Not My Skin

A Novel by E.L. Black

Copyright © 2025 by E.L. Black

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover Design by - @marswritesss on Instagram

For the girls who have made mistakes too big to take back.

For the women who carry guilt like a second skin.

For those who have hurt and been hurt, who have lied, fought, and shattered things beyond repair.

For the ones who are messy, complicated, and far from perfect.

This is for you — the girls and women who aren’t good people, but are still here, still trying, still worthy of being seen.

Part One

⧫

Dissolution

Chapter One

Ana Leighs

Ana Leighs was a woman-made horror, stitched together from the shreds of things that no one else wanted to see.

And now, her skin was peeling. Not just peeling, but taunting her with the idea of desertion, as if it had grown weary of the burdens of the flesh it was meant to contain. It wasn’t so much a condition as it was a suggestion, an ominous whisper from her body that something fundamental had turned against her. It always began innocuously — a faint tug from under the tissue, a tightness that promised at nothing more than a mild discomfort. But then, between the banal moments of her life — brushing her teeth, crossing a street, zoning out at work — she would catch glimpses of it. And when she saw it, it saw her.

A flash of betrayal. Her body had become a traitor.

Her skin peeled. Or sloughed, perhaps — that seemed a more fitting word. No, not quite. “Fitting” felt too sterile, and this was anything but.

Slough implied something accidental, something natural, like a snake discarding its old self for a better fit.

This was no renewal.

Her skin folded. Folded, as if it were surrendering, giving in to gravity with a wet, audible sigh. It would slide off in lazy, reluctant ripples, gathering at her feet like a puddle of flesh-coloured regrets. As if her epidermis had suddenly developed a passionate desire to become one with the floor. The sensation was exquisite, in the way that agony can be exquisite — like every nerve firing at once. She stood there, bare and newly exposed, stripped to the raw viscera of her being. And once the flesh beneath the skin had fallen too, the whites of her bones gleamed in the sickly light, like they were trying to outshine the dim, fluorescent buzz of the room. Muscles and tendons hung in there, still clinging to some last bit of dignity, but they were next — she could feel it, like a countdown that had already started. Her skeleton, slick and uncomfortable, seemed to squirm, unsure of itself without its cosy meat-coat, like a rejected mannequin from some grim department store clearance. It felt like it might collapse under the weight of its own self-consciousness, exposed to the marrow, all those bones naked in a world that never told them they were seen.

Why are we out here? The bones seemed to quiver, each joint jittering in confusion, every ligament tugging with uncertainty, like shy children at a funeral. Should we be seeing this? They seemed to ask, rattling their accusations up the length of her spine. She could feel each question as a shudder, a series of uneasy billows travelling through the fragile scaffolding of her body. If she could murmur back, her voice would have trembled through the empty cavern of her mouth: No, no, this is all absurd, though even in her mind, the words felt like lies — absurdly insufficient against the grotesque enormity of the truth.

She couldn’t explain it — not to her bones, not even to herself — why her body was so intent on betraying her, why each layer sloughed off as if disowning her. Her own architecture felt more vulnerable than nudity could ever be. This was a rawness beyond mere nakedness, an unravelling, a glimpse into something that should never be seen — not by the eyes of the world, not even by the eyes of her own stubbornly blinking skull.

She would always be left there, quivering in her own slippery bones, alien and horrified, an exposed nerve in a city of anaesthetised  flesh.

She assumed this was some kind of punishment, a reckoning of sorts. A karmic balancing act orchestrated by the universe, or perhaps some malevolent God, or maybe just her own damn body turning on itself out of spite. A penalty for some long-forgotten crime she must have committed in her youth, back when she still had the arrogance of self-belief. When she thought she could change her fate with sheer force of will — or worse, when she believed her thoughts alone could alter reality. She’d be lying if she said that she didn’t still think like that, but she’d learned not to say it aloud.

Apparently, whenever she did, her skin folded like wet paper and began its hideous descent. And there she’d be again, bones rattling with questions she couldn’t answer.

It started on a night in October, just a few months ago. She was late home from work — another soul-sucking shift at some dingy bar off Tenth Avenue, where the patrons all had that washed-out look of people who’d made the worst of their bad decisions. She trudged her way through her parents' too-large, too-polished, and too-unnecessary home. It was the kind of place so ostentatious, so aggressively obnoxious, it made Versailles look like a quaint little fixer-upper. Marble floors that could blind you, chandeliers hanging like guillotines waiting to drop, and walls covered in art so abstract it felt like they were taunting you for not getting its meaning.

And there, right in the foyer, stood a mirror so large and so disturbingly ornate that she used to imagine it doubled as a portal to Narnia. Or maybe Hell. Most likely Hell.

She’d always avoided that mirror. It looked like it had the kind of pernicious consciousness that could reach out and grab you by the throat and shake loose all of you. “Look at yourself, you insignificant fool,” it seemed to hiss whenever she dared pass it. “Look at what you are and what you’ll never be.”

It wasn’t paranoia; it was just the atmosphere.

Rich assholes, her parents were — though they preferred to use words like “benefactors” and “philanthropists.”

She usually avoided the mirror. She had no reason to look, no desire to see what it was that stared back. Maybe it was a rejection of vanity, a way to tell the world to shove it. Or maybe it was something simpler, more primal — an inability to accept who she was, or worse, an inability to recognise it at all. But that night, something compelled her to step right in front of it, as if some dark force had reached out and pulled her into its gaze. Maybe she sensed something was off. She could feel it in the air, which was too cold, pressing against her skin like a thousand tiny needles. The walls seemed to press in on her, too close, too tight, like she was trapped in the ribcage of some monstrous unseen beast. Her breathing felt tight, her lungs squeezing shut like a fist. And there was a strange buzzing in her ears, like a whisper that hadn’t found its words.

Whatever it was, she turned to that cursed mirror and looked. And there she was — or rather, something that wore her face but wasn’t her at all. What she saw would have made Dorian Gray himself scream and smash his portrait into pieces.

Her reflection was grinning — a wide, lunatic grin that split her face from ear to ear, revealing teeth far too sharp, too jagged, like shards of broken glass crammed into bloody gums. Her eyes were all wrong, too — sunken deep into her skull, black pits leaking some thick, inky fluid that dripped down her cheeks in rivulets, carving paths like worms burrowing through flesh. Her skin was sallow and sagging, pocked with lesions that oozed a sickly yellow pus, bubbling like an overripe corpse left out in the sun.

And then it spoke to her. Its lips moved, but the voice didn’t come from the mirror — it came from inside her own head, a voice like a thousand flies buzzing in unison, like nails on a chalkboard, like the screech of metal on metal.

Come closer, it hissed, a wet, gurgling sound that sent a jolt of cold terror down her spine. Look at what you really are.

She wanted to run, wanted to scream, but her feet were rooted to the spot, her muscles locked in place as if gripped by some invisible force. Her heart pounded in her chest like a caged animal, each beat a violent, desperate thud. She could feel the bile rising in her throat, the acidic burn of it threatening to spill over. But she couldn’t look away. She couldn’t move. She was trapped, a fly caught in the sticky, glistening strands of a web woven by something ancient and hungry.

She tried to smile, a feeble, trembling attempt to make peace with the malformed thing in the mirror — trying to convince herself it was just her, just another exhausted, world-weary version of herself. But the smile that twisted across the reflection’s face was something out of a fever dream, a rictus grin that belonged on the lips of a killer. It was more crooked than before, like a wound split open, stretching her mouth so wide it looked like her cheeks might tear apart. Her lips pulled back so far she could see the raw, glistening meat of its gums.

The longer she stared, the more an unholy itch crawled under her skin — searing, maddening, the kind of itch that made you want to claw at your own body like it was a broken chair you were dying to strip of upholstery. It wasn’t just a physical sensation anymore; it was existential, like her body was holding her hostage in a meat prison she never signed up for. She wanted to tear it off, strip it down to the bone and sinew, just to see what was lurking underneath, to confirm that she wasn’t really her, just some cruel cosmic joke disguised as a human. She imagined her fingers digging into her face, each scrape of nail against flesh a cathartic prayer, pulling away layer by layer, until her skin hung in strips, soaked and bloody, like some grotesque art installation designed for the truly disturbed.

The sound would be there, too — like Velcro ripping apart, or a slab of meat being pried off the butcher’s block. God, she could almost hear it. It felt right. But this wasn’t some tortured self-expression. It was something simpler, something darker — a wish she couldn’t shake, born of the same helpless, teenage desire for escape. It reminded her of high school when a classmate got sick with cancer, lost all her weight, and for a while, people looked at her like she was some kind of model of success. Everyone, even Ana, envied her. Not because they wanted cancer, of course. But because the aftermath made her skinny. And in this case, the itch would finally disappear.

Ana didn’t want cancer now, and she didn’t want to tear her skin off. But the sweet release? The itch fading into nothingness? That was the real dream.

She wanted to beg, to plead with whatever had decided to turn her into this twisted nightmare.

Please, she whispered to her reflection, her voice crackling like old leather. Give me back my face, I promise I’ll appreciate it this time. I’ll even start moisturising! I’ll exfoliate daily, I’ll buy all that overpriced crap you see in those glossy magazines — just, please, make it stop!

But nothing changed. The face in the mirror continued to stare back at her, unmoved, grinning with that same predatory gleam.

And she had to stand there, frozen, paralysed by the sheer horror of it all, trapped in a staring contest with her own nightmare.

This thing wasn’t going to leave. It wasn’t going to vanish or fade away, no matter how hard she wished or begged. It was her now. And it knew it.

That’s when it started. That was the first tear in the flesh. It didn’t happen all at once, of course — these things never do. But it was there, that seed of madness, planted deep in the pit of her stomach. She could feel it writhing, squirming like some hideous parasite, its roots snaking through her veins, crawling up her spine, twisting around her brain until every thought was soaked in its rancid poison.

She tried to tell people when it all began, made an effort, she really did.

I’m peeling, Mom, she had said one morning before leaving for her final year of college, hoping that this would be the start of something — a conversation, maybe, or an intervention. Something to stop the slow unravelling of her sanity.

She could almost see it: her mother’s face going pale, her voice quivering as she asked what on earth she meant, and then a quick, panicked call to some specialist who dealt with these sorts of things — the kind of doctor who knew how to put the human body back together when it decided to turn itself inside out.

But no. Her mother looked at her with that initial flicker of motherly concern, the kind usually reserved for misplaced car keys or a forgotten doctor’s appointment. Then her expression twisted, her brows knitting together, her mouth tugging downward, into something sharper — something close to fear. But just as quickly as it arrived, the fear melted away, and she began to laugh. A big, belly-deep laugh that bounced off the walls like something unhinged, like she’d just heard the most absurd joke.

Perhaps we should take you back to that dermatologist then, she said, still chuckling, her voice thick with condescension. It was the laugh of someone who’s utterly convinced you’re making things up because that would be easier for them.

No, Mom, this isn't just dry skin. This is serious, she insisted, clutching at her arms like she could somehow keep the skin in place through willpower. But her treacherous body had chosen that morning, of all mornings, to play nice, to act like a well-behaved corpse and keep everything where it was supposed to be. Her skin lay perfectly intact over her bones, smooth and unblemished, like a fresh layer of paint hiding rot beneath. It was as if some joker had decided to give back her skin just for a moment, smoothing it over like a cheap magician performing the same tired trick.

“Look, it’s all there, isn’t that nice? Now shut up and get on with your life.”

Mom moved closer, her face set in that look of detachment she wore when she was about to fix something — like a surgeon about to dissect a particularly unpleasant specimen. She grabbed her daughter’s chin with that firm, no-nonsense grip, turning her head this way and that as if she were examining a piece of fruit for bruises, eyes narrowing as she scrutinised every inch.

Oh yes, it is quite dry, actually, she said with a raised eyebrow. I’ll book you in with Dr. Reed. And with that, she walked off to call the dermatologist, leaving her daughter standing there, mouth hanging open like a fish gasping for air. The fury that welled up inside her was almost alive, a hot, boiling thing that twisted her insides. She wanted to scream, to grab her face and claw away every inch of her supposedly “dry” skin right there in the foyer, to tear it off strip by strip and fling it at her mother like a madwoman. But there was nothing — no evidence of the horror she felt creeping within her skin, no proof of her body’s quiet betrayal. Just her own increasingly shaky grip on reality, fraying like an old rope.

Maybe she was losing her mind. Maybe it was all in her head — an elaborate hallucination cooked up by a brain teetering on the brink of a breakdown. That idea sank its claws into her, deeper and deeper, more suffocating than the fear of shedding her skin like some cursed creature. She told herself this every day, whispering it like a chant to keep the madness at bay: You’re not peeling. You’re not peeling. You’re just insane. And she would have kept believing it too, would have clung to that tiny shred of sanity, right up until the moment of The Great Sloughing — Capital T, Capital G, Capital S. A moment so grandiose, so utterly grotesque, it deserved its own chapter in the memoir she’d inevitably write from the confines of a padded cell.

It started innocently enough. Her body gave a little shiver, the kind that rattles your bones and sends a rippling shudder down your spine. A cold chill, she thought. A perfectly normal bodily function. But then she saw it — the skin on her hands beginning to unravel again, flaking away in lazy curls like it had somewhere better to be. It was almost polite about it back then, the way it started to fold and peel, just a little here and there, like a houseguest sneaking out in the dead of night without making a fuss. She shook her head, trying to dislodge the sight, to convince herself it wasn’t real, but it clung to her like a bad dream that refuses to fade with the morning light.

Now, one might like to imagine she handled this with the grace and poise befitting a young adult raised in the upper echelons of society — a composed acceptance of her peculiar affliction. But it wasn’t quite like that.

She slammed her hand against the nearest wall with all the force her bones could muster, like a woman possessed, hell-bent on hammering out some evil spirit.

Break, goddammit! She shrieked, slamming her peeling hand against the wall again and again, with such violence that the framed photo of her family — everyone dressed in matching sweaters and wearing the kind of forced smiles that belong in a hostage video — rattled against its nails. She screamed at her own flesh as if it were a traitorous lover, her voice a ragged, feral growl.  I don’t want you to grow back! You’ll just leave me again, you bastard! She was a lunatic, a mad prophet delivering a sermon to her own body, to the skin that refused to stay put.

