I barely ate.My stomach twisted every time I tried.I sipped water because Sister Ana watched until I took a drink.
The other sisters gave me space.They didn’t try to talk to me beyond offering food or showing me where things were kept.I listened to them rustle through their routines.Their voices were soft, calm, steady, nothing like the noise still ringing in my head.
The convent followed a strict schedule.There were bells at dawn, ominous and moody.Prayers.Chores.Meals.More prayers.Lights went out early and everyone was expected to go to sleep.Every night I lay awake and stared at the ceiling until my eyes burned.When sleep finally dragged me under, I jolted awake gasping—heart hammering, certain there was someone standing over me with a gun.
Some nightmares didn’t care how far you ran.They found you anyway.
The worst dreams were the ones that weren’t dreams.
My mother’s hands on my shoulders.Her voice tight and rushed.
“Hide, Neve.Now.Don’t come out.No matter what.”
She shoved me into the closet before I could ask why.I heard shouting.Then her scream and a gunshot so loud it made my ears ring.I stayed in the dark for the longest time before I finally cracked the door open.I thought she’d be standing there, waiting for me with her arms open, and everything would be fine.
Instead, I found her on the floor, eyes wide and glassy, staring at nothing at all.My knees buckled, dropping me beside her as I grabbed her shoulders, shaking her, begging her to respond.But her body stayed limp, her gaze fixed, and the truth hit me with a cold, merciless finality—she was gone, and she was never coming back.
I looked down at my hands, trembling, slick with bright red that didn’t feel real until it was smeared across my skin.Panic surged.I scrubbed my palms against my nightgown, desperate to wipe it away, desperate to pretend this wasn’t happening, but the blood only spread, blooming across the fabric like a stain I’d never outrun.
I moved back to the closet like a ghost, numb and floating somewhere just outside my own skin.My feet knew where to go even if my mind didn’t.
The back wall gave way beneath my hands, just like Mother and Father had taught me.I slipped into the hidden passage, the door sealing quietly behind me.
The house had a second skeleton running through it—narrow corridors buried between the walls, built for escape, for hiding, for surviving.My parents had shown them to me as soon as I was old enough to understand, their voices serious in a way that had made the whole thing feel like a game I didn’t understand.
If you ever need somewhere safe,they’d said.Go to the pantry.
I drifted through the dark belly of the house, brushing past cold plaster and exposed beams until the passage opened behind the false wall.
The pantry.
The hidden door stood to my right, exactly where it had always been.
To my left, shelves rose from floor to ceiling, stacked with enough food to supply a small army.Cans.Boxes.Flour.Rice.
And tucked among it all were the things my mother kept just for me.
My favorite sweets.
My hand moved before my brain caught up with it.I pulled a candy bar from the shelf and slid down the wall until I was sitting on the cold floor.
The wrapper crinkled loudly in the silence.
I stared at it in my hand like it belonged to someone else.
I didn’t know why I did it.
Maybe I wanted a single moment of normalcy in a night that had swallowed everything familiar.
Maybe I just needed something small and solid to cling to while the rest of the world bled apart around me.
Then the man with the gun found me.
His eyes were stuck in my head now.Cold.Grey.Unblinking.I saw them every time I closed my own.
He hesitated.I didn’t know why.But he did.He didn’t kill me like he did everyone else.
Now I was here.Alone.Trying to understand where my life ended and this new one began.