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The hole was shrinking. I could feel the dirt pressing against my back, my sides, my head. It was swallowing me, inch by inch. I scratched at the walls, desperate for escape, but the dirt just crumbled under my fingers, filling my nails, grinding into my skin.

I remembered the stories my father used to tell—about people buried alive, about suffocation, about darkness so thick it drives you mad. I wondered how long it would take for the air to run out, for my mind to snap.

I whimpered, tears leaking down my cheeks. I wiped them away but they kept coming, blurring my vision, making the darkness swim.

I tried to remember who I was. My name. My age. My favorite color. Anything. But my thoughts kept slipping away, sliding into the dirt.

Starla. My name is Starla. I’m twenty-five. I used to like the color blue. I used to have dreams. I used to be someone.

The dark laughed at me, echoing in my skull.

No one will remember you.

No one will find you.

You’re just another dead girl, buried and forgotten.

I pressed my face into my knees and sobbed, the sound muffled by my own flesh. My body shook with fear and cold and hunger. Every part of me hurt.

I started whispering apologies, to my mother, to myself, to all the girls I couldn’t save, to the girl I used to be. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. I didn’t mean to end up here. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I’m sorry I’m never good enough.

The hole seemed deeper now, the darkness heavier. I felt something crawling on my skin—ants or worms or just my nerves misfiring. I slapped at my arms, my legs, but there was nothing there. Just the itch, the knowing that I was already rotting, already disappearing.

Bones fell out from the dirt wall. They piled around me, until I was surrounded by fragments of the dead. My ears were filled with whispers. They laughed at me, they screamed at me, they taunted me.

Eventually, the bones disappeared, and it was all black around me again.

I lost track of time again. The moon moved, I thought, the cracks above shifting, but maybe it was just my mind playing tricks. I wondered if I would die of thirst, of hunger, of madness.

Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe the dark would take me before any of that.

I laid on my side, cheek pressed to the cold earth, and watched the shadows move. I saw shapes I couldn’t name, faces I didn’t recognize, all of them watching, waiting. I heard my own voice, thin and far away, calling for help that would never come.

It’s just a hole. Just a hole in the ground. But it felt like the whole universe had folded in on me, crushed me down to nothing.

I would never see the stars again.

My breath slowed, deepened, became ragged and hollow. The panic attack ebbed, leaving me empty, wrung out, hollowed. I didn’t even care if I stopped breathing. I barely noticed the ache in my chest, the cramps in my gut. I just floated, drifting in the dark, one more ghost in a house built of them.

I tried to imagine the stars, one last time. I pictured them bright and cold, scattered across the sky, watching me, not caring, not even knowing I existed.

Still, somewhere deep inside, I wanted to live. Some part of me, small and stubborn, refused to die. I gripped it with both hands, held it close to my chest, like a spark in the endless night.

But the dark was patient. The dark would wait. The dark always won. And so I laid there, alone in the hole, listening to the silence, waiting for the dark to swallow me whole.

Chapter 12

Lost In The Vortex

Malakar

I’m haunted, unwanted, lost.

You’re a disgrace, Milo. Do something right in your life, for once! Make me proud, show control, and stop being so fucking weak.

“Shut up!” I screamed. The glass in my hand was tossed to the wall. Glass shattered. Silence descended again.

Fuck your mother, she deserves it. She deserves to be shown who is in control. She’s a crazy bitch, she needs to learn.