THYME'S POV:
Darkness.
A thick, greasy, absolute darkness pressed in from all sides. It wasn't a place; it was a smothering presence. I tried to force my eyes open, to find a sliver of light, but the fabric bound over them was heavy, scraping my eyelids raw. It carried the stench of old sweat and the sickly sweet, metallic tang of dried blood. Panic, a cold, slick serpent, uncoiled in my gut. I tried to scream, but a foul, sweat-soaked rag was crammed deep into my mouth, forcing my tongue back, making me choke on my own saliva. A desperate, gagging sound was the only prayer I could offer.
My body was a map of pain. The searing bite of rope at my wrists and ankles, the dull, throbbing agony at the back of my skull where the world had been stolen from me. And beneath it all, a deeper, more profound ache. A violation that went bone-deep.
Then, the voice returned. It wasn't just a memory; it felt like it was whispering directly into my ear now, here in this suffocating blackness. A voice of sugar and arsenic.
"Did you really think I would let you have him?" she crooned, her words a caress and a threat. "A little stray like you? So desperate for a scrap of affection you'd wander right into the wolf's den. I warned you. I told you he was mine. But you just couldn't stay away."
Her laugh was a silken, chilling thing. "Now look at you. Ruined. How will you ever look him in the eye again, knowing what five other men have done to you? Knowing that they turned you into their plaything? He'll look at you and all he'll see is their filth."
The memory was no longer a flicker. It was a tidal wave of ice and fire that consumed me. The sounds hit first: the heavy clank of a metal door, the low, guttural laughter that wasn't human, and my own muffled, pathetic whimpers. It wasn't five men. In the fractured landscape of my memory, it was a single, sprawling beast of grasping hands and rotten teeth and mocking, endless laughter. A many-limbed horror that smelled of cheap liquor and stale cigarettes.
My clothes were torn from my body, the cold, stale air hitting my skin like a thousand tiny needles. My frantic, useless struggling, my fingernails bending and breaking against the floorboards as I tried to claw my way to an escape that didn't exist.
"Hold him still," one of the beast's voices growled.
Then, the press of cold steel against my cheek. I froze, every muscle locking in sheer terror. It was a knife. He wasn't cutting me, just holding it there. A promise.
"Be a good boy for us," the voice rasped, the blade tracing a cold line down to my jaw. "Scream too much, and we'll carve a new smile for your lover to find. Something to remember us by."
The assault that followed was a symphony of degradation. My body was no longer my own. It was a thing to be used, to be broken, to be defiled. I tried to retreat into my mind, to find that safe corner where I kept my dreams, but there was nowhere to hide. Every brutal thrust, every contemptuous slap, every whisper of disgust was an anchor, dragging my soul back into the filth to witness its own destruction. They cracked me open and scooped me out, leaving nothing but a hollowed-out shell filled with shame.
And the woman's voice was the conductor of it all, a triumphant narrative to my agony. "If I can't have him, you will never have him either."
Now, here in the darkness, the full, unbearable truth slammed into me. I remember everything. A scream of pure, soul-shredding horror built in my chest, but with the gag in my mouth, it could only manifest as a violent, silent convulsion. My body bucked against the ropes, a pointless, spastic dance of remembered violation.
The pain in my head was a fire. The ache in my body was a deep, gnawing rot. But it was nothing. It was a shadow compared to the utter annihilation of my heart. I was filth. A walking grave. A thing that had been passed around and discarded.
I no longer deserve him.
The thought was a shard of ice in my soul. Unworthy. Unlovable. Broken.
And who was he? Who was he?
My mind tore at the edges of the abyss, desperate for a face, a name, a single memory of the person for whom I had endured this. The man I loved. The man I had betrayed with my own defilement. But there was only a void. A searing, featureless black hole where his memory should be.
The inability to remember him was a new and exquisite form of torture. To have lost everything for a ghost. To be unworthy of a love I couldn't even name.