She wanted the impact to crack her bones open like a cheap egg, to spill out the real her — the true self she was convinced lay hidden somewhere beneath all this deceptive, wayward nonsense. But the skin, stubborn as ever, didn’t listen. It never does. Instead, it clung on with a grim determination, flaking and peeling just enough to make a mockery of her. Each slap against the wall was met with the dull, fleshy thud of skin against plaster, but the flesh, that obstinate second skin, refused to shatter, refused to cooperate. It held on just enough to torment her, to play at stability before inevitably betraying her again.

In retrospect, she thought, personifying her own skin and accusing it of abandonment issues probably wasn’t the healthiest coping mechanism. But what else could one do when faced with the sight of one’s epidermis attempting to make a break for it like it was planning a daring escape from Alcatraz? At times like this, conventional wisdom tended to dive headfirst out the nearest window.

Her therapist wouldn’t know what to do with this. “So, my skin’s leaving me. Should I double my meds?” Maybe she’d ask her college advisor next. “Do you have any internships for people without skin?”

The leftovers of her flesh clung to her body like a dying vine on a crumbling wall. But she knew better. It would only be a matter of time before it betrayed her again — slipping away like it always did. Like it always will.

Her body was a treacherous thing, a rebellion waiting to happen, and she was its unwilling prisoner.

Chapter Two

Ana Leighs

Most mornings, Ana found herself late for work. Not the fashionably late kind, either — the kind where people might think, “Oh, she must have had a fascinating evening” — but the kind of late that makes you stand there, staring at your own miserable reflection in the toaster, and ask yourself, “How did it come to this.” The kind of late that reminded you there was nothing fascinating about your life.

Which, of course, was a problem. Mommy and Daddy — Dearest — had severed her from the familial piggy bank with all the grace of a guillotine’s drop. And don’t get her wrong, that was fine. Perfectly fine, really. It wasn’t like she was spoiled or anything. Just poor. Poor with the kind of student debt that feels like a colony of rats gnawing away at your ankles. Debt that followed her everywhere, leaving a thick, inescapable sludge behind her, like some wretched snail trail of middle-class misery. She wouldn’t mind a splash of their old, mouldy money right about now, just a smidge to soothe the haemorrhage. But no that wouldn’t do. She had to find a “real” job or shack up with some well-bred automaton. Specifically, one of their family friends’ sons with his slicked-back hair, his teeth like bleached tombstones, and his endless collection of polo shirts. They’d like that.

But fuck that. And while we’re at it, fuck the whole “familial expectations” charade. She’d already fucked things up beyond repair, like a bull in a porcelain shop, drunk on bad decisions. The moment she told her mother that her skin was no longer hers — oh, the look on her face. Her lips had pursed so tightly they might as well have fused together like some hideous skin graft. Then her nostrils flared like she’d just caught a whiff of rotting meat left too long in the sun.

Ana tried reasoning with them, though reasoning was hardly the word for it. She’d thrown out a desperate plea: Hey, listen, we all go mad sometimes. Isn’t that inevitable? Isn’t that just the human experience?

Quite the profound statement, sure, but they'd looked at her like she’d suggested sacrificing the family dog at an altar of ivory or — worse — selling the family yacht to fund a new career as a professional finger painter.

Her mother muttered something about “Melancholia.” She was vintage like that, clinging to outdated terms. She didn’t like the word “depression”; said it was “too ugly.” As if wrapping it up in some 19th-century lace made it more digestible. Heaven forbid they acknowledge mental health issues with anything resembling modern terminology. Next thing you know, they’ll be eating dinner in front of the television and wearing white after Labour Day. The horror!

The point was simple: she had a shitty job she couldn't afford to lose, but her mind was slowly bailing on her, taking the lifeboat and leaving her to sink. Her entire body was staging a mutiny, rejecting her as if she were some botched organ transplant.

Each day blurred into the next; she’d stare at the mirror, slap her cheeks a few times to remind herself she was still alive and kicking, and then desperately rummage for a shirt that would cover the worst of it. And by “the worst of it,” she meant The Great Sloughing. Sounds grand, doesn’t it? Like a biblical plague or some kind of avant-garde performance art piece where the artist strips themselves down to raw nerves. But there’d be no applause, no polite nods of appreciation — just her coarse skin and exposed bones, blinking back at her, as confused as she was.

She knew nothing but this Great Sloughing, and she thought it was very real. Very real, and perhaps normal?

Apparently, this wasn’t a sentiment shared by many. Or by anyone, really. Her friends — what few remained  —  would look at her with the wary eyes one reserves for a rabid dog, as if calculating the risk of putting her down or just letting her go forth in peace. The coworkers gossiped, of course. She could hear them whispering, about the way she tugged at her sleeves like she was trying to keep her skin slipping off her bones.

She was, in fact, trying to do just that.

But the real clincher would always be Mommy and Daddy. She had walked into their house not so long ago, bold as brass, peeling like an overripe fruit in the middle of their too-white foyer, and declared,  My skin is leaving me. It is slipping away like bad fashion. You have to help me.

Her father stared at her for an uncomfortably long time before finally breaking the silence, Are you on drugs, Ana? He asked, not out of genuine concern, mind you, but because a nice, neat explanation like drugs would fit neatly into their orderly little worldview.

God, no, she had said, almost laughing, I wish I were on fucking drugs. Then I could blame this on something external. But this isn't drugs. It’s just me. Just me and my deceitful body deciding to moult in front of the whole world.

They exchanged that look, the one that parents of a malfunctioning adult child exchange — like they’re weighing the pros and cons of a lobotomy versus quietly shipping her off to a nunnery.

Mother, in her frosty, brittle tone, tried to summon a semblance of concern. Maybe we should see that therapist again. Who was it, Dr. Stein, sweetie, she said, voice all ice and no warmth. He could adjust your medication. Or find a nice place where you can rest. For a long while.

Ana had laughed at that. She couldn’t help it. The sound bounced off the sterile, pristine walls of their too-large home, where everything was too empty and too clean.

A padded room, you mean? Maybe a straitjacket to match? Some leather restraints? That would be kinky. Her mother’s face went flatter than a corpse’s.

Her father just sighed, deep and heavily. Maybe you should take some time off work, get yourself together.

And that was when she realised she was well and truly fucked. Because time off work was a luxury she couldn’t afford. She didn’t have the means to lose her mind gracefully, not with New York bills piling up like some tower of Babel and a job that barely kept her from drowning in debt as it was. She’d have to keep going, day after day, peeling and re-peeling, layering makeup over her raw, oozing spots and hoping nobody would notice the flesh underneath wasn’t quite right.

Ana had this nagging fear, you see — a fear that she was rotten. Not just a little off, not the quirky kind of rotten like a bruised apple, but soul-rotten-from-the-inside-out kind of rotten. The kind where, if you cut her open, you’d find a black, festering pit where all the good stuff was supposed to be. She’d always felt like her body was turning against her, like she’d somehow poisoned herself, spoiled whatever it was that kept the rest of humanity from rubbing raw. She wanted to be gentle with herself, she really did. Wanted to feel comfortable in her own skin. But how could she, when her own flesh was at war with her?

She’d told her therapist this once, back when she was sixteen and radiating that special brand of adolescent insufferableness. A real prodigy of teen angst, she was. The kind of kid who thought Catcher in the Rye was penned solely for them, J.D. Salinger, her long-lost soulmate. By seventeen, she’d gotten worse — fully leaning into the tortured poet routine, convinced she’d cornered the market on existential dread. She’d sit there, slouched on the therapist’s couch, and say things like, I think I’m rotten. I think I’ve gone bad. The therapist would give her that look — the one therapists are trained to give when they're about to drop some profound wisdom they picked up in an online certification course.

It’s okay to be rotten, she had said, You were not made for others to eat.

And that line stuck with her for a while. It sounded smart. Deep, even. Like something you’d see on a motivational poster in some hipster coffee shop, right next to a picture of a worm-eaten apple and the words “Embrace Your Decay.” But the thing is, Ana couldn’t bring herself to believe it. Because it’s not okay to be rotten. Not really. Not when you're actually, literally decaying, and your skin is peeling off. That’s where she was — rotting. Her body was flaying itself open, like it was auditioning for some Cronenberg film. But there’s no cure for this, no medicine, no magical cream that’s going to patch her up. Believe her, she’d looked. She’d slathered on all the lotions and potions Sephora had to offer, spent a fortune on skincare products with names that sound like spells. None of it worked.

And no one saw it. They saw her, sure, but they didn’t see her. They didn’t see the way her skin would slash back, like it had finally given up on pretending to be attached. Her parents, of course, were convinced she was crazy. The institutionalised kind of crazy. Not the fun, quirky kind that makes for a good story at Thanksgiving, but the kind that embarasses the hell out of them at the country club.

There’s a certain breed of crazy that fits nicely into their upper-crust world: the artsy eccentric, the mildly alcoholic aunt who stumbles into family photos, the uncle with the gambling problem who’s good for a laugh after a few glasses of Merlot. But not Ana. She was a different flavour. The kind that suggested padded cells and big, white pills. The kind that didn’t quite fit into their pristine little lives.

Ana was raised without love, you see. Or if it was love, it was love in disguise — the kind that says, We put a roof over your head, didn’t we? The sort of love that’s cold and stiff, like a moth-eaten blanket that does more harm than good. It wasn’t warm or fuzzy. More like the kind where you realise at twenty-three that you’ve never been hugged without bracing for impact. And so, naturally, she’d started to wonder if maybe she was just unlovable. Was that possible? Could she be some rare breed of human, born without the gene for being cared about? What a depressing thought. Like, slit-your-wrists-in-a-bubble-bath depressing. But at least she was honest about it. What else could she do?

“Fuck, I need to get to work,” she muttered. Self-pity wasn’t going to pay the bills.

Her job was dead-end. But it was the kind of dead-end that came with a paycheck, which was apparently the best kind if you wanted to keep a roof over your head and the lights on. Money. That’s what everyone needed. Kept the sadness at bay, or so they said. But for Ana, all it seemed to do was give her something else to be resentful about. She walked to work every morning, even when it was pouring. And in this forsaken February, it was always pouring — like the sky had some personal vendetta against the entire city.

She actually liked it when it rained though. There was something almost purifying about feeling the rain hammering down on her, soaking through her clothes, chilling her to the bone. It was as if the rain was trying to scrub away the rot, washing off the stench of whatever spiritual gangrene had gotten into her. She imagined the universe was well aware of how tainted she was. Stained with whatever it was that had been poisoning her from the inside out.

The rain just seemed to understand that. It didn’t ask questions; it didn’t make her explain herself. She didn’t have to justify her existence to the rain. It just came down and did its thing, pounding the filth away. She was a soft, messy creature in a world that only valued the hard and the clean, and nobody really knew what to do with soft, messy creatures like her. But the rain — it knew exactly what to do. It didn’t judge; it didn't sneer; it didn't demand she get her shit together. It just poured and poured, relentlessly, like it was in on the joke.

Ana stood there, head tilted back, letting it cascade over her face, slicing down her neck like an uninvited guest. Her skin felt raw, pricking under the cold onslaught, like it might peel right off if she let it. And maybe, in this sense, that wouldn’t be so bad — just sloughing away everything that made her her, all the parts that didn’t fit, that rotted at the edges. She could feel it, like a layer of mould growing under skin, a creeping, itching thing that nothing could purge.

She continued to walk, grabbing at her skin in a mix of confusion and dread. She couldn’t quite tell if the rain was actually falling or if it was just her skin detaching off in sheets. The sensation was unsettlingly similar — cold and wet, clinging to her, then peeling away like damn wallpaper in a mould-ridden bathroom. She had to resist the urge to claw at her arms just to make sure there was anything left under there.

The bookstore where she had started working was one of those painfully earnest, “quirky” independent places — the kind that thought a name like “The Book Nook” was clever rather than nauseating. It was the sort of place that reeked of overpriced candles and dusty paperbacks, where some obnoxiously twee folk music always played in the background, like a permanent soundtrack to a life spent in denial. She would roll her eyes every time she walked in, but it was still a step up from slinging drinks at that last soulless bar. At least here, she was surrounded by words. And words, she supposed, were her thing.

You could say Ana was a poet. A writer, in theory. It was a bit of a stretch at this point, like calling herself “healthy” was a stretch, but everyone needed a dream. Writing was the end goal — if there was even room left in this overstuffed world for someone like her to have an end goal. The market was already saturated with young women pouring their trauma and personal growth onto the page, soddening the literary landscape like a soggy, over sweetened sponge cake. Maybe it was time to diversify. Start writing about her skin peeling off, see where that got her. “Memoirs of a Moulting Maniac” had a certain ring to it. She bet it would sell. But she was getting ahead of herself. For now, she waited. She’d wait and wait and wait, like a dog left by the door, convinced its owner would come back, even though the car’s already in the garage. You’d think this would be the kind of behaviour therapy taught you to avoid — this whole “waiting” business. But her therapist had been more of a manifest your reality type. So, she was manifesting. Manifesting the hell out of her mundane existence, every single day.

As she walked, Ana liked to people-watch. Maybe it came from her chronic soul-deep yearning to be anyone other than herself. Super ordinary, she knew, but there was a sick comfort in imagining herself slip into someone else's skin, wearing it like a borrowed coat she could drape around her decaying self. New York was perfect for it — a city full of faces too busy to notice her staring, which was just as well. She’d watch them with a weird sense of longing, like she was homesick for arms that wouldn’t even want to hold her. She’d imagine sliding into their skins like some grotesque costume change, a human puppet show where she’d be the star. Pulling their strings.

If only she could do that, they wouldn’t have a choice. They’d have to carry her around like an unwelcome guest they couldn’t quite shake off.

If she was going to be stuck in her own rotting shell, she might as well have some company.

Maybe if Ana were still a kid, these people would have liked her better. Maybe they would have loved the softer version of her, the pre-decay model. That version was easy on the eyes, not as harsh as she had become now. It’s funny how sloughing off your skin can make you a little, well, abrasive. People don’t like looking at you when you’re peeling like a bad sunburn that’s gone three stages too far. They’d rather avert their eyes, pretend you’re just some strange roadside attraction. A walking warning sign: Beware of Human Detritus.

She could hardly blame them. She couldn’t even look at herself anymore.

Ana never really knew what she looked like these days. She’d catch her reflection sometimes — in windows, spoons, puddles, that sort of thing — and it was like seeing a stranger wearing her face as a borrowed mask. It was odd, really, going so long without any clear idea of what her own face was doing. She knew what was happening, of course. She saw the bits flaking off, curling back like old paint cracking away from a condemned house, and there was a kind of detached fascination in it. But there was no room for recognition there, no moment of, Oh yeah, that’s me.

