The world was quiet again.
When I opened my eyes, the ceiling above me was the same sterile white I remembered — but brighter, crueler.
Everything was clean, soft, and silent.
Too silent.
I turned my head slightly.
Pain followed, dull and deep, like something moving inside my bones.
The air smelled of disinfectant and wilted flowers.
I could see mouths moving around me.
Doctors.
Nurses.
A man standing near the door — my husband.
He was speaking, I could tell. His eyes were wild, his hands restless.
But all I heard was the low hum of my heartbeat.
Nothing else.
No voice.
No sound.
The doctor's lips formed words I couldn't hear.
Trauma.
Temporary.
We're hopeful.
They said I was lucky.
Lucky that I was found alive.
Lucky that the wounds had healed.
Lucky that I could still breathe.
But luck is not mercy.
It's a cruel extension of suffering.
It lets you live long enough to remember.
They said I had been unconscious for days.
I didn't ask how long.
I didn't ask why.
When my husband came closer, I didn't flinch.
When he reached for my hand, I didn't pull away.
I simply looked at him and waited for him to stop pretending.
His lips trembled as he spoke — words I didn't need to hear to understand.
I'm sorry.
I was wrong.
Forgive me.
Forgive?
I wanted to laugh, but the sound no longer lived in me.
So I only stared until his eyes broke away from mine.
Days turned into weeks.
They said I was improving.
That I could walk again.
That my voice might return.
But they didn't understand — my silence wasn't because of the wounds.
It was because words had lost their meaning.
No one remembered the woman they tortured.
No one mentioned the basement.
No one dared to ask where the bruises came from.
The Mistress visited once.
She stood by the window, her reflection perfectly still.
She brought flowers — white lilies — and placed them beside my bed.
When our eyes met, she smiled gently.
I read her lips: You look better now.
I turned away.
After I was discharged, they brought me home.
The same house. The same walls.
Only now, everything was colder.
The servants avoided me.
The neighbors whispered when they thought I couldn't see.
And my husband — he tried too hard.
He cooked breakfast, cleaned the garden, stayed home instead of going to work.
He talked to me endlessly, as if noise could fill the emptiness he'd created.
But I didn't respond.
Not once.
He cried sometimes, at night, thinking I was asleep.
I wanted to tell him it was too late to love me —
but I didn't even have the strength to hate him.
The hardest part was my son.
He came home from school one day and stood in the doorway, staring at me.
He didn't move.
Didn't speak.
Just stood there, holding his backpack, his small shoulders trembling.
When I looked up, he flinched.
He was afraid of me.
Not because of what I'd done — but because of what I'd become.
His lips moved, soft, uncertain.
Are you really my mom?
The words stabbed me, clean and deep.
I wanted to answer.
I wanted to cry, to hold him, to tell him I was still here — that I'd never stopped loving him even when he wished me gone.
But nothing came out.
Only air.
Days later, I saw him sitting outside my door.
He was holding a picture — the three of us on the mountain.
His hand traced over my face again and again, as if trying to remember what kind of smile it used to wear.
He whispered something I almost understood by the shape of his lips:
Come back.
But I couldn't.
The woman he wanted was gone.
The body remained — breathing, blank, waiting.
A hollow shell shaped like his mother.
That night, I dreamt again.
The same soft light, the same mist, the same warmth I'd felt before.
Only this time, I wasn't looking at the woman — I was her.
The other me.
The one with a heartbeat full of love and laughter.
The one whose child smiled when she entered the room.
And for the first time since everything ended, I felt something move in my chest —
a tiny, trembling spark that whispered:
Go back there.
Stay where you're loved.
When I woke, I knew.
This body was not my home anymore.
It was a grave.
And I was ready to leave it behind.