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SIXTEEN

LENORE

When you grow up in a broken home, with broken people, you think that the real world that’s out there will fix you, but that isn’t true.

It will make you worse. And I kept coming back to the memories—where did I go wrong?

And then I lowered my head down, seeing him closing his eyes, sleeping on my chest.

And a tear falls down.

It’s not the kind that burns or demands to be noticed—it’s the quiet kind. The kind that slips out like a secret you didn’t mean to tell.

He looked peaceful. Too peaceful. Like someone who didn’t know he had wreckage stitched into every part of him. Or maybe he did, and this was just the eye of the storm—his moment of rest before becoming a hurricane again.

I held my breath, afraid that even the sound of it might wake the version of him I didn’t know how to handle. The one that made me feel like love was a game I never learned the rules to.

People say the heart knows. But mine? Mine was confused, bruised, and too loyal for its own good.

Maybe that’s what love was for people like us—damaged and desperate. A battlefield where even silence feels violent. A kind of hope that looks too much like hurt.

And still… I stayed.

And still… he rested.

Not knowing he was the reason I no longer recognized myself.

People romanticize broken souls like we’re just waiting for someone to love us right.

But when two broken people find each other, it doesn’t heal anything. It just teaches you how to bleed in sync.

He was cracked, yes. But I was already shattered.

He screamed with his fists; I screamed with silence.

He broke things around him. I broke myself.

And somehow, we still called it love.

We were never a home. We were a war zone dressed in soft words and false promises.

He’d say, “I didn’t mean it,” and I’d nod like it made the bruise fade faster.

I’d say, “I’m fine,” while pressing a towel to my own wounds—some visible, some not.

But there’s no exit sign in relationships like ours.

You don’t run. You drift.

You sink slowly beneath the surface, and before you realize it, you’re drowning in everything you swore you’d never allow.

I used to draw lines on my skin when the noise inside got too loud.

Not because I wanted to die—

But because pain made things quiet.

Pain was something I could control.

He never noticed.

Or maybe he did and just couldn’t care through his own chaos.

Some nights, I’d sit on the bathroom floor, listening to him sleep like the world wasn’t crumbling around us.

And I’d think— maybe if I just hurt enough on the outside, I’ll stop feeling everything on the inside.

But pain doesn’t save you. It just delays the collapse.

And eventually, the mirror stops lying.

You realize you’re not the victim anymore.

You’re a co-conspirator in your own suffering.

Because you stayed.

Because you let the hurt become routine.

Because you confused punishment with penance.

And the saddest part?

You stopped hoping he’d change.

You just started hoping he’d stop noticing when you did.

I woke up at 3:18 a.m.

I didn’t have to check the clock. I always woke at the same damn time. But this time, it wasn’t the usual silence that pulled me from sleep—it was a voice.

He wasn’t there.

And the voice... it wasn’t his. It was female. Soft. Familiar.

She was singing that lullaby—the one I used to hum to soothe myself to sleep. But now it wasn’t a comfort. Now, it was calling me.

I sat up, slowly.

My skin prickled with cold. His black shirt clung to me. I didn’t remember putting it on.

I stood, barefoot, each step across the floor a whisper. The house felt different—thicker, slower, like it was watching.

Then I saw her.

A little girl at the end of the hallway.

Her hair was tied in pigtails, swaying as she twirled. She laughed, light and sharp like glass hitting tile. The lullaby slipped from her lips in a singsong voice, sweet and eerie all at once.

And she kept singing.

And I kept walking.

“Hush now, darling, close your eyes, The stars are whispering lullabies. Moonlight paints your dreams in gold, Safe and warm, though nights are cold.”

“Tiptoe shadows, don’t be scared, Mommy’s gone but someone’s there. Hearts can break but still beat on, So sleep, my love, till the pain is gone.”

“Roses bloom where no one sees, Ghosts still hum beneath the trees. So hush now, darling, time to rest— With broken dreams against your chest.”