She would glance down at her hands, her arms, her skin — what was left of it, anyway — but tried to do it like she was some omnipresent viewer. Like she was hovering above her own body, watching from a safe distance, the way one might watch a particularly gruesome nature documentary. And here we see the self-destructing human in its natural habitat… Dissociation — that was the word for it, right? God bless therapy for indirectly teaching her that trick. It was easier that way, separating herself from herself. Feels more surreal. But how surreal can it get, though, when you're literally watching your own skin fall off?

She used to think there was something poetic about it. Maybe it was the writer in her, desperate to find meaning in the disproportionate, trying to make a metaphor out of her own bodily failures. But poetry only gets you so far when you’re scraping yourself off your bed sheets every morning, flaying away like some cheap decal stuck to the bottom of a shoe.

Ana would remember the way her skin split and tore, like a shedded scab oozing and splitting at its seams, and she wondered if this was what becoming truly real looked like. Perhaps that’s what was happening. Maybe she was shedding all the pretences, all the societal gunk that clings to you like barnacles, hiding what you really are underneath. Maybe she was becoming the truest version of herself — the version no one wanted to see.

Though it probably was just rot, plain and simple, while the world kept moving on, oblivious, uncaring. That seemed more like it. Ana shuffled past all these people — businessmen squeezed like sausages into their too-tight suits, moms dragging their screaming toddlers who thrashed like caught fish, couples glued to their phones as if the digital void was more compelling than each other — and she wondered what it would be like to slip into one of their skins. Just for a day, to feel what it was like to be whole and intact. Not this unravelling, flaking mess.

Would they notice? She thought. Would they feel her lurking under there, writhing around like some parasitic worm, desperate for a little warmth, a little stability? Or would they keep on moving, blissfully oblivious, while she clawed her way deeper, burrowing for whatever it was they had that she didn’t? She imagined herself nestled just beneath their skin, like some greasy stowaway in a stolen coat, feeling out all the seams and joints, trying to figure out how it all worked. How it all stayed together.

This thought always got her — the idea that it could be so easy to become someone else. Like maybe if her skin already had this uncanny ability to peel away whenever it damn well please, she could just, she didn’t know, shed it all and build a new one. Grow a whole new Ana from the ground up, like one of those lizards that drop their tails when they’re scared, leaving the useless part behind to twitch and writhe. Maybe that was what was happening. Maybe her therapist’s hokey manifesting mantras had finally taken root in her subconscious, twisting and mutating until they became something altogether darker. Maybe she was morphing into someone else entirely — an upgraded model. A better version.

Wouldn’t that be sickly? Sickly in the way where it was both revolting and fascinating, like one of those deep-sea fish that looked like a melted wax sculpture but also had bioluminescence, so you couldn’t help but be a little impressed. Ana almost hoped it was true. Like those people who believed anger could be chiselled into something beautiful, something powerful. What if that was what was happening to her? Maybe all this peeling and sloughing was just the universe’s twisted way of saying, Hey, Ana, time to level up. Time to become something new.

But then she wondered —would she even get a say in who she became? Or would life just slap her with another ill-fitting suit of skin, another identity that itched and burned at the hems?

Probably the latter, knowing her luck. When you come from places so tough and mean that you start to believe every day is a bare-knuckle fight, you get the sense that life’s not about to hand you any freebies. It’s not a “choose your own adventure” kind of gig; it’s more like, “Here, take this mess and see if you can make something out of it. Good luck, sucker.”

Life’s sadistic like that. You could pray for tenderness, beg for it even, but chances are life would show up wearing brass knuckles and a menacing grin. You learn to stop asking for gentleness after a while. You learn that when life gets hard, you have to get harder. And not in some poetic, “builds character” kind of way. You’ve got to match it, grit for grit. Like you’re squaring up in the boxing ring with life itself — Ana versus existence, and existence always had the home advantage, always had the weight class on its side.

She could see herself in that ring, flesh hanging like ribbons, like some parody of a prizefighter. She’d be dropping bits of herself onto the mat, a pulpy, plodding mess, while Life stood across from her, grinning and hulkling, like a mean-spirited God of misfortune. Life wouldn’t pull any punches, either. It’d go straight for the gut, winding her good and proper, leaving her gasping and flailing, trying to keep her insides from spilling out onto the floor. And what was she supposed to do? Take a swing with whatever was left of her? Throw a punch with fingers that barely stayed attached? Maybe that’s all anyone could do: throw punches, even if your hands were already disintegrating.

“Ana?” Jamie called from the entrance of “The Book Nook,” her voice impatient.

Ana shuddered at the sound of the name — The Fucking Book Nook. Every time she saw those twee, hand-painted letters, she wanted to scrub her eyeballs with bleach. If there was a hell specifically designed for her, she was pretty sure it would involve a never-ending loop of indie bookstore puns and mason jar candles that smelled like “whimsical moss.”

“Yes, Jamie,” Ana croaked, her voice like gravel scraping out of her throat.

Jamie was glaring at her, hands on her hips, like some underpaid middle manager with a Napoleon complex. Which is exactly what she was.

“You’re late,” she began, her lips puckering as if she’d just sucked on a lemon. “Again,” she continued, stretching the word out like it was painful to say.

“I tried running,” Ana shot back bluntly.

She didn’t, though. Running was a bad idea when you can’t trust your skin to stay intact. Last time she’d tried that, she’d left a breadcrumb trail of dermis from her apartment to the nearest crosswalk, like some modern-day Hansel and Gretel. An extremely twisted version. The city pigeons were still traumatised.

Jamie sighed, a deep, theatrical sigh, as if she were a martyr enduring Ana’s presence for the greater good of mankind. She spun on her heel and stalked back into the store, a silent command for Ana to follow.

When Jamie got moody — which was most days — Ana found herself thinking, I was not made for this life. She’d been meant for something more tragically poetic. She should have been like Kafka or Plath, quietly suffering for her art and then dying just before anyone could give her any credit for it. Not that she expected posthumous fame either. Knowing her luck, she’d die in some obscenely mundane way, like tripping over a curb and cracking her skull open. And there’d be nothing but an obituary that misspelt her name and the wrong birth year etched into her gravestone.

As she followed Jamie through the store, it felt like the place itself had turned against her. The walls seemed to close in, narrowing like a constrictor around her torso, trying to squeeze out whatever guts she had left. The bookshelves, which were once quaint, now stuck out like jagged teeth, waiting to take a bite out of her flayed skin. She could swear the store was alive, each shelf quivering with anticipation for a taste of her, like it was hungry, like it had a vendetta. She imagined her raw, peeling flesh snagging on the splintering wood, tearing like cheap tissue paper.

Jamie was still rambling on. “You’re lucky it hasn’t been busy for the first hour,” she said, throwing a withering glance over her shoulder. “I’d be more annoyed otherwise.”

Ana had to bite her tongue to stop herself from rolling her eyes so hard they’d detach and roll away down the aisle like a couple of marbles.

“Sorry,” she muttered. She could almost feel her skin start to peel in response to the stress, like it was too thin and fragile to handle any more nonsense.

Jamie kept talking, yammering on about productivity and customer service, her voice blurring into a cacophony of meaningless nonsense. All Ana could focus on was the sensation of her own skin crawling — literally crawling — stretching and tearing like a sausage casing too full of meat. She could feel it split at her elbows, her knees, the crook of her neck, and imagine great swathes of herself sloughing off like meat falling off the one in a slow cooker. Mind you, the skin hadn’t even peeled away yet. Ana knew this. She clung to the fact like a toddler clutching a frayed blanket, soft and wet with spit. It’s not happening, not really, she recited in her head, her personal lullaby of denial. The trick was Dissociation, once again. She just had to step back, squint at the scene like it was a grainy photo from someone else’s nightmare, and voilà — her own body would feel as distant and alien as her mother’s cooking tips.

“Okay, where do you want me?” Ana snapped, cutting Jamie off mid-ramble. She couldn’t stand another second of it. Her fingers were clawing at the threadbare jumper she wore, scratching at her skin like it was a tick she couldn’t shake, or worse, a parasite she needed to dig out.

Jamie shot her a look of pure disdain, the kind that suggested she didn’t know what Ana’s problem was but was definitely offended by it nonetheless. As if Jamie would ever comprehend the itch swarming under her skin, burrowing deeper, like worms tunnelling into the meat of a ripe corpse.

“The usual would be great,” Jamie said with a sigh so heavy it might have snapped her spine. “New book releases need stacking. And Kacey isn’t in today, so hit the counter when I’m not there.”

She turned on her heel and marched off before Ana could agree, disagree, or even blink. Typical. That’s Jamie for you — a hurricane of condescension.

Silence then filled the air, the kind that buzzes, that lives inside you like a bloodsucker, chewing away at whatever you once had for a soul. Ana wasn’t always quiet; at least, she hadn’t been before everything started to strip away — before her skin became something to fear. People liked to assign these traits to others before they knew anything of substance. They liked to look at Ana and call her “odd.” But that wasn’t quite right. Ana was more like a cheap knockoff, a bottled version of a person you might find on some back-alley market stall.

Ana wasn’t odd; she was plagiarised — a counterfeit made up of fragments of women she’d observed from afar. She was a patchwork quilt of personalities stitched together at the hip, with the seams fraying and splitting as they held on for dear life. She didn’t believe in originality; she found it as believable as Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny — a myth for the gullible to cling to, a comforting story people tell themselves to feel unique. Ana knew better. She was an amalgamation, a composite creature crafted from scraps of conversations overheard on buses, the way a woman might brush her hair behind her ear, the specific rhythm of laughter from a stranger on the street. If she was odd, then so was everyone else — a jigsaw puzzle where none of the pieces actually fit together.

She drifted toward the stack of new releases, each cover more garish than the last, their glossy jackets shrieking for attention like desperate carnival barkers. She could practically hear them taunting her. Buy me! I’m full of life lessons you’ll forget in a week! She began stacking them, each spine clunking against the next, each book a tiny coffin of someone else’s better, more coherent thoughts. Her hands moved automatically, but her mind was somewhere else — deep in that familiar, dark place where the itch beneath her skin became unbearable, where she imagined ripping it off like wallpaper.

She couldn’t be here. Realistically, she shouldn’t be anywhere near this place. Not while her skin was misbehaving. Not while she felt her body was staging some sort of silent revolt, a mutiny against the very idea of being intact. She should be at home, barricaded in her bathroom with a pair of kitchen scissors, slicing away at the rebellious patches of skin like she was trimming dead leaves off a houseplant. Or maybe she should run to the hospital, let them poke and prod, take samples of her flesh like she was some bizarre new life form dredged up from the Mariana Trench. Or, hell, maybe she should run to Mommy and Daddy, except they’d probably just offer her herbal tea and a pamphlet on mindfulness from Dr. Stein. Anywhere but here. Literally fucking anywhere.

The bell above the door jangled with a sickening cheerfulness as customers began the tickle into The Fucking Book Nook, bringing with them the thick, cloying scent of rain-drenched wool and self-importance.

Ana watched them, the usual archetypes that haunted the shelves of pretentious independent bookstores like this one. These were the types who believed books were a gateway to intelligence, and that intelligence was the ultimate aphrodisiac. Maybe there was some truth to it — reading is sexy, smart, the new craze. But these were also the same pretentious bastards who’d stroll in, sniffing the air like bloodhounds, and declare they’d marry anyone who could recite all of Dostoevsky by heart. Or worse, the ones who’d swagger around with a glint in their eye that suggested they believed they were Dostoevsky, reincarnated and ready to save literature from the common rabble.

Ana’s skin twisted under her jumper like it was trying to free itself from her body, the sensation scraping against her bones like nails on a chalkboard. She could feel each layer rubbing against the next, an internal battle that made her want to shred it all, right there in front of everyone. Her skin felt like it was too tight, too loose, too wrong. She had to get out. Now.

“Do you guys have Metamorphosis?” a customer asked, some bearded hipster in a scarf. His tone was casual, like he wasn’t asking for a piece of her soul.

Ana almost laughed, a choked, hysterical sound bubbling up from deep in her chest.

“At the back, somewhere,” she managed to spit out, though it came out like a rasp. She was sweating through her clothes, her breathing was turning into frantic gasps, like a fish gulping for air on a riverbank.

The hipster nodded, oblivious, and wandered off, mumbling something about Kafka to his equally pretentious partner. Meanwhile, Ana felt like she was about to rupture, like her skin would suddenly give way and explode in a shower of gore and misery. She could see it happening: chunks of her flayed skin slapping onto the floor like raw chicken cutlets, her exposed muscle and sinew glistening under the harsh fluorescents, her blood pooling and mixing with the sticky residue of spilled coffee and forgotten gum.

Jamie would have to clean it up, her face twisted in annoyance. Maybe she’d complain to management about how they really need to invest in better mop buckets.

Her skin was rebelling more violently now, a hideous itch that felt like ants marching just inside. Ana could sense them, a tiny army in formation, carrying away pieces of her sanity as they burrowed deeper in her flesh. She wanted to peel herself apart like an onion, layer by layer, until she found whatever rotten core was causing all this misery. Her nails dug into her arms, scratching herself through the fabric of her jumper until she felt the wet warmth of blood starting to seep through.

“Hey, I can’t find the book. Do you even have Kafka in here?” the hipster came back, hovering like a fly that just refused to die. The stupid fucking hipster.

Ana could barely believe he couldn’t see her turmoil — the sweat pooling down her face, dripping past her eyes, her pupils wild like a cornered animal. Her skin felt like it was alive, rippling, and the itch was unbearable now, like her sweater was woven from barbed wire and fire ants.

“I don’t fucking know,” Ana snapped.

“Woah, calm down. I’m just asking, girl,” the hipster said, holding up his hands like he was some innocent victim here. His glasses perched on his nose at an angle that made him look like a pompous cartoon character, probably one who’d read too much Proust and thought he was enlightened because of it.

“I really don’t care,” Ana hissed, her voice dropping to a low, venomous whisper. “If you were a real literate, maybe you’d already have read Metamorphosis.”

The hipster’s face twisted into a mock-pout, a theatrical frown that made Ana’s skin crawl even more.

“No need to be rude. I’m currently reading Russian literature, actually,” he droned, puffing his chest like a goddamn pigeon.

“Just fuck off, please,” Ana muttered through gritted teeth as she turned on her heel and stormed off to find Jamie. But, of course, the hipster followed, because of course, he did. He was that guy — the type who couldn’t resist pushing buttons until they broke, who needed her to know he was the intellectual in this situation, the real literary genius.

“I’m serious, I’m actually really into Tolstoy right now,” he blabbered behind her. “I’m a sucker for existential dread.”

