Tangled Voice Novels & Stories

Pain doesn’t come gently. It crashes. Burns. Consumes. My hands clamp over my throat as warm blood spills through my fingers, thick and unstoppable. My knees hit the floor, vision shaking violently as the world tilts. No… no, no, no I try to scream, but nothing comes out. Just a broken, choking sound. Footsteps echo. Slow. Unhurried. Like he has all the time in the world. “Miss me?” the voice repeats, deeper this time, laced with something twisted… something pleased.

They had turned bright red, and he groaned weakly. "He's come to Menils." "Who?" I asked, my voice dropping low, scared he had been able to put a face to the boy who had knotted him years back. "Nothing. Just a peach scent—more ripe and sexually dripping than yours have ever been." He hung the words with a wink and dashed out. I spared Lia an awkward smile, and she did the same. "Mum calls him psycho." She added. ---

As soon as I get inside, I write down the number on a piece of paper. Okay. Let’s do this. I call the number and wait patiently. It rang a couple of rings before someone picked it up. “Hello?” “Who is this?” The voice responds. “My name is Hazel and Im-” Before I could finish the sentence, the call ended abruptly. Wow. Was my voice that bad? I click my recent calls and call the same number again. “Hello?” “What?” The voice sounded agitated. “Taranis.” I say quickly thinking that he would end the call if I stalled too much.

My mouth opened. It wasn't me who spoke. Not really. The sounds that poured out of me were jagged and strange, syllables twisted in a tongue I had never learned, couldn't possibly know, and yet they fell from my lips like water that had always been waiting to spill. The sound was layered, my voice doubled and tripled, an echo that made the chandeliers tremble and the stones quiver. Everything blurred.

And center stage Isolde. Or… not her. It looked like her. Moved like her. But it was a phantom hair slightly wrong, tone too precise. A performative echo. She turned toward the crowd and began to speak in a voice composed of dozens of fragments Isolde recognized as her own: interview snippets, voice notes, phone calls. “My name is Isolde Wrenleigh. I came for truth, and instead I found… desire. You asked for a performance. So let me begin.”

Galterio’s voice asked angrily, “When she wake, she will feel for you. Want you. If not, other bond too strong”. That voice. That dammed voice. I have to be wrong, it can’t be who I think it is. There is more than one person in the world who talks in an accent. Galterio for fucks sake has an accent. But this one. This voice. I have been listening to this voice nearly every day for weeks. I know who it belongs to. I just hope that I’m wrong.

He cut through the silence with his manly and attractive voice. My cheeks burned with embarrassment, I was caught checking out the man, who is here to fix my windows. My mouth felt tongue-tied, this man took my vocal cords away. “Uhm, am I at the right house, Tara Jenkins?” He questioned with his deep and sexy voice. I was stuck in a daze, I could hear him talking but I couldn’t form a sentence. I was just staring at him like a fool. What the hell is wrong with me? I cleared my throat and tried to gather my words, but he left me speechless.

“You should’ve fucking died that day.” Her voice is strange … as if it bears scars you can hear — ragged, rough, like it has been torn once and never fully mended.

Power that had been waiting—banked like embers—lurched sideways, bleeding into the ground with a sullen hiss. Several cultists staggered. One gasped, clutching at the charm around his neck as if it had bitten him. “What did you—” the marked woman began. “Ruined your pretty lines,” Rin said. Everything broke at once. The humming behind the ring tried to swell into chant, but the first word stuck halfway out of throats as Talia’s second knot—the tongue‑tangler—unfurled. Air thickened around mouths; syllables slid and snagged like bad thread. What came out was a ragged, discordant noise, more cough than invocation.