THE GAP

Georgia - The gap appeared on what might’ve been my ninety-third day. Or my hundredth. Time folds when you’re buried alive. I’d spent hours—days, perhaps—mapping every inch of this underground prison with my fingertips. The rough-hewn stone walls that scraped my knuckles raw. The dirt floor that drank my blood and tears with equal indifference. The low ceiling that seemed to press lower with each passing hour, threatening to collapse and finally end this nightmare. That’s when I found it. A sliver of existence between two wooden support beams where the cellar ceiling met the house above. Not much bigger than my spread fingers, but in the suffocating darkness, it might as well have been a doorway to heaven. I stood frozen beneath it, heart hammering against my ribs like something feral trying to escape. Light. Actual fucking light. Not the sickly yellow glow of the bare bulb Carlisle sometimes allowed me, but real, honest-to-God daylight. I needed to claw my way into that light—eve

SCRATCHING

It was during one of my surveillance sessions that my hand began to scratch at the edge of the gap, almost mindlessly. The rough, splintered wood caught against the nail, and that’s when the idea took hold. Not even an idea—an instinct, primal and desperate. I began to scratch. At first, it was just nonsense—aimless gouges in the wood as my brain struggled to form coherent thought. But then came the letters. Words. Messages. For her. For Adeline. For anyone. HERE. I AM HERE. The nail bit into the wood, each letter a jagged scream. Splinters lodged under my nails. Blood smeared the grain like war paint. I wrote in rust and pain, a language only the desperate could decipher. The pain started as a dull throb in my wrist and arm, a warning I chose to ignore. When the nail slipped and gouged my finger, I barely paused. The relief of doing something overwhelmed the pain. Besides, pain had become a companion in this place—familiar, almost comforting. At least when I hurt, I knew I was s

The Pantry

Adeline - I counted the hours like prisoners tap code on cell walls—forty-eight until I became Mrs. Carlisle Brocandale. The thought should have fizzed in my veins like champagne. Instead, it pooled in my gut like spoiled milk. Standing in the pantry doorway, I stared at the scattered cans of preserved peaches, thinking they resembled evidence at a crime scene. Yellow-orange fruit suspended in syrup, gleaming under the weak bulb like organs in formaldehyde. I hadn’t left them like this. Just like I hadn’t moved the stack of linens two days ago, or misplaced the sugar canister before that. Small things. Inconsequential disruptions that most people—sane people—would laugh off as wedding jitters making them absentminded. Maybe that’s all it was. I stepped into the pantry, my fingers trailing along the worn wooden shelves. This house—Carlisle’s ancestral home—had swallowed me whole the moment I moved in. Too big, too old, too full of shadows where unpleasant things could lurk. When Ca

The Pantry 2.0

Dinner with Carlisle that night was an exercise in pretense. I smiled at his jokes, nodded at his plans for our future, raised my wine glass in toast to our happiness. All while the nail in my pocket pressed against my thigh, a small, sharp reminder that something wasn’t right. That nail was my reality check, my anchor to the truth I couldn’t quite grasp. “You seem distracted,” he said during dessert, his fork poised over chocolate cake neither of us had touched. The cake sat between us like a dark island, untouched and accusatory. “Wedding details,” I replied automatically. My go-to excuse, wearing thin with overuse. “Just want everything to be perfect.” Perfect was a word that tasted like ash in my mouth these days. He set down his fork with deliberate care, the tines perfectly aligned with the edge of his plate. Everything about Carlisle was precise—his movements, his speech, the way he arranged his life and now mine. Sometimes I wondered if he measured his breaths, counted his

All Chapters of The House of the Damned: Sin & Deceit (A Dark Romance): Chapter 171 - Chapter 174

THE GAP

SCRATCHING

The Pantry

The Pantry 2.0