Ana could not have given a smaller fuck if she tried. Her whole body felt like it was on the verge of tearing itself apart from the inside. Her skin tightened and loosened in waves, a tired metaphor that’d overstayed its welcome, as if even her body was getting bored of trying to hold itself together. Each pulse was a reminder: You’re not whole, and you never were.

She finally spotted Jamie near the counter, restocking a shelf with the dead-eyed intensity of someone who’d given up.

“Hey, I need to go,” Ana blurted out.

“Uh, no, no you don’t. It’s only me and you working,” Jamie replied, her tone clipped. “You leave, I’m stuck here alone, and that’s not happening.”

“You can do it on your own, Jamie. No one fucking comes in here anyway. Please,” Ana begged, her eyes wide and frantic.

Jamie glanced at her, finally noticing the sweat dripping from Ana’s chin and the way her hands were scrabbling at her own arms, nails digging in as if she was trying to get to the bone.

Her expression softened slightly, but not enough to matter. “Ana, you’re acting crazy. Just… take a breather or something.”

“A breather?” Ana repeated, her voice high-pitched, almost a screech. “Jamie, I’m about two seconds away from turning into a walking anatomy lesson. My skin is about to fall off, and I swear to God, if I’m here when it happens, I’m going to rub it all over your fucking face.”

Jamie blinked, taken aback, but before she could respond, the hipster chimed in again, because of course, he did. “Wow, what a metaphor, dude! That’s like, so visceral. Really captures the essence of Kafka’s work.”

Ana turned slowly to face him, her contorted with agony and rage. “If you say the word ‘Kafka’ one more time, I’m going to peel my face off and hand it to you as a bookmark, you pretentious little shit.”

The hipster for once, looked stunned into silence, his mouth hanging open. Jamie stared at Ana like she’d grown a second head, which, honestly, at this point, didn’t feel out of the realm of possibility. Her lips pressed together in that tight, managerial grimace she always wore when she was about to pull rank, while the hipster just stood there, blinking rapidly, his ego clearly bruised but still looking for an opening to redeem himself.

“So, like, do you guys at least have Crime and Punishment? I feel like I should grab that too if I’m going to make the trip worth it,” he piped up again, because he apparently hadn’t read the room. Or maybe he just didn’t know how to read anything except the spark notes of Russian novels.

Ana’s eye twitched. “Oh, sure, let me just flay my way over there and check for you,” she sneered, still scratching furiously at her arms. “I mean, I’m practically falling apart, but for you, dude, anything.”

“Ana, cut it out,” Jamie snapped, but there was a hint of panic in her voice now.

Ana’s hands were nearly raw from all the scratching, the skin flaking off like burnt parchment, but the hipster was too busy blinking at her like he’d just spotted a live rat in his overpriced kombucha. His eyes were saucers now, the cool detachment melting into something more familiar: fear, but it wasn’t the kind that had anything to do with her skin peeling away like a sad paper mache project. To him, it just looked like Ana was… well, acting like she had a serious dandruff problem. An internal joke about “exfoliation” barely made it out before he recoiled, the look of horror settling in like he’d just witnessed someone pick their nose in public.

“Uh, you’re kind of… bleeding,” he mumbled, pointing awkwardly at Ana’s arms. “Are you okay?”

“Oh, now, you notice? Thanks for the concern, buddy. Really makes a girl feel special.”

Jamie’s eyes darted between them, trying to calculate whether this was going to turn into a HR incident, or worse, a Yelp review disaster.

“Look, Ana,” she began. “If you’re not feeling well, maybe just take a minute in the back—”

“I don’t need a minute in the back, Jamie. I need to leave. Because if I don’t, I’m going to lose it. And by ‘lose it,’ I mean I’m going to crack my head open just to make sure my brain isn’t leaking out along with everything else.”

“Woah, okay, drama queen,” the hipster muttered. “I just came to buy books, not get into some, like, psychodrama.”

Ana turned to him so fast it was like she’d been yanked on a string. “You wanna see a psychodrama?” She held up her forearm, where the skin was now hanging in tattered strips like soggy toilet paper. “This is my psychodrama! This is Kafka’s worst nightmare and I’m living it!”

Jamie’s face went pale. She looked around the store, praying no other customers would wander in and see this little freak show.

“Ana,” she hissed, glancing over her shoulder to make sure they weren’t drawing more attention, “you’re gonna scare people.”

“Yeah, we get it, you scratched up your arm,” the hipster added.

Ana’s laugh was almost a cackle. “Good! Maybe they’ll leave and never come back to this overpriced candle-scented shithole!”

The hipster took a step back, genuinely alarmed now. “Look, I don’t want any trouble. I was just looking for some Kafka—”

“Shut up about fucking Kafka!” Ana screamed. “I swear, say it one more time, I’m gonna start peeling your skin off, page by page, chapter by chapter!”

Jamie stepped in, hands up, trying to play peacemaker now. “Alright, alright, Jesus. Let’s just calm down. Ana, seriously, take five. Go outside, get some air, maybe splash some water on your face—”

“I need to get out of here before I take this hipster’s smug face and smash it into the ‘Staff Picks’ display,” Ana said.

“Hey, there is no need for violence,” the hipster stammered. “I’m just gonna.. Leave. Like, right now.”

“No, you’re not. You’re going to go to that shelf, find Metamorphosis, and you’re going to read it right here, so maybe — maybe — you’ll understand just a fraction of what I’m dealing with.”

“Jesus, Ana. Alright you win. You can go. Just… go. I’ll handle it. But you owe me, okay? You owe me.”

Ana didn’t wait for her to change her mind. She stormed past them both, making a straightaway for the door, practically tearing it off its hinges as she left. The hipster and Jamie watched her go, the bell jangling violently in her wake.

“Well, that was intense,” the hipster mumbled, looking at Jamie with wide eyes.

Jamie sighed, walking back towards the books she was arranging.

Chapter Three

Ana Leighs

She continued walking away from the bookshop, her pace uneven, her mind blank except for the simple need to keep moving.

Ana wanted to be alone. She needed to be alone.

Alone, where she could fold herself into the shadows and pretend the world didn’t exist.

She wanted to pray in solitude, so she could sin in peace. She wasn’t sure if what she was doing was a sin, but it had to be something like it — a transgression, a punishment from God, or maybe some low-level demon who’d been bored and decided to mess with her for kicks.

The way she lived felt wrong. Wrong like a splinter shoved deep under the skin, festering, itching, driving her mad. But she’d never admit that out loud.

She went through phases of believing in the Lord, like really believing, with the fervour of a fanatical evangelist on his tenth cup of coffee. And then, almost without warning, she’d flip, like a cheap light switch stuck in some grimy bathroom, and she’d beg for His help because suddenly she didn’t believe anymore. On and off, on and off — the faith of a broken strobe light.

She wasn't raised with religion; her mother had been born into it, a dyed-in-the-wool Christian until she was turned away by the devil. The devil being her father, who had a special talent for sucking the light out of everything around him.

Religion wasn’t important to everyone, Ana figured. It was just one of those things people hoped was real when life became unbearable. One of those comforting theories you tell yourself when you’re knee-deep in a sludge and can’t see a way out. But sometimes, when things got too unbearable — when her skin crawled and cracked and seemed to peel away from her bones — she’d search for God in the corners of her bedroom, in the creases of her sheets stained with sweat and worse, in the grit under her fingernails that looked a lot like dried blood.

She’d peer into the yellowish light of the bathroom, gaze deep into the mirror, where her reflection glared back like a wax mannequin left too close to a bonfire. And she’d ask, Are You there? Are You watching this mess? Do You enjoy this shit?

But deep down, she knew she wouldn’t like Him much if He were real. He seemed to have a nasty habit of forsaking her, of turning His back right when she needed Him most, like some holy deadbeat dad who promised to show up to the big game but never did. She’d had enough of those types in her life already, no need for another, especially not one who claimed to run the universe.

If she was going to talk to Him, it’d be on her own terms, somewhere dark, somewhere filthy, somewhere holy in its abnormality. She wanted to find God in a place like the back alley behind her apartment building, where the dumpsters spilled over with black bags of rotting trash and rats the size of small dogs. That seemed more fitting — more honest. She could see Him there, dressed in rags, leaning against the brick wall with a cigarette between His fingers, smoke curling up into the night sky like the souls of the damned. She’d approach Him slowly, keeping her distance, and He’d look at her with those eyes that saw everything and said nothing.

Why me? She’d ask, scratching at her arms where the skin was already beginning to flake again, where the flesh was raw and red, like the aftermath of a butcher’s cleaver.

He’d take a long drag of His cigarette, let the smoke fill His lungs, and then blow it out with a slow sigh. Why not? He’d say, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Well, that’s a bullshit answer, she’d reply, Is that what they teach you in divine asshole school?

And God — if He were real, if He were there — He’d chuckle, low and mean, and flick the cigarette butt into the gutter. You think you’re special? You think you’re the only one who’s ever been cursed with a life like this?

Yeah, actually, I do, she’d shoot back, crossing her arms over her chest. I think my life’s a custom job. You took one look at me and thought, ‘Now here’s a girl I can really screw with.’

He’d just shrug, his face impassive, like He’d heard it all before. Life’s a meat grinder, kid. And some of us get tossed in with a little more spice.

But God isn’t here. He never is. So, Ana just kept walking, or tried to. If you could even call this slow-motion collapse “walking.” Her arms were practically spiralling, skin falling off, leaving behind angry streaks of exposed flesh. Strips of her fleece jacket clung to herself one minute, and then melted onto the pavement the next, becoming part of the urban grime. She limped under the weight of her own decay, every step a slow, painful shuffle as though her body might just give up and hit the concrete any second. And wouldn’t that be something? A heap of skin and bone, left in a pile on a New York sidewalk.

Of course, New York being New York, no one noticed. No one cared about Ana’s personal horror movie playing out in real-time. People walked by, engrossed in their own little universes, too busy texting, too busy living to notice that a woman was shedding her skin. No one offered to hold up the strips of flesh that dangled from her arms, no one even flinched as she left a trail of dermis behind her.

At one point, she glanced down and saw her own skin hanging off her elbow, flapping in the wind like a dirty rag. Her body was becoming some cheap, defective costume, the seams coming apart all at once. How could no one notice this? Was she invisible? Or was this… normal? Maybe this was just another Tuesday in the city, where even the most outlandish horrors get a casual shrug.

“I could really use God right now,” Ana muttered. She tried to laugh at herself, but it came out more like a wheeze.

“Amen to that!” someone yelled, walking briskly beside her without even breaking stride.

Ana blinked. Dumbfounded. She turned her head to look at the man who’d just spoken, expecting maybe to see someone at least a little horrified by the human-shaped puddle she was becoming. But the guy just marched on, earbuds in, as if her slow, fleshy decomposition was nothing more than background. He didn’t even glance at her, didn’t even offer her the faintest hint of acknowledgment.

“Excuse me, sir?” she called, trying to keep her voice steady, though she could feel another patch of skin loosening at her collarbone. “Can you see me?”

He waved vaguely in her direction, not even bothering to look up from his phone. “Yeah, yeah, God sees you, too, or whatever. Good luck with that.”

Ana was utterly confused by how normal this was to everyone around her. Maybe this happens to everyone secretly, she thought. Maybe she wasn’t alone in this bizarre nightmare. Maybe the whole city was full of people barely keeping it together, their bodies held with sheer force of will and a thin layer of denial.

Was that businessman's suit just a little too stiff? Did that woman’s scarf seem suspiciously wrapped around her neck like it was hiding something? Was that guy’s hat sitting weird on his head because half his scalp had slipped off?

She wasn’t sure anymore. What if they were all like her, rotting from the inside out? The whole city, all these people, were just as broken, just as flayed alive, but they ‘d perfected the art of not letting it show.

Suddenly, without warning, Ana felt her skin decide — because it had a mind of its own — to re-wrap itself around her bones, as though it had gotten bored of hanging off her in tatters.

With a sickening swoosh, her flesh snapped back into place, threading itself together like some reverse knitting project. The bones beneath squealed with excitement, as if they’d just been freed from a long, icy prison, giddy to be warm again. They made this horrible grinding noise, like wet chalk scraping against concrete, as they slotted back into the warmth of her reassembled skin.

Ana stood there, gasping for breath, her body convulsing from the effort of keeping herself in one piece. The act of re-stitching one’s own flesh, it turns out, is exhausting. She wanted to scream, to just burst open and let all the flesh out, but after the ordeal of holding herself together, literally, she barely had the energy to whisper, let alone throw a tantrum.

She felt like a glitch in the system, a living error in the universe’s cruel design. The air around her felt hostile, like she was living in an atmosphere that her body could never quite adapt to. Every step was a violation of some fundamental law she wasn’t meant to break. Living felt like a transgression, like she was continually offending the universe simply by existing within it.

She glanced down at her arms, now perfectly smooth again, the skin eerily unblemished, as if nothing had ever happened. It almost made her angrier, this fleeting semblance of normalcy. She knew it wouldn’t last. The Great Sloughing would return when it wanted to, ripping her apart again, with no regard for her fragile sense of sanity.

Ana thought about it, really thought about it: could she just kill herself? Just throw herself in front of a bus, let her skin melt into the asphalt like hot wax, leave behind nothing but a smudge? Or maybe a train — quick, efficient, no time for hesitation. The idea lodged itself in her mind like a splinter, dark and painful but somehow seductive. She could be done with all this. Life is optional, after all.

Extreme? Yeah, sure. But when your skin has the habit of detaching itself like an old coat at the most inconvenient moments, you tend to go to extremes. She was tired, bone-deep weary. Every day felt like a new horror, a fresh hell she hadn’t signed up for.

She sighed, rubbing her now fully intact temples. “No,” she muttered under breath, “I should just walk it off.” Like a bad-cramp. Or food poisoning. Just a flesh-melting, bone-rattling existential crisis.

Still, it gnawed at her. She could no longer handle the fallout, the constant cycle of falling apart and stitching herself back together like fucking Frankenstein. How long could a person endure that? And more importantly, why should she have to endure it? She glanced down at her arms, flexing her fingers experimentally. The skin stayed in place, for now, but she didn’t trust it. Any minute it could start again.

She shook her head, an involuntary laugh bubbling up from her throat. She needed to have a serious talk with her skin. It couldn’t keep doing this to her. There had to be boundaries, even in the depths of this horror.

She tried to imagine sitting it down, giving it a good talking-to. Listen, you and I, we’re stuck together. Literally. So stop trying to escape like you’ve got somewhere better to be. Newsflash: you don’t.