Hot tears streamed from under my blindfold, mixing with the sweat and grime on my face. This wasn't just sadness. This was the grief of a condemned soul. I didn't just want to disappear; I wanted to have never existed at all. I wanted to rewind time and erase myself from the world so that this stain, this walking, breathing defilement that was me, would never have been created. The pain in my heart was so immense, so absolute, it became its own entity, a living creature inside me, feasting on the wreckage of my soul. I was trapped, not by ropes, but by a memory that had become my reality, forever chained to the horror of what had been done to me, and haunted by the ghost of a love I was no longer fit to remember.
"Ring! RING! RING!"
The sound was a physical assault, a blade of noise slicing through the thick, suffocating darkness of the nightmare. I was ripped from the abyss with a choked gasp, my body lurching upright in bed. My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird trying to break free. The phantom sensation of rough ropes still bit into my wrists, and the sour taste of a cloth gag filled my mouth. I clawed at my own throat, desperate for air that was already there, my lungs burning.
"Where am I...?" The words were a raw croak. My eyes darted around the room, taking in the familiar sight of my dorm—my desk, my closet, the gray morning light filtering through the window. I was safe. I was here. I remembered.
The memories of yesterday flooded in, a confusing torrent that did little to calm the storm in my soul. Meta. The beach. The inexplicable, shared sorrow that felt ancient and profound. The kiss… a moment of impossible connection that left me feeling more exposed than ever. And the terror that followed—the cold embrace of the ocean, the feeling of my life slipping away before he pulled me back. We left the hotel before 6 AM, the three-hour drive back to Bangkok a blur of exhaustion and unspoken tension. I don't have classes today, so when I got back to the dorm, I collapsed into bed.
But… that dream. What was that dream?
My hand rose to my cheek, and I flinched at the unexpected dampness. I was crying. A deep, guttural sob escaped my chest, a sound of such utter despair it terrified me. Who wouldn't cry after a dream like that? A nightmare of being violated, of being broken by those monsters. But why did it feel so sickeningly realistic? Why was my entire body still shivering with a cold that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room, as if the memory was embedded in my very cells?
I feel suffocated. The air in my own room was suddenly too thick to breathe. The walls felt like they were closing in, pressing down on me. I threw off the covers and stumbled to the bathroom, my legs trembling. I needed to wash my face, to feel the shock of cold water and prove to myself that I was here, now, and not trapped in that dark, horrifying place.
I leaned over the sink, splashing water onto my face again and again, the cold sting a welcome anchor to reality. When I finally looked up, the face in the mirror was a stranger's—pale, haunted, eyes wide with a terror that wouldn't fade. They say dreams are born from our fears and frustrations, that they aren't real. But my body was screaming a different truth. It felt like it had happened. That it had already happened.
I need to get out. I dried my face, my movements jerky and uncoordinated. Maybe I was just hungry. Maybe an empty stomach was making me overthink a simple nightmare. I just needed to walk, to eat something, to force the world back into its normal shape.
Walking down the dormitory hallway, I tried to banish the images from my mind, but they were replaced by another kind of confusion. The kiss. The memory of Meta's lips on mine, the impossible warmth we shared in that hotel.
"What the heck, Thyme," I muttered, my voice shaky. "It's not good to think about that now." I slapped my own cheeks, hard, the sting a pathetic attempt to regain control. How could I even face him again? The shame of the kiss, the terror of the drowning, the humiliation of him saving me… it was all too much.
I stepped into the elevator, the doors sliding shut and encasing me in the small, sterile box. As it began its descent, the light inside suddenly sputtered and died, plunging me into near-total darkness.
"No," I whimpered, my breath catching in my throat. My heart leaped, and the feeling of being trapped, of being helpless in the dark, threw me right back into the nightmare. I pressed myself into the corner, my hands flat against the cold metal wall, trying to anchor myself as panic began to claw its way up my throat. After a terrifying second that stretched into an eternity, the lights flickered back on with a hum.