Page 20

Twenty

The quiet was too much.

It pressed in on me from all sides, heavy and thick like humidity before a storm. The kind of silence that made you feel like the walls were holding their breath, waiting for something to happen.

I sat curled into the corner of the couch, my knees tucked under me like a child. The TV played something I didn’t recognize—a rerun or a movie or maybe just noise—but it barely registered. The sound was background static, something to prove I still existed in a room and not in my head.

My fingers picked at a loose thread in the blanket draped over my lap. My nails had started to chip. I’d forgotten to repaint them this week. Or last week. My sense of time was all fucked lately.

Still, I focused on my breathing. In. Out. Count to four. Hold for four. Out for four. I’d done the exercise enough times to know it by heart. Dr. Reynolds would’ve been proud if I’d actually called her.

And for a few seconds, it helped.

Until I looked up.

They were still on the shelf.

Exactly where I’d placed them. One on the left. One on the right. Symmetrical. Perfect.

I hadn’t even realized I’d arranged them like that.

My gaze locked on their painted glass eyes, and a chill ran down the backs of my arms like a brush of cold fingers. My breath caught. My chest went tight.

And then it hit me all at once.

I’d put them back.

Not just set them back on the shelf like I was cleaning or organizing—no. I remembered every second of it now. The way I’d collapsed. Crawled. The panic. The choking. The pressure in my chest like something was inside me, yanking invisible strings. I remembered how my hands had moved without thought, how I’d cradled them like they were precious, like I couldn’t bear to be apart from them.

My whole body had surrendered.

I sat frozen, my skin prickling. My stomach flipped like I’d swallowed ice water. My heart thudded a heavy, sick rhythm in my chest.

They were just dolls.

They were just?—

My hands started shaking.

What kind of person talks to porcelain? What kind of person can’t throw them out? What kind of person collapses on the floor because of a thought ?

A crazy person.

The word landed sharp and bitter in the center of my chest.

I pushed off the couch, legs stiff from sitting too long. My limbs didn’t feel like mine. I moved like I was swimming upstream in my own skin. My head pounded. My mouth was dry.

I needed out.

I needed air. I needed people. I needed noise and cars and strangers and bright fluorescent lights. I needed anything but this—anything but them and the quiet and the awful, suffocating awareness that I wasn’t alone in my own body anymore.

I didn’t grab my keys.

I didn’t grab a coat.

I didn’t even check if I was wearing a bra.

I just grabbed my phone, jammed my feet into whatever shoes were near the door and yanked the door open so fast it rattled on its hinges.

I didn’t look back.

But I felt them.

Watching.

Like they always were.

I ran.

My lungs barely worked as I tore down the stairs, each step a jolt through my knees and into my skull. The hall lights flickered past like static, too bright, too sterile. By the time I burst through the front door and into the open air, the cold slapped me across the face like punishment.

It didn’t help.

It should have. The wind should’ve cleared my head, chilled the panic, made me feel alive again. But instead, it only made me more aware of everything I’d forgotten. The thin shirt clinging to my skin. The way my legs trembled as I forced myself forward.

I didn’t have a plan. I just needed away .

My footsteps echoed on the concrete, loud and wrong. My breath fogged out ahead of me in short, frantic bursts. The early morning light cast long shadows across the pavement, stretching out like fingers. I didn’t recognize the neighborhood even though I’d lived here for years.

It felt like the world was changing around me as I ran.

And maybe it was.

Because halfway down the block, my thighs clenched without warning.

I stopped dead.

I didn’t mean to. My body just froze like it had been struck, like the nerves in my legs fired all at once and then short-circuited.

Then came the heat. Low and fast and dizzying. Like someone had touched me—right there.

I gasped.

Then I took a step.

My hand moved.

Not in panic. Not to wipe sweat or fix my shirt or anything I chose to do . My right hand slid down my stomach, fingers splaying across my waistband like it had been waiting for this moment.

“No,” I whispered. My voice came out cracked.

My other hand shot out, trying to grab the wrist and pull it back , but it kept going. Slowly. Smoothly. Eagerly.

You ran, Sunshine.

The voice curled through my mind like smoke. Disappointed.

And I told you what happened to bad girls who run.

My fingers slipped beneath the waistband of my leggings, down past the lace of my panties.

I was already wet.

Dripping.

“No,” I whimpered, trying again to yank my own hand away, to force it to stop. I looked insane—standing on a sidewalk in the middle of a suburban street, fighting against my own arm while my hips began to rock forward, grinding against my own touch.

My breath came in shallow gasps. My legs quivered. My cheeks burned so hot they felt scorched.

“Please,” I begged to no one. “Please stop?—”

You love feeling better, don’t you?

And worse—my fingers moved like they knew my body. Like they’d been practicing. They rubbed circles over my clit, dipped into my heat, traced every nerve with cruel precision. My back arched. My knees buckled. My voice died in my throat.

I was fighting it with everything I had.

It wasn’t enough.

That’s it. Show me how desperate you are now, little runner.

I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t stop me .

But I couldn’t finish either.