Ana’s life started off well enough, which is quite possibly the most mundane statement ever made about her existence. Growing up swaddled in wealth and gilded expectations didn’t faze her much. It wasn't like she had some grand revelation about the vapidness of privilege — she was pretty content being dressed up like a porcelain doll and paraded around like her mother’s personal trophy.

Her mother had loved her. Well, loved dressing her up, anyway. She threw extravagant birthday parties, the kind that were more about showing off than celebrating. High school graduation was no different. It was another excuse for her mother to plaster on a smile and throw a massive party.

But it was at that graduation ceremony, at the age of sixteen, that something inside Ana snapped — or more accurately, something inside her shifted, like the tectonic plates of her brain had suddenly decided to go on a joyride. As she sat there in her cap and gown, surrounded by her peers from Horace Mann School, something felt off.

It started as a slow itch under her skin, not unlike the sensation of wearing wool in the middle of summer. Her body felt foreign, like she was stuffed into a suit that wasn’t made for her. And the more she fidgeted, the worse it got.

Her mother noticed, of course. She always noticed the things that would reflect poorly on her. Stop that, she hissed, teeth clenched in that way that mothers do when they’re trying not to cause a scene but are boiling with rage beneath their plastic smiles. Ana tried to stop, she really did, but the feeling of discomfort only grew. By the time they got home, her skin felt like it was trying to crawl away from her body, like it was ready to bolt and leave her behind as some skinless, exposed mess.

Her father, as usual, noticed nothing. He was there in body, sure, but mentally, emotionally, he was probably light years away, orbiting some distant planet. Her mother, however, was livid. She berated her all the way home, made snide remarks about how Ana had ruined the ceremony, how she looked like a mess, how she couldn’t even sit still for one goddamn picture.

That night, Ana did something she had never done before. She stood in front of the mirror in her bedroom, staring at her reflection, trying to understand what was wrong. Her face stared back at her, but it didn’t feel like her. The more she looked, the more distorted it became — her features twisting and stretching, like her reflection was mocking her.

It was at that moment she grabbed the closest thing within reach — a heavy, ornate lamp her mother had gifted her — and hurled it at the mirror. The glass shattered instantly, shards raining down like sharp little confetti. For a split second, she felt relief. But then the panic set in. It wasn’t just the mirror in her bedroom. She couldn’t stand to see herself anywhere. The bathroom mirror went next, smashed into a thousand glimmering pieces. Every reflective surface in her wing of the house was either destroyed or covered up, hidden under sheets like some macabre crime scene.

The problem, though, was that even without the mirrors, she couldn’t escape. Her skin felt wrong, like it didn’t belong to her anymore. It clung to her too tightly in some places, sagged in others, as though gravity had become malicious, tugging and pulling her flesh in monstrous ways. She spent hours running her finger over her arms and stomach, feeling the contours of her body, convinced that any second now, her skin was going to slough off, leaving her an exposed bundle of nerves.

Her mother, being the ever-doting narcissist, decided therapy was the answer — because, of course, her daughter couldn’t be seen acting out. Ana was shipped off to therapists and specialists, but it didn’t matter. She couldn’t explain what was happening to her. How do you tell someone that you feel like your skin is plotting against you, ready to rip itself away at any moment? How do you explain that the act of existing in your own body feels like a form of punishment, like some divine retribution?

The therapist threw around terms like “dissociation” and “body dysmorphia,” but nothing really stuck. There was no diagnosis for feeling like your skin was about to fly away, no term for feeling like your flesh was stitched on wrong. She’d lie in bed at night, staring at the ceiling, wondering if she’d wake up one morning and find that it had finally happened — that her skin had given up and abandoned her, leaving her bleeding on the sheets.

Sometimes she wished for it. Maybe if the skin just left, the itch would stop, the discomfort would fade. Maybe then she could finally look in a mirror and recognise the person staring back at her — or at least feel like that person belonged in the reflection.

Nevertheless, Ana ended up at Columbia University, because that’s what good daughters of good families do. Tradition. Expectations. The usual suffocating cocktail of rich, intellectual pedigree. She was smart enough to get in on her own merit, but it wasn’t like she had a choice in the matter. If her parents had anything to say about it, she was going to Columbia, end of story. They didn’t care what was wrong with her, didn’t notice the deepening shadows under her eyes or the way she seemed to withdraw from her own body like a hermit crab ready to abandon its shell. The only decision she did make for herself was to stay on campus. Sure, they were all in Manhattan, but if she was going to implode, she’d rather do it in the sterile solitude of a dorm room than under the critical eyes of her parents.

If it weren’t for that oppressive sense of tradition, Ana would have flown away to a university nobody gave a shit about. Some place without prestigious accolades or suffocating legacies, just far from her parents and their warped way of coping with her… condition.

Her mother had taken it upon herself to “fix” Ana, as though sadness was a blemish that could be treated with chemical peels and microdermabrasion. “Skin treatments” she called them, though they bordered more on self-mutilation. Ana would lie still, gritting her teeth, as her mother slathered on creams that burned, stung, and made her skin feel like it was collapsing for real this time. Beauty is pain, her mother would croon, blissfully unaware that she was making things so much worse.

Then came the dinners. The fucking dinners. Her parents would parade her around like some bizarre centrepiece, introducing her to guests as their “quirky” daughter, a harmless little eccentricity in an otherwise perfect family. But once the guests were gone, her mother would turn on her, venomously berating Ana for her appearance, her behaviour, her failure to fit into the mould she was meant to fill. You’ve ruined everything! her mother would shriek.

And Ana would respond the same way every time: I am what you made me. Whatever’s rotting inside of me, you planted it.

At Columbia, she tried to figure out what the hell was wrong with her, something no doctor, specialist, or therapist had managed to do. She haunted the library like a ghost, scavenging through the psychology section, desperate to find something — anything — that explained the creeping sense that her body was on the verge of collapse. When that failed, she ventured into the biology section, flipping through textbooks filled with diagrams of healthy human bodies, trying to spot what was off about hers.

In moments of complete desperation, she even wandered over to the shelves where they kept the occult and supernatural books, hoping — praying — that she might stumble upon a tome about magical beings who, like her, felt their bodies were moments away from unravelling at the seams. But no, nothing. No answers, no clarity.

So she did what any teenage girl with undiagnosed hypochondria would do: she turned to Google. Late nights in her dorm room, hunched over her laptop, she typed in every disturbing symptom she could think of. Skin feels like it’s crawling off. Constant itching under skin feels like something alive. Bones feel wrong inside body. Help me. Her search history became a dark abyss, an incriminating tail of increasingly paranoid questions. To an outsider, it would look like the beginnings of a serial killer manifesto — like she was researching how to harvest human flesh or disassemble a body. But to Ana, it was just a desperate search for an answer.

Her dorm room became like a prison. The walls closed in on her, suffocating and hostile, like they were complicit in her body’s betrayal. She stopped going to class, unable to focus on anything but the sensation of her skin pulling away from her muscles, the way her bones seemed to creak and shift inside her frame, as though they were preparing to make a break for it.

She thought, more than once, about just grabbing a knife, starting at the wrist, and slicing her way out of the fleshy cocoon that had trapped her for so long.

Chapter Four

Ana Leighs

“Ana, I swear to fuck, you better have sorted out whatever the hell started yesterday,” Jamie barked over the phone.

This was already strange. Jamie never called. She was a text-only kind of manager. The fact she’d gone full vocal with it meant things were about to get really weird. Then again, weird was the default setting these days.

“I mean seriously, Ana, what the fuck is wrong with you? The itching? The agro, odd, off-putting vibe? The customers were terrified, and I don’t blame them. One guy said you looked like you were trying to scratch your way out of your own skin,” Jamie ranted, her voice coming through in grainy bursts of frustration.

Ana paused, gripping the phone like it was the last tether to reality.

“Jamie, did you not see my skin? Are we just forgetting the fact that it was literally peeling off? I couldn’t stay at work while I was dangling there like some half-flayed roadkill.”

“Yes! Yes, I saw your fucking skin. You scraped half of it off on the register. It looked like you were trying to leave a DNA sample behind for some crime scene investigation! Is this, like, a mental issue, Ana? Should I call HR? Get you some help or something?” Jamie fired back, her voice edging into that condescending tone people get when they don’t understand, but pretend they do.

Ana felt something deep and terrible unfurl in her chest. A sinking, nauseating realisation that despite everything, she was still unseen, still unknown. It was like standing naked in front of a crowd, screaming at the top of her lungs while they all squinted and asked if she could speak up.

There was a beat of silence. The kind of silence that fills your stomach like bile. She wanted to reach through the phone, yank Jamie through the wires, and make her see. To shove her disgusting reality into her face, force her to witness her body glitching like a faulty machine.

“Hello? Are you coming into work today or not? Let me know now so I can call someone else in,” Jamie’s voice crackled again, oblivious as ever.

“No,” Ana said flatly.

“No? No explanation? You realise you need to explain this, right? You can’t just—” Jamie started, but Ana cut her off.

“No, because I quit. I can’t do it. I’m sorry.”

There was another beat of stunned silence on the other end of the line. Jamie was probably trying to wrap her head around the fact that the human disaster she hired was now officially her problem no longer.

“You quit? Just like that?” Jamie sounded like she was choking on her own disbelief. “Is this because of the weird skin thing? Because, Ana, I’ve seen people push through worse—”

“No, Jamie. It’s not just the skin thing,” Ana sighed. “It’s the fact that I can’t fucking exist properly anymore. I can’t do it. I can’t keep showing up like everything's fine.”

She could literally hear Jamie blinking in dumbfounded silence on the other end of the line.

“I… I don’t even know what to say to that,” Jamie muttered.

“Yeah, me neither,” Ana said, running a hand down her arm.

The skin was still firmly attached, for now. But she knew better. It was only a matter of time before it started doing its thing again. And she was tired of holding herself together. Tired of pretending she wasn’t slowly disintegrating from the inside out.

“I’ll send your last paycheck when I have time,” Jamie muttered, and the line went dead.

It was meant to feel good. She had imagined it would be liberating, like a weight lifted off her soul, freeing her to become the person she was always supposed to be. Maybe that weight was pressing down on her, warping her thoughts, dragging her down into that sticky, unbearable place where she couldn’t think or feel like a normal person. But it wasn’t like that at all.

Instead, Ana’s breathing grew shallow, each inhaling a slow, panicked drag. Her lungs clutched at the air like they knew she’d fucked up, like they were mocking her inability to keep a job when she really fucking needed a job. The panic spread from her chest to her stomach, then to her limbs, buzzing through her bones like some malevolent electricity. She could almost feel her skin tightening, stretching across her face and arms as if preparing to crack open again.

Ana was terrified of things staying the same, the endless monotony of her life dragging on forever, an eternal loop of mundane horror. But the thought of change? The thought of something truly different? That scared her just as much — maybe more.

“Fuck,” she muttered under her breath, the word barely a whisper.

Then louder, “Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.”

She tried to summon anger, to stoke the fire of her righteous fury, but instead, her throat tightened and her eyes prickled. A sob tore out of her before she could stop it, followed by another, and another. Tears streamed down her face, hot and relentless, and she gasped between sobs, trying to hold it together but failing miserably.

She cried like a child, the way you do when the world feels too big and too hard and you’re just so tired of fighting it. Her skin tingled, stretched thin like it might start peeling off again, leaving her unripe and exposed. She looked down at her arms, half-expecting to see the flesh curling up like dried leaves, but it was clinging on — barely.

Ana, as always, was a mess. A disaster. Upset by something that was probably small in the grand scheme of things, but it didn’t feel small to her. It felt huge. Overwhelmingly huge. It felt like her entire life was being consumed by her skin, the itch, the discomfort, the crawling sensation that never went away. It was taking over her, becoming all she could feel.

She grabbed her phone again, her fingers trembling as they hovered over the contact list. Her thumb hovered over her mother’s name. She hadn’t spoken to her since the last skin treatment, the one her mother had insisted on — the one with the needles.

Ana had read about this treatment. It seemed normal enough in theory. A few pokes, some injections, and voila — rejuvenated skin. Except, her mother hadn't laid her down like a patient in a spa. No. She’d strapped her to the table like a specimen about to be dissected. She could feel the cold metal of the table beneath her, her mother standing over her with an eerie smile, like she was about to gut her alive rather than give her smooth skin. The needles went in deep, too deep, puncturing her flesh like they were trying to scrape the bone, twisting under her skin. It was supposed to help with the peeling, with the sloughing, but all it did was make Ana feel like she was being flayed alive. She had seriously considered that maybe her mother was trying to kill her.

Despite that, she needed money. And the only place to get it was from the family trust fund. There was no escaping that fact. Ana stared at her mother’s name on the screen, her finger trembling as it hovered over the call button.

“Mom,” Ana spoke into the phone, her finger hovering over the red “end call” button for far too long, as if the conversation might somehow fix itself if she hesitated long enough.

“Ana! Everything alright? Ooooh, how’s the skin?” her mother purred, like she was asking about the weather.

Ana clenched her teeth. “Smooth as fuck,” she deadpanned.

“Ana! Language, please,” her  mother snapped, her tone instantly switching gears, like a car screeching to a halt.

“Who doesn’t swear? It’s 2024.”

“I’m not saying people don’t swear. I’m saying you don’t need to swear at me.”

“I wasn’t swearing at you. I was just swearing—” Ana sighed, “Oh, who fucking cares. Mom, I need money.”

There was silence on the other end. The kind of silence where you knew her mother was calculating her response, sifting through her mental library of what a good mother says in this situation.

“Ana, seriously? You know we don’t just hand out money to you. You have to earn it,” her mother’s voice dripped with disappointment. Disappointment always pounded thicker than concern, like it had weight to it, sinking deeper into Ana’s skin than she cared to admit.

“I quit my job. I can’t pay rent.”

Her mother’s response was immediate, quick, like a trap springing shut. “Then move back home. There’s always a place here for you.”

Ana didn’t answer. She just sat there, gripping the phone, the silence between them heavy and sticky, like syrup. She could feel her mother waiting on the other end, poised like a spider in her web, waiting for her prey to stumble into admitting that, yes, maybe she did need her.

“Hello? Ana? God, are we really that fucking bad?” Her mother’s voice broke through the quiet, and Ana nearly laughed at the hypocrisy, the way her mother wielded the curse word like a weapon, while chastising her for doing the same.

Her mother was still talking, going on about how Ana needed to get her act together, how life didn’t stop for little inconveniences, how everyone struggles, and why did Ana think she was so special, so different from everyone else?

