After sitting in the basement darkness for about twenty minutes, Anya—wrapped in the blanket—slowly got to her feet. Barefoot, one hand holding the tatters of her torn nightgown in place, she went out into the garden.
The cold autumn air, after the stifling basement steeped in horror, scorched her lungs—but brought a strange, ringing clarity. She walked to the familiar gate. It was ajar again—a careless gesture from someone who, in panic, had lost his bearings and forgotten his safety rules.
Anya stopped, staring at the gray strip of path beyond the fence. Running away again would have been absurdly easy. One step—and freedom. But she reached out, gripped the icy metal, and with a dry, final click slid the bolt shut.
She sat down on the bench, tucking her battered legs under herself. In her head, like static on an old radio, the same thought kept pounding: death was hanging over this house.
Viktor didn’t know it yet, but Anya felt it in her skin. If she left now, he would lose everything—and that vacuum would fill with uncontrolled rage and madness.
The rational thing to do was to save her own life. Any normal person probably would have done exactly that. But if she ran, if she left everything as it was, if by doing so she signed someone’s death warrant—her mother’s, her friend’s, an acquaintance’s, or just some stranger’s—how would she look at herself in the mirror afterward? How would she go on living? Working? Laughing?
Go to the police for protection? Yes, of course. To the police, who worked on the principle of “no body, no case.” Very reliable protection.
I’m not leaving, she thought, looking down at her pale hands, where bruises from his grip were already beginning to show. Because someone was going to die anyway. Either me, or him, or someone else.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Anya’s flawless performance was still intact, but the intrusion of blind chance—Viktor’s nocturnal episode—had thrown everything out of alignment. Today he had stopped. He had fled the basement without finishing what he’d started, frightened by the defilement of his own “value.”
But what would happen tomorrow? What if next time he came at her not with his hands, but with a knife? If he struck two or three times in a fit of madness and then came to himself—none of that would matter anymore. His remorse over her corpse wouldn’t bring her back.
In her mind, two paths became clear.
Either Viktor would accept the monster in himself. He would throw off the shackles of the “Architect” and admit that he was simply a beast. Then Anya would need a weapon. A real one—sharp. To drive it straight into his carotid artery while he was taking his pleasure from her in that damned basement.
Or Viktor would fight the monster. That would shake his psyche even harder. He would become more acutely sensitive to every imperfection in himself. In that case, she would need to become his “ally” against himself—help him turn that fight inward, harder, sharper, with no hope of relief.
And what about guilt? Blame myself instead? Stupid. To justify him would be to give him a license for the next act of violence. No—I just need to use the situation…
Anya closed her eyes.
Daughter… Daughter… Daughter…
The hair clip in the basement. His night delirium. The skeleton. The convulsive reaction to that word. Something had happened many years ago, and that “something” was the root of all his madness. She needed information. Without understanding what had happened to the real Anya, she wouldn’t be able to finish building her strategy. She needed to find the ghost that lived within these walls.
She got up from the bench, wrapping the blanket tighter around herself. The wind had picked up, flinging dry leaves into her face, but the cold no longer frightened her.
Now she knew: she wasn’t just a woman locked in a house. She was the only thing separating this world from Viktor’s final breakdown. She was his fail-safe. And she was his executioner.