Fight or flight beauty

The nightmare always started the same way.

Emmaline stood in the marble foyer of her father's estate, her heart hammering against her ribs like a caged bird desperate for freedom. The late afternoon sun slanted through the tall windows, casting long shadows that seemed to reach for her with grasping fingers. She could hear his footsteps—heavy, deliberate, furious—echoing from the study.

"EMMALINE!"

Her father's voice cracked through the house like a whip, and she flinched, her fingers tightening around the strap of the duffel bag slung over her shoulder. Everything she needed was in that bag. Everything she could carry. Everything she was willing to take from this gilded prison.

The study door slammed open, and Richard Ashford emerged, his face purple with rage, veins bulging at his temples. Behind him, she could see him—Marcus Blackwell, the man her father had sold her to like a piece of property. Forty-three years old to her eighteen. Cold eyes that had looked at her like she was a possession to be acquired, a trophy to be displayed.

"You ungrateful little bitch," her father snarled, advancing on her. "After everything I've done for you. After the arrangement I've made—"

"Arrangement?" The word tasted like poison on her tongue. "You mean selling me to that monster?"

Marcus stepped forward, his thin lips curling into a smile that made her skin crawl. "Now, Emmaline, is that any way to speak about your future husband? We're going to have such a wonderful life together. I'll teach you to be obedient. Compliant."

The way he said those words—obedient, compliant—made bile rise in her throat. She'd seen the bruises on his last wife before she'd "fallen" down the stairs. She'd heard the whispers, the rumors that everyone knew but no one dared speak aloud because Marcus Blackwell had money and power and connections that ran deep into the city's corrupt underbelly.

"I'm not marrying him," Emmaline said, her voice shaking but firm. "I'm leaving."

Her father's hand shot out, catching her wrist in a grip that would leave bruises. "You're not going anywhere. You'll do as you're told, or I'll—"

"You'll what?" She jerked her arm, trying to break free. "Lock me in my room? Beat me into submission? I'm done, Father. I'm done being your pawn."

His other hand rose, and she saw the blow coming—

Emmaline jolted awake with a gasp, her body drenched in sweat, her heart racing like she'd just run a marathon. For a disorienting moment, she didn't know where she was. The darkness pressed in around her, suffocating, and she could still feel her father's fingers digging into her wrist, could still see Marcus's predatory smile—

No. Not real. Not anymore.

She forced herself to breathe, slow and steady, the way she'd taught herself over the past five years. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Ground yourself. You're safe. You're free.

The familiar sounds of her neighborhood filtered through the thin walls of her studio apartment—sirens in the distance, someone shouting in Spanish three floors down, the rattle and hum of the ancient radiator in the corner. The digital clock on her nightstand glowed 4:47 PM in harsh red numbers.

Emmaline sat up, pushing her sweat-dampened hair back from her face. The nightmare was coming more frequently lately. Five years since she'd run, and still her father's rage haunted her sleep. Still Marcus Blackwell's cold eyes followed her through her dreams.

She swung her legs out of bed, her bare feet hitting the cold hardwood floor. The studio was small—barely three hundred square feet—but it was hers. She'd paid for it with money she'd earned, not money tainted by her father's dirty dealings. The walls were bare except for a few band posters—The Clash, Dead Kennedys, Bad Religion—and the furniture was secondhand, but it was honest. Real.

The bathroom was barely large enough to turn around in, but the shower was hot, and that was all that mattered. Emmaline stood under the spray, letting it wash away the lingering terror of the nightmare, the phantom sensation of her father's grip on her wrist.

When she emerged, wrapped in a threadbare towel, she caught sight of herself in the mirror above the sink. Amber eyes stared back at her—her mother's eyes, though she tried not to think about that. Her mother had died when she was twelve, and sometimes Emmaline wondered if that was when everything had started to go wrong. When her father had stopped seeing her as a daughter and started seeing her as an asset to be leveraged.

She dried off and pulled on her clothes for the evening shift at Rusty's—ripped black jeans that hugged her legs, a faded Ramones t-shirt that she'd cut the sleeves off of, and her leather jacket, worn soft from years of wear. The jacket had been her first purchase after she'd run, bought from a thrift store in Queens with money she'd earned washing dishes at a diner. It was armor. Protection. A second skin.

Emmaline sat on the edge of her bed and laced up her combat boots, the ritual familiar and grounding. Then she moved to the mirror again, this time to apply her makeup. Heavy black eyeliner, wings sharp enough to cut. Dark eyeshadow that made her amber eyes even more striking. A touch of dark lipstick. The face that looked back at her was nothing like the girl who'd fled her father's estate five years ago. That girl had been soft, naive, breakable.

This woman was steel wrapped in leather and defiance.

She grabbed her keys and her phone—a burner she replaced every few months, just in case—and headed out into the dying light of the November evening.

Rusty's Bar occupied a corner lot in one of the grittier parts of downtown, sandwiched between a pawn shop with bars on the windows and a bodega that stayed open twenty-four hours because the owner slept in the back room. The neon sign above the door flickered erratically, the 'R' and the 's' completely dead, so it just read "usty's Ba."

Emmaline pushed through the heavy door at 5:55 PM, five minutes before her shift started. She was always early. Being late meant being noticed, and being noticed was dangerous.

The interior of Rusty's was exactly what you'd expect—dim lighting, sticky floors, the smell of stale beer and cigarette smoke that had seeped into the walls over decades. The bar itself was scarred wood, the stools mismatched, the booths along the wall patched with duct tape. A jukebox in the corner played classic rock at a volume just loud enough to make conversation difficult.

"Em! You're here!" Jenna, the other bartender on shift, looked up from where she was restocking the beer cooler. She was twenty-three, blonde, bubbly in a way that seemed incongruous with the bar's atmosphere. She'd been trying to befriend Emmaline for the six months they'd worked together. Emmaline had been politely deflecting for just as long.

"Hey," Emmaline said, slipping behind the bar and tying on her apron.

"So, I was thinking," Jenna said, straightening up and pushing a strand of hair behind her ear. "There's this new club that opened up on Fifth Street. Really cool vibe, great music. A bunch of us are going on Saturday night, and I thought maybe you'd want to—"

"Can't," Emmaline said, not looking at her as she checked the register. "I've got plans."

"You always have plans," Jenna said, and there was a note of hurt in her voice that made Emmaline feel a twinge of guilt. "Come on, Em. It would be fun. You could let loose a little, you know? You're always so..."

"So what?"

"I don't know. Closed off? Like you're waiting for something bad to happen."

Because something bad is always about to happen, Emmaline thought, but she didn't say it. Instead, she just shrugged. "I'm not really a club person."

"Right." Jenna turned back to the cooler, her shoulders slumping slightly. "Well, if you change your mind..."

"I'll let you know," Emmaline said, knowing she wouldn't.