Ana tuned it out, her attention focused on the small patch of her arm where the skin had started to bubble up, angry and red, like it was getting ready to pop. She scratched at it absentmindedly, the skin giving way with a squelch that was both satisfying and revolting, leaving a raw patch underneath, pink and weeping.

“Ana? Ana! Are you even listening to me?”

She could still hear her tinny voice, as she watched a chunk of skin curl away from her arm, hanging there like an afterthought. It dangled for a moment, swaying gently, before dropping onto her lap with a soft plop.

Ana blinked at it, then sighed. “Yeah, Mom. I’m listening.”

Her fingers were already busy picking at another loose piece, the flesh beneath itching like mad, like it wanted to be free, like her skin was as desperate to escape this conversation as she was. It was hard to focus when your body was actively rebelling against you, and Ana was an unwilling expert in that. Harder still when her mother wouldn't stop tattling off her passive-aggressive shame.

“Ana, it’s just embarrassing. You know, when I was your age, I was travelling in Asia. Oh, it was fantastic, just me and your father, drifting across the oceans like two explorers,” her mother’s voice was all smug nostalgia, the kind that felt like being choked slowly with silk.

Ana hummed in response, the noise flat and lifeless.

“Ana,” her mother snapped, “seriously, you’re in your twenties! Enjoy yourself before you’re thirty and realise you hate your life. Or, I don’t know, maybe get a real job with that degree of yours.”

Ana gritted her teeth. The “twenties” talk again. The incessant reminder that she was supposed to be having the time of her life. The universe nudged her, saying, Look, you’re 25, where’s the joy? The freedom? The endless Instagrammable moments?

Except Ana wasn’t having the time of her life. She was 25, and instead of floating through her twenties like a carefree butterfly, she was decaying from the inside out.

“Right. Thanks, Mom,” Ana said.

“I’m just looking out for you. You’ll grow to resent yourself for lying in that dull mindset of yours all your life.”

Ana chuckled darkly, feeling the corners of her mouth twitch into something too tight to be a smile. “I resent more than my mind, Mother,” she muttered, watching as her skin still peeled away in tiny, ragged flakes.

Her mother sighed, and Ana could picture her rolling her eyes on the other end of the phone. “Oh, here we go. Stop fishing for pity. I’ve paid for your therapy, for those… What did you call them? Skin people. And those other strange doctors. You’re fine. Worst case, you’ve got some eating disorder. We can handle that.”

Ana could have screamed. Could have shrieked into the receiver that this wasn’t an eating disorder, wasn’t some fashionable sickness you could slap a label on and throw a pamphlet at. It was something far more insidious. Something alive inside her, something that itched and scratched at her bones like a trapped animal.

Her skin had become an enemy, a sentient thing, leaving her body in strips, bubbling up in angry patches, like it was punishing her for existing. It slid down her arms in greasy ribbons, curling at the edges like burnt paper, leaving raw, oozing flesh beneath that wept and pulsed with every heartbeat. She could feel it moving even now, shifting and writhing as if it had plans of its own.

“Yeah, Mom. I’m sure it’s just an eating disorder.”

“Well, when you’re done sulking, let me know. Your father and I are going to the Bahamas next week. Maybe some sun will do you good,” her mother said, oblivious.

“Yeah, maybe,” she muttered, hanging up the phone.

Then Ana screamed. Screamed and bellowed, a guttural cry that scraped her throat raw.

“Cursed!” she shrieked, voice tearing through the quiet of her apartment. “I’m fucking cursed!”

Her screams echoed off the walls, reverberating back to her in distorted fragments, like the apartment itself was mocking her. It took a moment to calm down, enough time for her heart to stop pounding so hard it felt like it was attempting to leave her chest. She didn’t need the neighbours concerned. They’d knock, probably offer more sympathy than her mother or father ever had. But then they’d go back to their lives, shaking their heads, grateful they weren’t her.

Ana slumped down on the floor, her back against the wall, feeling the cold seep through her thin t-shirt. Her body trembled, but not from the cold. There was something deeply unsettling about how her skin continued to stretch too tight, like her flesh was threatening to betray her once more.

Maybe this violence was some kind of awakening, she thought, half-heartedly. Like the idea that life has to be messy, violent even, before it can become something calm. Something gentle. Maybe this was the storm before adulthood truly hit her, before she “settled,” whatever the fuck that meant. But the thought felt hollow, ridiculous even.

She still had no job, no money. Her savings were circling the drain, and when the month was up, she’d have nowhere to live. The walls around her seemed to shrink in response to that thought, reminding her of the inevitable. Her future, looming like a devil in the corner of the room, grinning at her.

She could write, she supposed. The thought hit her out of nowhere. Maybe I could write my way out of this mess. But how? How does one simply sit down and write their way into solvency? It wasn’t like magic, like words could somehow materialise into money. She pictured herself pounding away at the keyboard, a mountain of unpaid bills on the desk beside her, and laughed, the sound bitter and broken.

Nothing was simple. Nothing ever fucking was. And fate? Fate hated her. Fate was a sick, twisted creature that lived off the suffering of people like Ana. It had a special craving for the pain of the vulnerable, gnawing on their misery like a hungry beast. Ana imagined it now, hovering above her, licking its lips at her anguish, finding her despair divinely tasty.

There were times, like now, when Ana felt completely unfit for life. Unfit for anything resembling humanity. And because of her skin — her wretched, traitorous skin — she felt anything but human. Her flesh wasn’t her own anymore; it was a hostile alien force, moving and shifting as if it had its own will.

How could she be alone in this? Surely, someone equally as fucked-up had to feel the same way. There was probably a whole community of people, rotting inside their own bodies, connected by some miserable subreddit or the dark web. She thought about scrolling through the forums filled with stories just like hers — people sharing tips on how to survive when your own body’s the one trying to kill you. Maybe there was even a club for those who were flailing apart at the seams, where they could all gather and compare their latest skin failures, their latest personal downfalls.

Welcome to the Broken Flesh Society. First rule: Don’t fucking scratch.

She decided there’d be no harm in searching for people like her. There had to be others. So she moved quickly to her laptop, like she was sneaking around her own home, acting as though opening Reddit was a covert operation. Her finger hovered over the keys, her brian already conjuring the wildest terms.

Skin flaying itself. Skin betraying me. Skin trying to kill me.

It had to exist somewhere. Reddit was a given for this kind of madness — where people with no fucking clue what they were looking for stumbled upon some sick corner where equally twisted souls congregated.

Ana typed furiously, posting in the darkest subreddits she could find. “Hey, need help. My skin is… well, trying to remove itself. Anyone got tips on how to survive this?”

She sat back, waiting. The replies rolled in within the hour, and at first, she thought she’d hit the jackpot. Until she started reading them.

These were not people with skin problems. No. These were… enthusiasts. Sick fucks who had flaying fetishes. Her stomach churned as she scrolled through their replies, eyes wide with horror.

You ever try peeling it off real slow? Feels like ecstasy. Post pics. I can help you. DM for details.

Just lean into it, bro. Skin’s a prison anyway.

Peel it slowly, like a banana. Make it sensual for us.

I’ll trade you my teeth for your skin. I got some good molars left, real clean.

You’re evolving. Embrace it.

The messages made her skin itch even worse.

What the fuck is wrong with people? Ana thought, slamming her laptop shut. Her heart raced as though she’d just stumbled into a serial killer’s basement. These were the same people who probably collected teeth or had human skin lampshades in their houses. People who, given the chance, would happily help her shed — probably with some sick grin plastered across their faces, waiting to watch her unravel like some gruesome present.

She stood, pacing the room, feeling like her skin was crawling more than usual. Every step made her feel closer to slipping out of herself entirely. Maybe I should make my own forum, she thought. There had to be others like her, the non-fetish kind. People who were rotting from the inside out, trapped inside their bodies like ticking time bombs. They were probably hiding, too scared to speak up, locked away in their own apartments, their bones the only things holding them together.

They were probably pale, gaunt figures hunched over keyboards, their skin hanging from them in sheets like rotting meat, leaving trails of dermis wherever they went. Maybe they’d all meet one day, when their skin had completely given up, and it was just skeletons shuffling toward each other, like a sad reunion of the forgotten. Bones bleached by the sun, pecked clean by vultures. Ana could picture her ribs exposed, clattering like wind chimes, her spine curving forward as she tried to keep the last remnants of herself from falling apart entirely.

Maybe, she thought, staring at the mirror, her reflection starting to warp and melt, I’m already one of them.

Bones were flaring. Like, literally. She could feel them scraping against her skin, threatening to rip out any second. It wasn’t subtle, like a headache you could ignore or the quiet realisation that you’ve made every wrong decision for the past decade.

No, this was more of an “I’m about to burst out of my own skin and leave it on the floor like a chameleon, but less cool and more horrifying” kind of feeling.

October had Ana locked in her apartment like some kind of cursed princess. Except it wasn’t as if there was any prince cooking, no fairytale ending, just the impending doom of unpaid rent and a landlord who probably fantasised about kicking her out. She hadn’t paid rent in weeks, and honestly, she was starting to feel like one of those cautionary tales parents tell their kids: This is what happens when you get an arts degree and live off your parent’s money until you spontaneously combust from existential dread.

Speaking of parents, hers were still off in the Bahamas, drinking overpriced cocktails and pretending their daughter wasn’t slowly crumbling, both metaphorically and literally. They’d probably be more upset about the mess she was making of the family name than the fact that she was coming apart at her hems. Her dad would give her a look that said, I told you so, and her mom would hand her another fucking business card for some overpriced “skin treatment.” She figured she could crash at her parents’ place once the eviction notice came, camp out in their cold mansion, and pretend she had a future. Maybe she could write. Maybe she’d start a career, finally. Ha! She laughed, the sound catching in her throat like bile. The idea of her picking up herself now, starting anything, was as laughable as it was tragic.

Ana lay back on the couch, which was starting to smell vaguely of sadness and old pizza. She imagined her landlord discovering her body once she’d fully disintegrated into the cushions — just a pile of bones and disappointment. Would he even care, or would he just be pissed about the rent?

“Great, now I’m thinking about my own death. Perfect,” she muttered to herself. The whole situation felt like one of those shitty sitcom episodes where the main character hits rock bottom, but instead of learning a valuable lesson, they just spiral further.

Maybe I should try praying again? She thought. To whom? God? Pfft. That guy still hasn’t answered her prayers since — well, ever, really.

Ana pressed her hands to her ribs, feeling the strange, unsettling movement beneath them, like termites writhing beneath the surface. Maybe this is a lifelong punishment, for daring to want more than this flesh prison. Her fingers traced the ridges of her collarbone, which felt sharper than it should poking against her skin like it wanted to slice its way out.

Chapter Five

Ana Leighs

“Is a person capable of change?” Ana asked that evening, sitting before a new therapist.

This one she had found on her own terms, not her mothers, mostly because she was tired of listening to people tell her that no, she was not, in fact, a walking disaster.

It wasn’t long before she got sick of staying in her apartment either, even sicker of sweeping up her own skin from the floor every morning. It was all very grotesque, and not in the cool way.

The therapist looked at her with that predictable, professional interest. “What do you mean by change?”

“I don’t know,” Ana said, already regretting coming. “Like, if a person is inherently bad, can they become good again? Or are they like gone-off fruit? You know, once it’s mouldy, it’s unsalvageable.”

The therapist gave her that pensive look therapist’s do when they’re stalling to think of something wise, something that justifies the price of the session. Ana didn’t expect an answer; she enjoyed tossing out these existential landmines. Philosophical questions were a game to her at this point. She could probably start charging them to play along.

“I suppose it depends on the person. Why do you ask?” the therapist replied. Oh, great, Ana thought, another dodge.

“Well, I feel like I’m that person. Like I’ve gone off. Maybe there was a point where I could’ve been good, but now I’m… spoiled. Like, I keep begging to be transformed into something beautiful.” She paused, feeling the urge to scratch her skin but holding back. “Something worth keeping.”

“Even beautiful things hold pain,” the therapist said, nodding solemnly.

Ana blinked. Oh, for fuck’s sake. There it was — another meaningless philosophical nugget, straight out of the “deep thoughts” section of Pinterest. It was all very poetic and vague, but what did that even mean? Like, sure, roses have thorns, but no one ever wrote an angsty blog post about that, did they?

She sighed. This was becoming a pattern, her trying to figure out whether she was a good person while her therapist lobbed back those dollar-store zen koans.

“Ana, I don’t think you’re a bad person. I think you’ve convinced yourself this rut makes you bad, but believe me, there are far worse people out there.”

“Yeah, like serial killers, rapists, and MLM recruiters. Really uplifting, thanks.” Ana deadpanned.

“You’re not selfish for wanting more. Everyone wants more, Ana. That’s human. What’s not human is convincing yourself that wanting more somehow makes you unworthy of it.”

“But I always want more,” Ana groaned, feeling a familiar itch crawling up her neck. “I’m literally never satisfied. Isn’t that selfish? Isn’t it selfish that I can’t just accept my life as it is?” She stopped, realising she didn’t actually want the answer, but like everything else in her life, she’d already committed to the downward spiral.

“Wanting more doesn’t make you bad,” the therapist said, clearly oblivious to the horror playing out in Ana’s mind. “It just means you’re not ready to settle.”

Ana scratched at her arm absentmindedly, wondering if that was it. Maybe she was just not meant to settle. Maybe her body knew it, and that’s why it’s actively trying to jump ship. Her skin, flaking off in chucks and ripples, was probably just it trying to get a head start on leaving. She could see her skin bailing on her and filing for a divorce. Irreconcilable differences, it would say.

“Yeah okay, but at what point does this constant need for more just become pathetic? Like, am I going to end up as one of those people who can’t stop chasing something they’ll never get, and then I die alone, surrounded by expired takeout containers and back issues of Cosmo? We’ve all seen that movie, and I know how it ends.”

The therapist smiled, one of those soft, pitying smiles that made Ana want to scream. “You’re not alone in this, Ana. Plenty of people feel lost at times.”

“When will people understand that it is not a comforting thing to be told?” Ana asked, aloud, by accident.

“What isn’t comforting?” the therapist responded, raising an eyebrow.

“Saying that I’m not alone, that people always feel like this. That doesn’t make me feel better; it just makes me feel like part of a failing system. I don’t want to be like those people. I don’t want to find comfort in the fact that I’m one of many flailing bodies in the same swamp. I want to be in the other group — the one that’s all figured out.”

