The day passed in silence.
April sat at the kitchen table as still as the house itself.
The wooden surface beneath her fingers felt strangely foreign, as though she no longer belonged here. He hadn't come to her.
He hadn't spoken. After it was done, he had stumbled into his bedroom, collapsed, and slept as though nothing had happened.
As though he had not stolen something from her.
As though her world had not cracked. As though her purity wasn't snatched away from her.
But April was not broken. Not anymore.
The house was too still. A silence that did not soothe but trembled with tension, like the air before a storm.
And she was the storm.
Her fingers moved before her thoughts caught up. A knife lay in her hand—cold, sharp, familiar. She dragged her thumb lightly across its edge, feeling the whisper of promised pain.
"This ends tonight," whispered April.
April rose without a sound. The floorboards did not betray her as she crossed the hall.
The door to his room was ajar. Inside, his heavy snores filled the darkness, thick and uneven.
She pushed it wider.
He lay sprawled across the bed, mouth slack, one arm dangling over the side. For the first time, April thought he looked… small. Human. Weak.
Her grip tightened around the knife.
One thrust, straight into the throat. He would never wake again. Never speak, never raise a hand. She would avengeance and he would never hurt her again.
Her heart raced, but her hands remained steady.
April raised the knife—
And his eyes snapped open.
Bloodshot. Black. Focused directly on her.
"The hell—?"
She struck. The blade arced down, fast, merciless—
His hand shot up. Fingers like a vice locked around her wrist, halting the blow inches from his neck.
Agony flared as he twisted her arm. The knife slipped free, clattering onto the sheets.
"You bitch!"
The next instant, April's body lifted into the air. Her back slammed against the dresser with a hollow crack, her breath leaving her in a broken gasp.
He was on her before she could recover, his fist crashing into her ribs. Pain stole her lungs, but instinct drove her forward.
Her trembling hand groped blindly around, fingers brushing against cool glass.
An ashtray—heavy, thick, perfectly shaped for what came next.
But she didn't think.
Didn't breathe.
Didn't hesitate.
With a surge of panic-fueled strength—
CRAAACK!
The impact split the silence with a sharp crack. Shards burst across the floor as blood ran down his temple.
He staggered, cursing.
April lunged for the knife in one movement, but suddenly his hand seized her skull and with visible anger he drove it into the dresser.
White-hot pain devoured her vision. Warmth slid down her face.
The world tilted—no, it dissolved. Darkness seeped inward from the corners of her eyes, swallowing shape and color alike.
He shouted something. His voice seemed far, too far, then lost altogether.
"No—no, no! What have I done? Tanya's going to kill me—no, she's… she's dead. I killed her. I should be worried about him! What's he going to do?!"
His voice cracked on the last word, trembling somewhere between fear and disbelief. The air felt heavier, colder—almost as if his own guilt had taken shape and was suffocating him
But April couldn't hear anything.
The last image before the void claimed her was his face.
Not filled with rage.
Not with victory.
But with fear.
Then nothing.
She awoke to silence.
A silence so vast it felt alive. Not the natural hush of a resting world, but a suffocating void, one that pressed against her ears until she could almost feel it crawling inside.
Darkness accompanied it. Endless. Absolute.
April's chest heaved, panic clawing its way upward. She tried to move, but something tugged at her arms, her skin—cold tubes, wires, restraints she could not see. Her limbs felt heavy, her body muted.
She opened her mouth to scream,
"..."
but the sound never came.
'W-what's happening? Why can't i speak?'
Then suddenly—contact.
A hand. Warm against her wrist.
April flinched, heart lurching. She had not heard anyone approach. She had not sensed their presence until they touched her.
A faint vibration pressed into her palm—steady, rhythmic. A heartbeat.
The grip tightened, slow and reassuring.
A doctor? A nurse? A stranger? She didn't exactly know and neither could she ask due to her throat hurting her.
The darkness did not yield. The silence did not lift.
Time lost meaning. April no more knew how long she just layed there. Maybe a day or two passed or perphaps a month. But that didn't matter now as today April felt like today was going to be different.
___
Today was a different day as infront of April stood two doctors. One of the doctors was looking down upon a wooden clipboard with Aprils current health condition.
"Hmm i see April Willia--stratch that Kuremi... i see it's been exactly four months seems the unknown abrupt surgery. So according to my calculations it should be fine to remove her bandages," spoke one of the doctors with slicked back dark-brown hair.
The other doctor nodded in agreement. Then the next moment he moved forward to remove the bandages.
When the bandages came away, April had expected the world to return. Light. Shadow. Something.
But the darkness remained.
Her eyes were gone.
The two doctors both tried explaining exactly what was going on to her, though April understood little. She could not hear their words; they wrote instead, scrawled across paper and she traced them with her trembling fingers.
Head trauma. Skull fractures. Surgery. Complications.
And something else. Something the words did not fully admit. She caught fragments, murmurs when they thought she was too far gone to notice.
A mistake.
Something foreign left inside.
Something they could not remove.
