Lying in the basement darkness after Viktor left, Anya watched the laptop’s pale indicator light.
Offer him something? No. That would be a fatal mistake. Any request—any attempt to show independence—will be a sign to him that the old me is returning. If I say, “Viktor, let me cook in the kitchen,” his paranoid mind will immediately build the chain: kitchen—knives—window—escape. He won’t see trust in it. He’ll see a bargain. And Viktor can’t stand bargains. He isn’t a trader. He doesn’t need my consent—he needs my complete, organic dissolution into his reality.
Sudden moves right now are death. That means ending back in isolation, watched over by that icy silence.
I have to wait. Dolls don’t ask to be taken out of the box. They lie still, staring into emptiness with glass eyes until the owner grows too weary of his own loneliness. Until he wants someone to share his “perfect world” with him not as a captive, but as décor that can smile and sympathize.
My task now is to become so “his,” so natural a part of his daily life, that the very thought of me sitting behind a door starts to feel to him like… an aesthetic mistake. A flaw in his picture of “family happiness.” I have to become the interior detail without which the room feels empty and cold.
I need to get out of this basement for good. The basement is a lab. The kitchen is the first foothold. The real game starts there. A shared table, the smell of frying onions, clinking dishes, the small noises of domestic life… that’s what blurs boundaries. In the basement he’s a jailer. In the kitchen, over dinner, he’s a man who cares. An ancient, primitive instinct. When we eat together, his hunter’s instinct will begin to dull. And he’ll believe it’s normal. That I’m here because I want to be here.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
But the initiative has to be his. Every “permission” has to feel like his own merciful idea. I just have to… radiate readiness. Be that emotional emptiness that, in his endless loneliness, he’ll want to fill with his world.
I’ve got all the time in the world. Patience is my new discipline. I won’t run from the prison. I’ll make it my home.
Hidden-volume note:
Today I caught myself having a strange thought when he was leaving. When the key turned, I didn’t feel scared—I felt… hurt. As if I’d been excluded from something important.
The sound of the lock now meant the start of loneliness. Long. Grinding.
I sit here and wonder: what is he doing up there? Is he drinking tea? What is he thinking about? I suddenly missed those simple domestic sounds so much—the clink of a spoon against a cup, the rush of water from the tap. The basement is too sterile, too lifeless.
I catch myself thinking in terms of “us.” I want our dinners in the kitchen to become a tradition, not a rare reward. I want to stop being a “guest in shackles” and become just… his?
But… I’m afraid to ask. Afraid he’ll misunderstand me. So I just wait. I wait for an evening when he comes and cracks the door to his world open for a moment. It isn’t enough, but maybe I don’t deserve more.
Maybe I really am going insane. But if this madness smells of linden and gives me a sense of safety, I don’t want to get well.