The therapist gave her a long, patient look — the type that screamed, I went to school for this — before finally speaking. “I understand that. But people do come out of this sense of lostness. That should be comforting.”

Ana rolled her eyes. “I’m not most people, okay? Do you see people walking down the streets of New York with their skin dangling off their bones, flapping in the wind like some fucked-up fashion statement? No. That’s not normal. I’m not just lost — I’m disintegrating, and that’s a big fucking difference.”

The words hung in the air, thick with the kind of energy that makes therapists furiously jot down notes for their inevitable vacation to get away from patients like Ana. But Ana hadn’t meant to lose her temper, and she could practically feel her rational brain slapping her on the wrist. The last thing she needed was to have a psychiatrist slap a label on her like “schizophrenia” or something when, really, her skin just needed to get its shit together.

“I assume that’s a metaphor for how you’re feeling?” the therapist said, in a tone that suggested she was trying very hard not to sound patronising but was absolutely failing.

Ana shot her a glare. “Yes, it was a fucking metaphor.”

“Oh. I’m impressed. You should definitely consider that writing career we were talking about.”

Ana was unsure if the therapist had just complimented her or was expertly deflecting. Either way, she suddenly felt like they were both ignoring the bigger picture — namely, that she was falling apart, and this wasn’t just some cute crisis where she buys a journal and takes up meditation.

What was next? Exfoliate more! Or worse: Have you tried yoga?

“Great. I’ll write the next Great American Novel while I slowly moult into a human raisin,” Ana muttered under her breath. The therapist either didn’t hear her or was already mentally on her third martini.

“Writing can be very therapeutic.”

“Yeah, if by ‘therapeutic’ you mean I get to document the slow unravelling of my own body. I guess I can be the Camus of skin problems.”

“Camus?” The therapist perked up, clearly pleased to latch onto anything remotely intellectual. “That’s very interesting. The absurdism, the struggle with hope. How does that relate to how you feel?”

Ana groaned internally. “You know, like in The Stranger, where he’s all detached, going through life in this haze? That’s me. Except instead of being, like, indifferent to existence, existence is indifferent to me.”

The therapist nodded, probably thinking thai was some kind of break through. “That’s another powerful metaphor.”

“Yeah, great,” Ana snapped. “Maybe I’ll pen some existential masterpiece while I’m at it. Call it The Shedder.”

“You’re being a bit hard on yourself. You’re clearly intelligent, introspective. These are all great starts, Ana.”

Ana half-considered coming in next week with a limb missing. Maybe then she’d get it: this wasn’t some metaphorical Absurdist struggle — it was a literal horror show.

So, therapy wasn’t exactly helping. Not even close. Ana always sort of suspected therapy was incapable of working for certain people, and naturally, she was one of them. It wasn’t like she was resisting; it was more that the whole process felt like trying to stop a sinking ship by yelling at the water. If anything, it gave her something to do while she holed up in her parent’s house — pretending to figure out her life.

She tried writing, because why not lean into the cliche of the tortured, unemployed soul with a degree in something utterly useless? But nothing stuck. Every idea she had was drenched in sadness, like she was trying way too hard to channel Plath with a bit of Wilde, but instead, she was just churning out stuff that was unreadable even by her standards. Like seriously terrible. The kind of drivel that made you want to set your laptop on fire just to purge it from the world. She thought about smashing it — wouldn’t be the first thing she’s broken recently — but that seemed melodramatic, even for her.

It was intriguing, though, this part of her life. Not in a good way, but in that morbid, can’t-look-away-from-the-car-crash kind of way.

It was a time of cracks, of crawling, and of aching. She didn’t feel like herself anymore, not since The Great Sloughing started. Her soul felt like it was splitting too, separating into fragments, each more useless than the last.

Something inside of her was furious. It was the kind of anger that simmered beneath the surface, gnawing at her like a wild animal that had gotten trapped inside her ribcage and was now thrashing around, pissed off and desperate to get out. Maybe a bear. Yeah, a rabid bear, clawing at her insides, making her feel like she was going to explode if she didn’t do something. But what could she do? Eat raw salmon and hide in the woods? No, that was ridiculous. She couldn’t even cook salmon, much less hunt it.

Her therapist asked her if this anger was directed at someone specific, like maybe her parents, or her old boss, or life in general. Ana had laughed. “Life in general?” That was like asking if the Titanic had an issue with one iceberg. No, it was everything. The world, her body, the ridiculous notion that any of this had a point. She wasn’t just mad at the iceberg — she was pissed at the whole fucking ocean.

But, of course, she didn’t say that. She just smiled and nodded, the polite lie of someone who knew how the game worked. “Yeah, sure. Let’s blame my parents. Maybe they are responsible for this bear in my chest.”

The therapist had given her one of those looks, the kind that said, “I’m going to ask you to unpack that in a way that doesn’t make me question my career choices.” Ana didn’t have the heart to tell her there wasn’t a suitcase big enough for all this shit.

Ana’s mother and father were camped out in the foyer, strategically positioned like two gatekeepers of a suburban hellmouth, the smaller sitting room perfectly framed to catch her in their parental crosshairs the moment she walked through the front door. The archway leading into the room gaped like some monstrous maw, waiting to swallow her whole. Usually, it was easy to avoid them in this labyrinth of a house, a place that somehow felt both too big and suffocatingly small. But not today.

Ana stumbled in, soaked to the bone, her skin soggy and sodden. She shut the door with a sigh, leaning against it as though it was the only thing holding her upright, her eyes squeezing shut. The water dripped from her clothes, pooling around her feet like she was melting. Maybe she was.

“Ana,” something whispered. A shiver slid down her spine. Was it an evil spirit? The one that had been following her from the mirror for months, with those wide, hungry lips and eyes that never blinked? She could feel it, lurking in the shadows of her mind, ready to devour her whole. Ana’s heart raced, her breath shallow. She swore if she looked in the mirror now, her face would be gone, replaced by that grinning, twisted thing.

“Ana!” The whisper came again, louder this time.

“Ana!” her mother barked, jerking Ana out of her terror-induced trance. She whipped around to see her mother staring at her, eyebrows arched with a mix of curiosity and concern — although concern wasn’t exactly her forte.

“What is wrong with you?” her mother asked, voice laced with irritation as if Ana had come in covered in something far worse than rain — like shame or failure, or shit, perhaps.

“Sorry, the rain just… got to me,” Ana muttered, trying to shake off the feeling that something was following her, creeping just out of sight. She was still cold and damp, her skin pulling tight like it might tear if she moved too fast.

Her father sighed heavily from his chair, like Ana’s existence was just too much for him to bear. Her mother, meanwhile, seemed on the verge of laughter. Of course she was.

“Seriously, what has happened to you?” her mother asked, tone sharp with mockery. “You are scared of rain now as well?”

Before Ana could answer, her mother’s hand was on her, prodding and pinching like she was a piece of fruit at the grocery store, one that had gone past its prime. Ana could feel her mother’s fingers digging into her skin, cold and probing. Any second now, the wet flesh would slip right off her bones, and wouldn’t that be a sight? Maybe then her mother would finally shut up. Or maybe she’d scream. Ana kind of hoped for the latter.

“My darling, you are disturbingly skinny. Tiny! Have you been eating anything we’ve been sending to your room?” her mother asked, her fingers trailing across Ana’s cheek like she was inspecting a particularly withered corpse.

Ana blinked. Had she been eating? She thought so. But with all the peeling, the shedding, the constant moulting of her skin, it was hard to keep track. Her body seemed to be devouring itself, piece by piece, and every time her skin peeled away, so did a little more of her fat, her muscle, her self.

“I have been eating,” Ana said, though she didn’t believe it anymore.

Her mother, as usual, wasn’t buying it either. She leaned back, eyes narrowing in that way she did when she was about to drop some cerebral bullshit on Ana.

“You know, you’re exactly like that poem by Carol Ann Duffy,” her mother began, already puffing up her own smugness.

Ana groaned inwardly. Here we fucking go. Her mother loved to pretend she was cultured, an intellectual giant among mere mortals.

“The skinny one, Ana,” her mother continued, waving a hand dramatically. “The one about the woman wasting away… what was it called again? ‘Death of a Diet?”

“Just The Diet, Mom, it’s called The Diet,” Ana corrected, pulling off her soggy jumper and tossing it onto the floor with a saturated smack.

“Ah, yes. That’s it. You're just like that one,” her mother chirped, as though comparing her daughter to a woman who starved herself into oblivion was a compliment.

“Great, thanks,” Ana deadpanned, suppressing the urge to laugh or scream — she wasn’t sure which.

“Oh no, honey. I didn't mean it as an insult,” her mother added with the sincerity of a snake oil salesman. “Think of it as a warning.”

“A warning for what?” she asked, rubbing her arms as her skin began to itch. Again. It always itched after it got wet. She expected it to start peeling now.

“Well, you don’t want to turn out like the poem, do you? How did it end again?” Her mother’s face scrunched into faux concentration, already pulling out her phone. Here we go, Ana thought, mentally preparing for another performance of Google Scholar Theatre.

“Oh my God, Mom, if you don’t even know the name of the poem, or what happens in it, maybe just… I don’t know, don’t reference it?” Ana said.

But of course, her mother wasn’t listening. She was too busy scrolling through her phone, likely searching The Diet on some second-rate literary analysis site. Probably Cliff Notes or Genius, like a high schooler cramming for an exam on poetry she didn’t care about.

“Here it is! Yes, look,” her mother said, practically shoving the screen in Ana’s face. “Look at this part. The skinny one is inside the fat woman now. Gosh, how horrific. That's bingeing, Ana. That means you’re—”

“I know what it means, Mom,” Ana interrupted, biting back laughter that teetered on the edge of hysteria. It was all so fucking ridiculous — her mother, her life, this goddamn house.

Her mother continued, oblivious to the fact that Ana had tuned her out. “You don’t want to end up like that poor woman in the poem, restricting, then devouring everything in sight. It’s a metaphor, you know, for letting yourself go.”

Ana almost wanted to clap. It was like watching someone give a TED Talk on something they didn’t even remotely understand. The level of unearned confidence was staggering.

Now Ana didn’t feel like eating. She never did after one of her mother’s impromptu lectures on eating disorders — or anything that involved the shapes of her body, for that matter. It was like some dark magic, the way her mother could turn something as simple as food into a curse.

Maybe she wouldn’t eat. Maybe she’d just rot in bed tonight, letting her skin peel away in strips like old paint. She could lie there, psychoanalysing every single conversation she’d had today, picking it apart, finding all the wrong pieces of herself. And then, maybe she’d get rid of those pieces.

By murder, perhaps. Hers or someone else’s — she couldn’t quite decide.

Ana attempted to walk away as her mother continued her tirade about body issues, but the hallway felt like it was stretching, growing longer, impossible to escape.

“Ana, I’m not finished with you. There’s something we need to tell you,” her mother said, her voice curling like smoke into the crevices of Ana’s brain. Ana glanced over at her father again — still useless, barely awake in his chair, as if he’d been glued there for years.

We, Ana could have laughed. Her father barely cared enough to have something to say, let alone join in on the grand announcement.

“What is it?” Ana asked, bracing herself for the final blow — the one where they disown her, change the locks, and politely request they change her last name.

“We managed to get you into a journalism internship,” her mother said, walking over to her father and nudging him. The poor man jolted as if from a near-coma, pretending to be involved for once.

“Yes, yes, it’s really interesting, Ana. Listen to your mother,” he parroted, still barely looking up from his phone. He was likely playing solitaire or texting the neighbour about golf. Classic.

“You what?” Ana said, blinking as if her eyes were broken, lids flapping like dying moths.

“I had some contacts, so I used them. For you, my favourite child.” Only child, Ana thought. Was that meant to be endearing or factual?

“You’ll stay with a few other girls who are doing it too. In Maine,” her mother continued, as if she’d just suggested a spa weekend and not some kind of group hostage situation.

“What?” Ana said again. The word became a loop in her mind. Whatwhatwhatwhatwhat. Was this a joke?

“This is big, Ana. Or at least, it’s a beginning,” her mother said, her face beaming like she’d just handed her the key to life. Meanwhile, Ana felt her skin itching to peel more violently, as though it was protesting this latest development.

“It sounds like you're sending me to a mental institution. Shipping me off with a bunch of girls I don’t know, who I have to live with? What kind of Stephen King nightmare is this?” Ana asked, her voice rising in panic. This wasn’t an opportunity. This was exile with a smile.

“Well, it’s not,” her mother replied. “If mental institutions were still available, you’d have been sent to one a long time ago.” Her parents both chuckled, as if it was the funniest thing in the world, like they weren’t discussing their own child’s possible mental breakdown.

“Do I have a choice?”

“A choice? What do you mean a choice? This is a career opportunity, not a fucking asylum. You’re doing it because you cannot stay here any longer without paying rent,” her mother snapped, her tone so sharp Ana swore she felt it slice through her peeling skin.

“Sounds a lot like you’re shipping me off to some kind of boarding school.”

“We’re not, Ana,” her mother said, all patience gone. “You do nothing to help yourself. And now you’re being selfish about this? We are trying to help you. If you don’t take this opportunity, fine. But we won’t help you anymore. You’ll leave this house, find another shitty job, and make a living that way. Maybe your skin will fall off while you’re working minimum wage. Who knows?”

Her father finally chimed in, delivering the final blow like it was a line rehearsed for a bad soap opera. “Yeah, if you don’t take this, you’re on your own. We’re done. We’ve given you all the chances we can.”

Ana stared at them, the room felt like it was warping, breathing in and out. Her own skin seemed to sag off her bones like melted wax. So this was it. A forced career opportunity or life on the streets. Either way, she’d still end up rotting.

One could only conclude, after a certain point, that the world simply wasn’t designed for girls like her. Not for the weird ones, the ones who made people feel uncomfortable just by existing. Depraved women, too complicated, too nuanced for society’s neat little boxes. Ana was too much, even for her own family, which was barely a family at all. It was more of a collective of people who happened to share a last name and a general disdain for one another.

As she lay in bed that night, she found herself fantasising about all the lives she could have lived, all the women she could’ve been. But that felt suspiciously like grieving. Grieving for a life she’d never get back, for opportunities squandered because — surprise! — she’d been her the whole time. Was 25 too late to turn it around? Too late to take back all the things she’d missed out on because she was, well, this?

Still, she thought, her parents were lucky she even went outside at all. After growing to hate her face, her body, her skin, her bones, her whole fleshy prison, the fact that she continued to move through the world was an act of sainthood.