And as she darted down the hallway, I chased after her. Something about her was too familiar. I reached out, almost grabbing her sleeve, but she vanished behind the door of a room I was never supposed to enter. Dad had always forbidden it.

I slipped inside.

The room was still, dust-heavy. Shelves lined the walls, weighed down with framed memories—photos of smiles, laughter, lost time.

At the center, a woman sat in a wooden chair, gently rocking a child in her arms. Her voice rose soft and sweet, humming the same lullaby I once sang.

“Mom?” I whispered. “Mom... is that you?”

She turned.

Her face was breaking, skin sagging, rotting away in slow motion. Bone peeked through. A hollow eye met mine. I screamed, the sound ripping from somewhere deep, shaking my ribs, rattling my soul.

“Run,” she whispered, barely audible.

The room shoved me out, walls breathing, floor trembling, and I stumbled back into the hallway.

Dorian stood by the attic door.

He was still. Watching. His eyes were stark white, blank like glass. Something inside him wasn’t him anymore.

His face sagged in slack terror, lower lip trembling. Drool spilled from the corner of his mouth. And in his hands was an axe.

“Kill. Kill. Kill,” he murmured, again and again, a twisted smirk blooming across his face.

I shrieked, pinching my arm, clawing at my skin to wake up— please let this be a dream. But the pain was real, sharp, nerve-deep.

I ran.

Down the stairs, feet slipping, heart thundering. I missed steps, stumbled sideways, and nearly fell.

This isn’t him, I repeated. It’s something else. Something inside him.

I reached the front door. Yanked it open.

And I ran.

Into the night, lungs burning, eyes stinging. My vision blurred, but I didn’t stop. The air tore through me as my heart pounded like war drums in my ears.

No matter how fast I ran, I always ended up back inside.

The house looped around me, folding in on itself—an endless circle I couldn’t break. Door after door, hallway after hallway, and every time I thought I’d reached the exit, I found myself in a different room. A new memory. A fresh nightmare.

I was trapped.

Haunted.

I kept looking for him—searching corners, shadows, mirrors—but he was gone. Gone, or hiding.

Then the phone rang.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

I hesitated, heart pounding, then snatched it off the receiver. Static hissed, then his voice slid through the line, low and cold:

“You should’ve never come back, little stepsister.”

Air caught in my throat. I gasped, clutching the phone like it could anchor me.

But the floor beneath me felt like it was shifting—tilting, breathing, alive. And his voice… it kept echoing through the hall, even though the line had long gone dead.

Then he appeared.

At the top of the staircase.

But it wasn’t him—not anymore.

He wore a mask.

Rough jute stretched over his face, stitched tight.

Two holes punched out where his eyes should be, dark and unreadable.

Where his mouth should’ve been… there was a line—drawn in blood.

A smile, red and crude, carved across the mask like a wound.

A smile that didn’t end. A smile that cut straight into my brain and stayed there.

This was it.

Hause had him now. He wasn’t here to speak. He wasn’t here to plead. He was here to kill me.

I screamed—raw, throat tearing. My head jolted to the right—and that’s when I saw him. My father.

His body hung from the ceiling, limp, hanging from a rope. His eyes were wide open. Lifeless. Watching nothing.

This was the final act.

He—the thing in the mask—was here to kill me.

How did it come to this?

How could Dorian become this ?

How could the boy I knew slip into something so hollow, so monstrous?

Then the doorbell rang.

A sharp, jarring sound that didn’t belong. Like it came from another world entirely.

I stumbled to the front door. Opened it.

Dorian stood there.

Alive. Normal. Breathing.

“Lenore?” he asked, confused. “What are you doing here?”

I screamed again, stumbling back, heart slamming against my ribs.

I turned—slow, terrified—and saw him. The masked one.

Still inside.

Still watching me.

I reached out, tried to move toward him, tried to grab him, to unmask him—but my body wouldn’t move. I was frozen, paralyzed, like I’d sunk beneath ice.

And all I could do was watch.

Watch as that figure crept closer.

The mask grinning.

The blood smiling.

And I was ready.

Ready to die.