SHE

The room felt smaller as my mom's words echoed in my head, each one hitting me like a wave I couldn't escape. I sat there on my bed, the soft blankets beneath me suddenly feeling like iron chains, weighing me down. The pancakes she made lay untouched on the side table, their sweet smell nauseating me.

How could she say those things? How could she talk about image, about dad's anger, when all I could feel was the lingering touch of his hands, the shadow of his presence, staining every part of me? My skin crawled, my heart raced, and the room spun in slow, suffocating circles.

I tried to make sense of it—of her silence, of her leaving me alone with this secret, this wound that was tearing me apart. The quiet of the room was deafening now, filled with the sounds of my own sobs, my own gasps for air as I struggled to breathe through the pain. It was as if my mom's absence had ripped open a hole in the world, one I couldn't find a way out of.

The clock ticked away, indifferent to my suffering. 5:30 p.m. now. The afternoon sun filtered weakly through the curtains, casting long shadows across the floor, reminding me of the night before, of the darkness, of **him**.

I closed my eyes, but the images came rushing back—the way his breath had felt against my skin, the way his hands wouldn't stop, the way my voice had disappeared into the void, swallowed by fear. I had screamed inside, begged for someone to help me, for my mom, for anyone. But no one came. No one ever came.

I squeezed my arms around myself, hugging my knees to my chest, trying to make myself smaller, invisible, like I could disappear into the bed and never come out. Maybe if I was small enough, quiet enough, the world would forget about me, and I wouldn't have to live in this nightmare anymore.

The door creaked open, and my heart jumped, fear spiking through me, but it was just my mom again. She stood there in the doorway, her face unreadable, her eyes distant. For a moment, I thought she might come back, wrap me in her arms, and tell me everything would be okay. But she didn't move.

"Bella..." she said softly, almost like she was talking to herself. "You need to understand... sometimes things aren't as simple as they seem. We have to protect what we have... we have to protect the family..."

Protect the family. The words felt hollow, cruel even. What family was there left to protect when the people who were supposed to love me couldn't even protect me from the monster within our own home?

I wanted to scream again, to shout at her, to tell her that I didn't care about our family's image, that none of it mattered as much as what had been taken from me. But my voice wouldn't come. My chest tightened, my throat burned, and the only sound that escaped was a broken sob.

"Mom..." I whispered, my voice trembling. "How can you say that? How can you let him get away with this? He hurt me... he... he..."

She looked away, her hands trembling. "I'm sorry, Bella. I really am. But you have to trust me. This is for the best."

For the best? The words twisted inside me, sharp and jagged. How could this be for the best? How could letting him walk free, letting him live like nothing had happened, be what was best? I stared at her, waiting for an answer, waiting for her to say something that made sense. But she didn't. She just turned and left, leaving me alone in the quiet, suffocating room once more.

The walls seemed to close in around me, the shadows growing darker, colder. I pulled the blankets over my head, as if hiding beneath them could protect me from the world, from the truth. But even in the darkness, the memories wouldn't stop. They played over and over in my mind, a never-ending reel of horror and helplessness.

I was trapped. Trapped in a world where my cries were ignored, where the people who should have been my protectors were too afraid of losing face to fight for me. Trapped in a body that felt like it didn't belong to me anymore, a body that had been violated, broken.

And somewhere in the back of my mind, a small, desperate voice whispered, **What if he comes back?**

That thought sent a shiver down my spine, my whole body trembling with fear. What if he did? What if he wasn't done? What if this nightmare wasn't over?

Tears streamed down my face as I curled up tighter, feeling smaller and smaller with each passing second. My mom's words echoed in my head, her silence hanging between us like a wall I couldn't climb.

I didn't know how to escape this, how to make it stop. All I knew was that I was alone, and that the world outside my room was just as dangerous as the darkness inside.

I squeezed my eyes shut, praying for sleep to come and take me away from this—if only for a little while. But even as I drifted on the edge of unconsciousness, I knew the nightmare would follow me there, too.