Her eyes, they wrote, had changed. From pale-white to Silver—dark, metallic, unnatural. But April did not care. Colors, names, appearances meant nothing now.
The world had abandoned her sight, her sound.
___
One Week Later:
The world was still dark. Endless, suffocating. No shapes, no light, no hope of return.
April sat on the edge of the hospital bed, her fingers pressed against the tender skin where her eyes had once been.
They throbbed faintly, useless windows to a world she would never touch again.
When the doctor entered, she spoke before he could say a word.
"I want them stitched."
He froze. "…Your eyelids?"
"Yes." Her voice was steady, calm in a way that unsettled even her. "Sew them shut. Permanently. I don't want to open them anymore."
The doctor stepped closer, clipboard in hand, his tone carefully measured.
"April, I need you to understand what you're asking. Once we do this, it can be reversed—but only with surgery. It would be painful, and it would leave scars."
"I don't care about scars."
He hesitated. "Are you absolutely sure? You'll never be able to—"
"See?" she cut him off, her lips twisting bitterly. "I already can't. All that's left is the reminder. Every time I open them, I feel it—the emptiness. I don't want it anymore. Stitch them. Please."
The room went still. The ticking clock, the shuffle of papers from the hall—all faded beneath the weight of her words.
The doctor finally lowered his clipboard, exhaling slowly.
"…If this is what you want, we'll honor it."
April nodded once. She did not smile. She did not cry.
When the sutures were finally placed, she felt only the tug of the needle, the bite of thread, and then the strange, final stillness of eyes forever closed.
It was not loss. Not anymore.
It was a choice. Her choice.
___
Weeks later, April was discharged.
No one came for her. No one guided her hand to the door. She walked alone, cane tapping against the ground, the void wrapped tightly around her.
But she was not the same.
Before leaving, she had reported him. Every detail, every truth. For once, someone had listened.
Flashback:
The room smelled faintly of disinfectant, its walls bare except for a single clock ticking with deliberate cruelty.
A metal table divided April from the two officers who sat across from her. A recorder blinked red between them, its soft light pulsing in the stillness.
April's hands were folded in her lap, trembling despite her best effort to still them.
Her bandaged fingers pressed hard against her knees, as though she could anchor herself there.
The older officer cleared his throat. His voice was level, almost too calm.
"State your name for the record."
Her lips parted. No sound came at first.
Then—
"April Kuremi."
The younger officer—round glasses, pen poised—scribbled on a notepad. He didn't look at her.
The older one leaned forward. "April, you asked for us. You told the hospital staff you wished to file a report. Do you understand that what you say here will be taken as an official statement?"
She nodded once.
"Good. Tell us why you asked us to come."
Her throat ached. Words clung there like shards of glass, cutting on the way out.
"My father," she whispered. "He… he raped me."
Silence fell. Even the clock seemed to hesitate before resuming its march.
The younger officer's pen stilled mid-scratch. He looked up finally, his face pale.
The older officer kept his composure, though his jaw tightened.
"Do you understand the seriousness of this accusation?"
April lifted her chin. She had lived in silence long enough.
"Yes. I want it on record. He raped me. He beat me. He—" Her breath shook. "He killed my mother."
The younger officer spoke this time, voice softer.
"You believe your father is responsible for her disappearance?"
"I don't believe," April snapped, sudden heat sparking in her tone. "I know. She tried to stop him. And then… she was gone. Everyone ignored it. No one came. He killed her. I was a child, and no one cared."
Her voice broke on the last word, and she swallowed hard, forcing herself steady.
The recorder's light blinked red, capturing it all.
The older officer's tone shifted—still professional, but gentler now.
"April, can you give us details? Dates. Times. Evidence we can use."
April pressed her fingers tighter against her knees.
"Every scar on my body is evidence. Every neighbor who heard the shouting and did nothing. The nights she wore bruises and told people she 'fell down the stairs.' The silence. That's the evidence. You want times? It wasn't once. It was my life."
The officers exchanged a glance. The younger one cleared his throat, pen moving again.
"Alright," said the older one. "We'll open a full investigation. Your testimony will be central. But you need to understand—it will be a fight. He will deny everything."
April leaned forward, metallic silver eyes hard as steel despite the bandages that covered her skull.
"Let him. I'm not afraid anymore. He can rot where he belongs."
The room went still again. The recorder's red light blinked. Tick. Tick. Tick.
The younger officer finally spoke, quiet but firm.
"April… thank you. That was brave."
___
And now, he justly rotted in a cell—shackled, where he could harm no one again.
"I… I'm free? Truly? This isn't some cruel dream? Will this dream one day twist into another nightmare?" she whispered to herself, her stitched eyelids softening as her face trembled with an expression on the verge of breaking.
Silence.
"So… I'm really free, huh, Mother? Free from his tyranny. Free from that cage I once called home."
In that moment, April Kuremi was free.
Free, though blind.
Free, though deaf.
Free, though alone.
Or so she thought.
Yet within that suffocating silence, something stirred.
Something patient.
Something ancient.
Something that waited to wake.