The door opens slowly, its hinges creaking, as Josiah steps inside with the unhurried calm of a man who knows no one is coming to save us.
He's not what I expected. Not some monster with visible evil written on his face. He's ordinary. Middle-aged. Thinning hair combed over a sunburned scalp. He wears khakis and a polo shirt, the uniform of suburban dads everywhere.
That's what makes it worse. He looks like someone's uncle. Someone's coworker. The guy who volunteers at church on Sundays and complains about his lawn at neighborhood barbecues.
But his eyes are wrong. Flat. Empty. The eyes of a man who stopped seeing women as people a long time ago.
"Good," he says, looking at me with the clinical interest of a collector examining a new specimen. "You're awake. We can begin."
Nadia moves. Instinct, not strategy. She lunges, gets three steps before Josiah's hand shoots out and catches her by the throat.
The crack is small, just a forearm against her windpipe, but Nadia drops like her strings were cut. She gasps, clawing at her neck, and Josiah steps over her without looking down.
"That," he says conversationally, "is what happens when you don't follow the rules."
Sometimes Lattimer would come with him. He’s the man in charge. He's not what I expected either. He's handsome, wearing a tailored suit designed specifically for his sculpted muscles. Middle-aged with thick dark hair styled to perfection.The kind of man you'd pass on the street and think his woman must be lucky.
"Syvannah." Dr. Chen's voice cuts through. I'm shaking, hands fisted so tight my nails draw blood from my palms. The office swims into focus. Beige walls, that stupid beach print, the box of tissues I'm suddenly clutching.
"Breathe," she says. "You're here. You're safe. Just breathe."
I try. Air scrapes through my throat like glass.
"You were in the motel room," Dr. Chen prompts gently. "What do you remember next?"
I can't speak yet. My body's still there, chained to a wall, Nadia whispering survival strategies, Exleigh crying softly in the dark.
"Time stopped meaning anything," I finally manage. "I don't know how long we were there. Days? Weeks? It all blurred together. He kept us separated most of the time. Brought us food, water, and kept us alive. But every time he came into that room…"
My voice breaks.
"Take your time," Dr. Chen says.
"He had rules," I continue, forcing the words out. "If we followed them, he was almost kind. If we broke them…" I swallow hard. "Nadia tried to fight back every time he tried to take me or Exleigh. He broke her arm so casually, like he was snapping a pencil. After that, we learned. We became whatever he needed us to be to survive."
"That's not weakness," Dr. Chen says firmly. "That's a survival strategy."
"It felt like weakness."
"Weakness would have been giving up. You didn't."
The nights were the worst.
He'd come into the room after dark, and we'd play his sick game of Russian roulette. One of us. Sometimes two. Neverall three at once. He liked to make us listen while he hurt the others.
I can still hear Exleigh's muffled screams through the thin wall. Still feel the phantom grip of his hands. Still taste the copper fear when it was my turn.
This is the trick I learned. You can't stop what's happening. But you can go somewhere else.
I counted the cracks in the concrete ceiling. One, two, three, four. There was a water stain shaped like a bird. Or maybe a hand. I decided it was a bird. Birds can fly away.
I recited song lyrics in my head. Anything to drown out the sound of his breathing, his voice, the things he said that were somehow worse than what he did.
When he touched me, I wasn't there. I was flying with the water-stain bird, far away from the basement where monsters lived.
But I always came back. That's the part they don't tell you about dissociation. You can leave, but you always have to come back. And when you do, your body remembers everything your mind tried to hide.
"How did you get out?" Dr. Chen asks.