The pressure built higher. Higher. My body burned, demanded , pleaded for release.

But it didn’t come.

You only come when I say so.

I sobbed. Out loud. One hand still stuffed between my thighs, the other digging bruises into my wrist trying to drag it free. My body shook. My mind fractured.

I needed it.

I hated it.

And I needed it.

Say it. Say thank you. Ask me nicely.

And I did.

Gods help me, I did.

“Please,” I gasped. “Please can I?—”

Come for me, Sunshine.

And I did.

My world shattered in broad daylight.

Right there, in the open, legs spread against the side of a brick building, I came harder than I ever had in my life. My thighs jerked. My spine curled. My voice caught in my throat and died as pleasure ripped through me like lightning.

When I collapsed to my knees, panting, shaking, humiliated beyond anything I could’ve imagined, the only sound I could hear was his voice.

Pleased.

Purring.

Proud.

That’s my good girl.

Then my body kept moving.

Even after I shattered, after my knees hit the pavement and my lungs finally remembered how to drag in air—I didn’t stop. My hand didn’t stop. My fingers were slick, soaked, still rubbing tight little circles that made my spine twitch and my eyes roll back.

I tried to yank my hand away again, but it was locked in place. Like I was stuck in a loop.

“Stop—” I begged, voice barely a whisper. “Please, I can’t?—”

You didn’t say thank you.

The words slid through my head like heat—sweet and sticky and slow.

I whimpered as my fingers started moving faster.

“No, no, no—please, I said please, I?—”

But you didn’t say thank you, Sunshine.

I keened, my forehead pressing to the rough brick wall as my hips bucked forward. Another orgasm was already rising, tight and violent, scraping through my insides like fire.

I didn’t want it.

I needed it.

And I couldn’t stop it.

“Please—” I sobbed. “I’m sorry?—”

Not what I asked for.

My body betrayed me again. My legs spread wider without my permission. My back arched like I was on display. I felt like a marionette, a puppet made of heat and slick and shame.

And the worst part?

I could feel it building again. Fast. Deep. Dangerous.

“I can’t?—”

Say it.

Tears spilled down my cheeks. I was panting so hard I felt dizzy. The air tasted like ash. My fingers didn’t stop. My pussy clenched around nothing, desperate and overwhelmed. I was nothing but a trembling, overstimulated mess, my thighs shaking so hard they couldn’t hold me up anymore.

And he was going to keep me here until I broke properly.

Until I gave in.

My lips trembled. I tasted salt.

“…Thank you.”

The words fell from me like a prayer. Barely audible. Shaky. Shameful.

“Thank you,” I gasped again, louder. “T-thank you, I—please, I can’t—I can’t anymore?—”

The voice hummed, warm and cruel.

Then come for me, Sunshine.

And I did.

It hit so violently I thought I blacked out.

My body jerked forward as the orgasm slammed through me, sharp and molten and unforgiving. My hand moved on its own, grinding against the raw nerves of my clit like it wanted to brand the sensation into my bones.

And I screamed.

“THANK YOU!” The words ripped out of me, raw and cracked and public .

“Thank you—thank you— fuck —thank you?—!”

It wasn’t quiet. It wasn’t subtle. I was on my knees, legs spread, hand stuffed in my pants, screaming gratitude to the empty street like I was in the middle of a fucking sermon.

When the pleasure finally ebbed, I was left limp. Unraveled. Sobbing from a place deeper than exhaustion. My body collapsed into itself, trembling, twitching. My throat burned. My panties were soaked. I could feel slick running down my thigh.

The voice was gone.

The warmth was gone.

And in the silence that followed—what was left was me.

My breath wheezed in and out. My vision was fuzzy. I pulled my hand out of my pants with slow, shaking fingers like I was watching someone else do it.

And that’s when the horror caught up.

What the fuck did I just do?

Why had my hand moved like that?

Why did I hear someone —a man’s voice — inside my head ?

Why had I—why had I fucking thanked him?

I stared at my hand.

Then at the street.

Then down at myself.

“Oh my gods,” I choked. “Oh my gods. ”

What the fuck was happening to me?

I didn’t move.

I couldn’t.

I was still slumped on the cold sidewalk, hand sticky, body twitching with the echoes of what had just happened. My breath came in wet, broken gasps. My leggings were damp between my thighs. My bones ached. My pride was dust.

My phone buzzed weakly in my pocket.

I pulled it out with trembling fingers like it weighed fifty pounds. The screen was cracked. Had it been cracked before?

My reflection stared back at me for a second in the black screen.

I looked insane.

I unlocked it anyway.

Because what else could I do?

What else was there to do?

I opened Chrome and, without even thinking, typed:

How to know if you’re schizophrenic.

I hit search.

Then immediately backspaced and typed:

Can your hand move on its own schizophrenia

Then changed it again to:

Possession vs hallucination real symptoms

And then just:

Demonic masturbation?

My thumb hovered.

Then I sighed—long, ragged, and so utterly done with myself—and hit search.

I didn’t even read the articles.

I just stared at the list of them. Each one confirming, in big, bold, horrifying letters:

You are not okay.