The obsidian typewriter takes a brief pause, crimson keys stilled like a beast caught mid-breath. Silence yawns across the room, heavy as a hangman’s noose, every creak of the old chair I’m slumped in echoing like a confession. It’s the kind of silence that makes you realize you were safer with the noise.
She shifts, legs uncrossing and then crossing again, a movement that’s deliberate, drawing my eyes. Her smile is more a baring of teeth, lips a slash of red against her pale, faultless skin. She’s got her claws resting on the edge of a thick folder—my folder, every sin, every stumble, every stupid mistake. The file looks worn, like it’s been read and reread until every word inside has teeth of its own.
“What did Frank see?” she asks, voice sharp but sweet, like candy laced with ground glass. “What did he remember?”
My throat tightens around the answer, my jaw locking out of instinct—but it’s a losing fight. She’s got me boxed in, and in this room, with its stale air, flickering lights, and the weight of their stares, there’s no such thing as secrets. Words scrape their way up, rough and splintered, like I’m dragging nails from my gut.
The shadow in the corner stirs, peeling away from the walls as if it’s decided it’s time to play. It forms into something resembling a man—tall, broad, pressed into a suit so perfect it seems to cut the air around it. His grin is crooked, half menace, half charm, and the horns curling from his head glow just faintly, a deep crimson pulse. He flips a coin, the metallic chime echoing unnaturally.
“We’re waiting,” he says, his voice all smooth venom. “You don’t want to keep us waiting too long, do you?”
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The air gets colder, and I can feel the hollow place inside me—the one Frank left behind—gnawing at my insides, an emptiness that burns like dry ice. Hell isn’t fire. Hell is absence, the aching hollow where something you loved used to be.
“Cat,” I manage, voice cracking like old plaster, “what happened with him… that was just the opening act.”
She leans forward, elbows on the table, her smile curling at the corners, a promise of pain. The kind of smile that says she’s already got her hooks in me, and now she’s just enjoying the way I twist.
“And Frank?” she presses, voice a soft purr of malice. “What did he tell you?”
The memories rise, dark and stifling, clawing at the walls of my mind. I try to hold them back, but it’s a futile effort. The typewriter kicks back in, its clacking syncing perfectly with the pounding in my chest, every keypress a hammer against the thin walls of my composure.
“What he remembered…” The words tear themselves from my throat, bitter, unwilling. “What he saw…”
The typewriter pounds harder, a relentless rhythm, like a heart in the throes of panic, pounding out a truth I’d rather bury.
“It was far worse.”
Life’s a rigged game, and every hand dealt has blood on it. You don’t get to choose your cards, just the way you play them.
But even knowing all that, even after every bluff is called and every chip lost, there's a certain triumph in playing your final hand with your head held high. No one leaves the table rich, but if you're fortunate, you leave a little better than when you sat down—wiser, perhaps, and unbroken. And maybe, just maybe, that's enough.
To be continued…