,” she supplied, a bit abashed herself.

“Good taste.” Marlene grinned between you. “Biryani’s a bit tough to burn, so we’ve probably not got an emergency on our hands. Either way, I’ll be quick.”

To your half-delight half-horror, Marlene zipped her uniform jacket the rest of the way down and began taking it off. You made a guffawing sound that caught her attention and made her look up at you through her lashes as she shimmied out of it. “Everything alright, princess?”

"I– you really don't have to climb up, Marlene, we can do it. It's our mess." You hoped she saw past your flustering to see your genuine concern.

Marlene just laughed heartily. "It's my job to climb up and down that ladder, I think it's fine. Can't risk injuring a pretty girl like you."

Before you could respond, one of her colleagues whose names you had already forgotten, came up beside her and slapped a hand on her shoulder. “Marls, don’t kill the poor girl before we get her back in her flat.” He flashed you an equally dashing smile. “I’m James. Just say the word if you need protection from this one.” He jutted his thumb in Marlene’s direction, and she promptly hung her uniform jacket on it.

You're not sure what emboldened you, but past all your blushed stuttering you managed to say, "Thanks James, but I don't think I want protection on that front."

Marlene’s smile turned genuine as she turned back to you and started walking backwards to the ladder that the others had now positioned just below your window. “Good to know.” She winked at you before starting her ascent on the ladder.

“Where’s your kitchen, darling?” Marlene called while halfway up. Her biceps were flexing beneath her tight white top, on full display while her uniform trousers hung low on her hips. You had to shake your head to not be distracted.

“Just to the right when you go through the window,” you called back. You swore you heard a mumbled “thanks princess”.

You did hear some snickering behind you and turned over your shoulder to see Mary whispering with the tallest of the firefighters, one with tawny hair and some mean scars across his nose. They were looking at you and covering their mouths slightly, entertainment written all over their features.

“Making friends, Mary?” you asked, raising an accusatory brow.

“Just following in your footsteps, princess,” she replied, earning a laugh from the other firefighter before he schooled his face beneath your gaze.

You swear you could have kicked Mary if it wasn’t for these literal officers around you.

“I’m in!” Marlene called out jovially as she climbed in through your window and disappeared out of sight. Your attention was immediately drawn to her again.

“Would you mind going up to your flat door, sweetheart?” James asked as he began pulling the ladder down with the last firefighter's help, the one with dark long curls. “For when Marls opens it?”

Upon the request, your legs moved on their own accord up your one flight of stairs, seemingly drawn to where Marlene was. When you made it to your flat door, your first moment alone, you held your face in your hands and schooled your breathing. Too many things to be embarrassed over happened back to back and you were about to be put through even more.

Before you were quite able to gather yourself, your front door opened with a flourish. With one hand still on the handle and the other dangling your keys, Marlene stood before you, grinning. “Fancy meeting you here, princess.”

“Thank you,” you breathed out, beyond relieved to finally see the inside of your flat. You took the keys she held out to you. "Really Marlene, thank you so much, you're an actual lifesaver."

Her expression softened slightly, lips falling into a more genuine smile, though her air of bravado remained. You were beginning to wonder if that was just how Marlene was. 

“Does this happen to you girls often?” She asked with a raised brow, crossing her arms over her chest as she leaned on your doorframe. You tried and failed not to look at the flex of her muscles.

“No, this was a first for us both. Long day, apparently.” You scratched the back of your neck, trying to laugh it off. Marlene’s eyes followed the movement. 

“Don’t be embarrassed, darling, it can happen to the best of us,” she said then, reassuring hand reaching out to squeeze your shoulder. “If it ever is to happen again, call us up on 999 like you did today, yeah?” Then, she took a step closer and handed you one of your own post-it-notes with an unfamiliar handwriting across it. “But if you ever want a more personalised course in fire safety, then this number is much more effective.”

You took the note from her with trembling fingers and when you looked up at her, you couldn’t help the wide smile that took over your face. Her energy was contagious. 

“I sure will.” Your voice was barely a whisper, slightly in awe.

"Great way to start my night then," she said with a wink before swinging past you with an elegance no one should be able to possess in those clunky trousers. "See you around, princess."

As Marlene disappeared from sight and you heard the loud friendly laughter downstairs from her and her friends, you entered your flat. She had turned off the stove and put the pan aside, nothing burned past the point of saving.

With a sigh, you dropped down on your kitchen table, glancing out through the still-opened window. There, Marlene was already looking up at you while hanging out of the firetruck, much like she had been earlier. She waved wildly at you, blowing you a kiss.

You though then that maybe, just maybe, this didn't wind up being the worst day of your life after all.