Page 86 of Shattered In Darkness

He shoves me, then pulls me back. My head snaps. The pressure bruises. He rips his shirt off and slams it over my head. It blinds me, smothers me, his hands holding it tight. I claw at the cotton but he’s stronger. He just laughs.

He’s not Brody. Not anyone human.

My ears fill with the sound of my own heart. I can’t see. I can barely breathe as he yanks me upright, choking me with the shirt. The world narrows to darkness and his grip. I’m a ragdoll, legs scraping across carpet, then the burn of cold tile, kitchen, then hallway, then front door.

The night howls in. I feel the wind before I hear it, slicing through the wet shirt, through my skin. My feet slip on frost. My toes are numb already.

He manhandles me out the threshold. Then, light. He rips the shirt from my head, and shoves me. I tumble into the snow, knees buckling. The last thing I see is him, face hollow, eyes inkblot black behind the mask.

He slams the door. I blink, but can’t make sense of anything except the pain. At first it’s just cold, and then it’s something else, agony’s dull shadow, the kind of ache that eats you from the inside out.

I gasp. Breath explodes out of me and hangs in the dark. The moon is the only witness. Pale, distant. No light from the windows. Brody shut the world in with him. All that’s left for me is the blue-white drift, deeper than my ankles, blowing into my eyes. I can’t even see the edge of the woods.

I stumble toward the door, half-blind. Skin on fire, then nothing. I slam my fist against the wood, hard enough to crack it if I could. “Brody!” It’s a scream, inhuman, ripped out of my belly. I bruise my hands on the door. Over and over. “Brody, let me in! Brody!”

There is no sound from inside.

Tears start but freeze before they can slide off my chin. Every inch of me shudders, begs for relief, even if it’s just another punch. I drop to my knees in the snow. It swallows me, numbs my skin. I try to breathe but can’t; it’s like the cold has frozen my chest. Light spots. Noise in my head. The world closes in. My field of vision shrinks to the black behind my eyelids.

Nothing helps. Not the air, not the sky, not the jagged memory of Brody’s hands. I’m spinning, clamped in place by terror and cold. The panic attack is a star collapsing, blank and endless. I can’t move. Can’t get up.

Is this what dying feels like? Lonely. Small. I want someone—anyone—but there is no one.

Only the snow, the moon, the mute cabin.

I curl forward, clawing at my hair, at my shins. Heart hammering so loud it drowns out everything else. Can’t slow it down. I don't want to. Every second outside is an eternity. I count them, but lose track.

This is how I’ll end. Out here, pathetic, freezing, salt and ice on my face. Just another victim. Maybe I was always meant for this.

But, the world breaks open. A blade of yellow light stabs the snow, burns lines into my eyes. I shrink from it, useless hands covering my face, but it finds me anyway.

The door swings wide, slams into the siding. My name spat into the night. “Lola.”

The word is guttural. He comes out, huge, unstoppable, skull stretched tight over his face, eyes burning from the black holes. Not a man. Not my boy. He’s a fucking reaper.

He’s on me in half a second. His hands are biting into my arm, yanking me up. He hauls me onto my feet, snow cascading off my hair, burning my shins, numbness popping and fizzing up my legs.

I try to stay up but my knees fold. He drags me anyway, up the steps, slamming me into the warmth so fast I can’t even make sense of it. He throws me down, flinging me onto the rug by the dead hearth. I curl in on myself, desperate to get small, to disappear. Behind me, the door slams shut. The sound vibrates through the floor. He locks us in.

Brody is pacing like a beast, the skull mask on his face makes him unreadable, untouchable. His hands won’t stop shaking.

He mutters to himself, pacing the length of the room, tripping over broken glass. Sometimes he barks a word—"liar," "mine," "safe," "fuck, Bambi, fuck"—and sometimes it’s just a low growl.

I shrink tighter, not wanting to look at the mask. The mouth, empty sockets. No way to see if he’s angry or empty. I can’t even guess if he wants to hurt me or cradle me.

When he storms past, I flinch. Every time. My brain lights up with memories: Marcus with his belt, Marcus whispering calm after the storm, dragging me out of the closet, calling me “sweetheart” even when he had blood on his knuckles. I see other men, too. The ones who liked to make me cry, who liked to watch me shake.

Brody’s silhouette blocks everything. Sometimes he stops in front of me, stooping low, breath hard and threatening. Sometimes he stares, sometimes he stalks away, rattling the table so more glass hits the floor. I can’t tell what version of him I’m getting. The protector or the monster. Maybe there’s no difference.

Curling up, my skin prickles where the melting snow soaks my clothes. My jaw aches from shivering, and every inch of me hurts. Knees, wrists, ribs. My mind flickers, short-circuits, shows me old punishments and the promise of new ones.

He could kill me here and nobody would know. Nobody would care.

Brody stops, looming over me. I try not to breathe, but my body betrays me, wet, hiccuping, panicked. He tilts his head, the mask a dead thing, and just watches. I expect a touch. A slap. A shove. Instead, nothing.

It’s worse than violence. The waiting, the not knowing.

Abruptly, he spins and slams his fist into the wall so hard I expect blood. More muttering floats from him.