“Fuck you, flesh,” she whispered under her breath as a fresh wave of pain shot through her from rolling over in bed too fast. Her skin was an enemy combatant at this point, and her body was a battlefield.

She couldn’t even write anymore, and now they wanted her to work in journalism? Journalism? How does one become a journalist when they can barely form coherent words that aren’t dripping with self-loathing? Every sentence she scribbled down felt like she was single-handedly peeling back layers of her own dermis, exposing nerves and tendons. And yet, she couldn’t stop imagining it — her bones writhing, her body bending in ways no human body should. What if her skin just slipped off, like silk ribbons, and she could fold herself into impossible angles? Would she snap? Would it ache as much as her brain did on the regular?

She was a grown woman, unchanged since childhood, still bearing the marks of all those old wounds. Except now the punishments had escalated. They weren’t just emotional scars anymore; they were something else, something otherworldly. Her own personal hellscape of bodily malfunctions. Punishments no one else seemed to endure.

Everyone else had it easy. They didn’t have to wake up every morning, peel themselves off the mattress like a strip of overcooked back, and wonder if their body would finally just give up today. No, that was all hers. Her very special, very distorted, and oddly specific curse.

Ana was leaving Manhattan, abandoning the only life she’d ever known, shipped off like a defective product. (Because, let’s be real, this had major "Bell Jar" vibes, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that this was some twisted version of an asylum treatment.)

Everything had to come to an end, she supposed. Even being a spoiled rich cunt from the Upper East Side.

For the most part, her skin stayed suspiciously intact during her final days at home. It was almost considerate, giving her a reprieve, a chance to think, to feel — to be real. Her flesh had never shown such grace before. Her bones, usually chattering and squirming beneath the surface, had gone mercifully quiet. But it all felt like the calm before the storm, like her body was playing a sick joke on her.

I know what you’re planning, she muttered to her arms, acting all nice now, but by the time I hit Maine, this charade’s up, isn’t it?

She wondered if, in some alternate universe, her skin loved her. Maybe in that version of life, her body was on her side. But here? Here it seemed to have no time for her, like it had places to be, and she was just dead weight.

At dinner, her parents insisted she join them, as if this was some kind of last supper. They sat there in their sleek, sterile dining room, her mother sipping soup delicately, her father pretending to care. Ana stared at them, feeling a strange kind of sorrow. It wasn’t sadness exactly, more like a slow, aching awareness of how little they actually knew her.

“I wish you both could understand me,” she said, the words slipping out with a sigh, more melancholic than accusatory.

Her mother looked up from her soup, then over to her father, who didn’t even bother to glance up from his phone. She met Ana’s eyes, her expression unreadable. “We don’t know anything about you, Ana, because you never let us in. You didn’t want us to know you after you left for college. And that’s that. Now, finish your soup.”

And that was the end of it. No dramatic revelations, no heartfelt goodbyes. Just finish your soup.

Ana hadn’t spoken to them since, a full week spent camped out in her room in the separate wing of the house. Not out of spite, but out of pure irritation that, infuriatingly, her mother was right. She never let anyone in — not her parents, not any of her friends. And yet she still had the audacity to complain when people didn’t understand her. She shut everyone out and then blamed them for not seeing her.

Maybe she was a horrible person. Maybe she was the problem in every single relationship she’d ever had, and this was why she was being sent away.

Part Two

⧫

Spiralling

Chapter Six

Ana Leighs

Ana arrived in Maine mid-june, suffocated by the sticky warmth and wholly unprepared for it, draped in her all-black attire as if mourning her own future.

The town felt like a waiting room for purgatory, complete with overpriced coffee and forced smiles from locals who probably performed lobotomies as weekend hobbies. She half-expected to see “Welcome to Your Inevitable Institutionalisation” on a road sign. It had that feel. Like it was all too much and too empty at the same time. But there were no white coats or padded cells — she thought it wouldn't have been surprising if they offered her one as a complimentary bonus with her internship.

Her skin still clung to her bones like it had signed a lease and was legally required to stay, but it did so mockingly. Sometimes Ana imagined her flesh had a personality of its own — always smug, with that infuriatingly knowing smirk like it was privy to secrets she wasn’t. The biggest secret being when it planned to fail her. It knew; she didn’t. The thought made her roll her eyes.

Her phone buzzed.

Mom: Any news? You landed?

Ana’s finger’s twitch with the urge to type Fuck off, mother dearest, and enjoy the silence I gift you from across state lines. But that would invite questions, which would inevitably spiral into conversations, and Ana wasn’t ready for that particular abyss. She shut off her phone, feeling a flicker of satisfaction. No news for Mom. No news for anyone, really. She had nothing to report except her flesh’s continued sneering attachment to her body. But no one gave a fuck about that.

The internship was with some mediocre literary house that probably hadn’t posted anything relevant since the 2000s. Illume, it was called. Pretentious name for a business with all the depth of a kiddie pool. Ana didn’t know what they did, exactly — besides some vague, secondhand murmurs about blogs and celebrity interviews — but she wasn’t about to ask. That would require enthusiasm, and enthusiasm was for the naive and unbroken. She was just hoping to survive the summer without dissolving into her component parts of sobbing into a half-eaten chocolate bar. Maybe, maybe, this would be the thing that gave her life meaning. Maybe that’s why her skin hadn't jumped ship yet — it sensed she was on the cusp of something… not important, but slightly less soul-crushing.

Still, Ana’s mind was a carousel of too many thoughts at this point — each one another nauseating loop she couldn’t step off. She craved… something. More. Something more than this grey static existence, even though the desire felt selfish, like she was asking too much from a universe that had already made it clear it owed her absolutely nothing. What she needed — beyond the banality of food, water, shelter — was guidance. Someone with a spine, who had lived through something real, not just parents. Parents were outdated software: they’d had their time, but they weren’t equipped for the new world she was navigating.

She wondered if her absence hurt them. Did it gnaw at them late at night, a dull throb of grief they couldn’t quite shake? She hoped so. She hoped it would kill them, slowly and agonisingly, like a virus weakening them bit by bit until all that was left were husks of the people they used to be. That would be justice.

Ana then discovered, with mild irritation and a pinch of relief, that the girls of the internship had paid accommodation.

Ah, so that explained why she was being crammed in with them like some human sardine. Her mother had spun it as if they were being herded together against their will, not that it was free housing.

Ana would've bunked with the devil himself for free rent, so a bunch of preppy future influencers was hardly a deterrent.

She arrived at the hotel, her luggage already whisked away by some eager bellhop who probably had his soul surgically removed upon employment.

The heat was oppressive, searing, and Ana could practically feel her sweat crystallising into a second skin. The dark, woolly sweater she’d so thoughtfully chosen was slowly turning into a wearable sauna. Though she couldn’t take it off. Beneath it? Absolutely nothing. Not even a bra. Ana had recently decided she was now a free the nipple kind of girl. Not in that faux-empowering, overly unbearable feminist way, she’d assure you, but simply because bras felt like tiny cages for her tits, and she refused to participate in her own torture any longer.

As she stepped into the waiting area, Ana attempted to channel an air of "I totally belong here" — cool, casual, collected. The girls around her, who she assumed were her fellow interns, were a walking Pinterest board of pre-packaged perfection. Their outfits screamed “I bought this, so please validate my existence” — polished to the point of parody. Ana found herself wondering if there was a discount code for looking this contrived. They were all Gossip Girl clones, birthed from some hive mind of overpriced privilege and daddy issues, and Ana’s upper lip twitched involuntarily, a reflex against the bile of second-hand embarrassment.

She told herself she wasn’t judging — no, not judging. She was observing. She wasn’t the kind of person to judge people. But God, how she wanted to. Everything about their existence felt like a finger in her eye, a constant reminder that she was an alien among these creatures. The more Ana tried to settle into the moment, to exist, the less human she felt. It was like watching a foreign species interact, these women with their endless inside jokes and effortless, whispered laughter. They were connected to one another in ways she couldn’t begin to comprehend, an invisible thread tying them together while she was a loose, frayed end floating around aimlessly.

This was the kind of scenario that made Ana feel like too much and not enough all at once. Too much of the wrong things — too loud in her silence, too out of place in her attempts to blend in. And yet, in the same breath, she was not enough, like some kind of half-formed thought that never materialised into a person. The mental warfare raged on: Should she fake it? Fit in? Try to morph into some kind of socially acceptable version of herself? But the more she thought about it, the more unappealing the whole idea felt. It was like trying to shove an octopus into a cocktail dress.

Ana had tried convincing herself that this was just what womanhood was: a slog through a miserable, isolating existence, punctuated by moments of forced camaraderie and fake smiles. Maybe all women felt like this, like they were alien and inadequate in a world of polished, poised pretenders. But then she saw the way the other girls interacted — how they moved through life like they were part of something, something bigger than themselves — and she knew it was a lie. They were connected. She wasn’t.

Ana wasn’t part of anything. And she wondered, briefly, if it would be easier to just stop pretending she wanted to be.

“No fucking way,” came the unmistakable screech of an overexaggerated New York accent, vowels chewed up and spat out like gum on a subway floor. Ana felt a cold shiver of dread crawl up her spine. She was in a horror movie, and the monster was about to make its grand, flesh-ripping entrance. “Ana fucking Leighs!”

Ana turned around, and there she was — Lila fucking Nielson. Of course. Fuck, fuck’s sake, fucking hell, Ana thought. She could bet good money her mother knew this was coming, probably orchestrated the whole thing like some twisted social experiment. After all, her parents had always shoved Lila down her throat, desperate for Ana to form some kind of forced connection with the rich New Yorker whose family had their claws in Denmark or wherever. Lila was like the human embodiment of every insufferable trust-fund baby stereotype, wrapped in privilege and dipped in obnoxiousness.

“Oh wow, hey,” Ana finally forced out, realising that letting the awkward silence drag on wouldn’t make Lila disappear into thin air — though she desperately wished it could.

“Girl, tell me why it’s been so long! I literally haven’t seen you since graduation. What the fuck?!” Lila chirped, smacking Ana on the side like they were frat bros instead of two girls who’d barely tolerated each other through college.

Ana fought the urge to groan. “I’ve been busy.”

“Clearly,” Lila replied, but her smile was as fake as the filler in her lips.

Dear God, just let me die, Ana thought. There were worse ways to go than being struck down in the lobby of a bougie hotel. Maybe she could just collapse from sheer exhaustion and disappear into the carpet. No such luck. Lila was still standing there, vibrating with insufferable energy.

Lila fucking Nielson. The girl who had it all — a shiny Columbia degree, a year as a freelance editor (which, knowing Lila, probably just involved slapping her name on someone else’s work), and, of course, her bestselling romance novel, a feat that seemed both baffling and nauseating to Ana. Because of course, Lila had written a bestseller, and of course, it was as shallow and irritating as she was.

And now, apparently, she was here. Why? No clue. Ana didn’t care enough to ask, but Lila didn’t exactly need prompting.

“You’re probably wondering why I’m here,” Lila said, like she’d been waiting all her life to drop that bomb. She just couldn't resist.

“I suppose a little,” Ana muttered, barely bothering to fake interest.

“Well, obviously, I wrote that novel, and it did, like, really fucking well, but, you know, I just felt this calling in journalism. Like, I need to write about the political state of our country and shit, you know?” Lila’s voice rose as though she was delivering some grand speech at a gala for the ultra-privileged. Ana wanted to roll her eyes so far back into her skull they’d get stuck. She tried to respond, but Lila, in typical form, kept going, uninterrupted.

“So Mom found this internship for me through some friends — it's supposed to be really good, super exclusive. I assume your parents did the same if you’re here,” Lila added, her words dripping with that thinly veiled, I’m-better-than-you venom.

Ana paused, trying to decide whether that was an insult or just Lila’s natural state of being. Probably both. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t about to let it get under her skin.

“Uh, yeah, they did,” she said with a laugh, even though there was nothing funny about it. Then she added, unable to resist, “Is this some kind of rich-kid cult or something?”

Lila blinked, clearly not expecting a retort with any bite. “What? Oh my God, no it’s not,” she said, laughing like the idea was utterly absurd.

“I was joking,” Ana said, forcing a laugh that barely made it past her lips. She had to make sure Lila didn’t spread tales about how weird she was. Not that she actually was weird, but in the world of these perfectly manicured, cookie-cutter girls, she might as well have been a circus freak.

“Oh, yeah, I know,” Lila said with a grin that suggested she definitely didn’t know.

“Right… yeah,” Ana muttered.

“Soooooo,” Lila drawled, her voice stretching out like gum stuck to the bottom of a shoe. “What have you been doing? Why’re you here?”

Ana felt a wave of panic. What had she been doing? Not nearly enough, that’s for sure. She scrambled to put together a story that didn’t sound like the sad mess it actually was.

“Uh, well, I moved back home first, you know, to get a leg up. Then I started working in a bar… just while I, uh, worked some stuff out.”

Lila blinked, her face contorting slightly as if she was trying to decode Ana’s ramblings. Ana continued, rambling through the discomfort.

“The bookstore was kind of grandiose though, so like, I didn’t mind working there for a bit, you know?” Her words came out in a jumbled rush, trying to sound like she had her shit together, when in reality, her life was a string of underwhelming decisions tied together with dread. “And yeah, now I’m here.”

Lila stared at her, dumbfounded. It was the same look people give when they hear someone say they enjoy eating plain white bread for dinner. The why haven’t you done anything with your degree stare? Why haven’t you tried to get a decent job?

“Right… well, at least you’re here now,” Lila said, her voice dripping with condescension. The words might as well have been, At least you finally dragged your sorry ass out of the gutter.

“Uh-huh,” Ana gritted her teeth, resisting the overwhelming urge to tell Lila to fuck off. The words teetered on the edge of her tongue. She wanted to scream, Just because your Mommy and Daddy have connections with publishers doesn’t mean you’re a better writer than me. In fact, Ana knew she was a better writer than Lila had ever been in college. But that didn’t matter in a world where nepotism was the new currency.

“Anddddd,” Lila continued, once again dragging out her words like some sort of vocal torture device, “at least we get to be together again! Oh my God, it’s like we’re eighteen all over again. Oh my God!”

There it was. The full-force, soul-crushing insufferability of Lila fucking Nielson. The girl had a talent for reducing every moment to the emotional equivalent of a high school reunion in hell.

“It’ll be so great,” Ana said, her voice laced with forced enthusiasm, but inside she was screaming. She actually wanted to go home now. As much as she despised her parents, she was starting to think they were better company than Lila. And that was saying something.

Maybe her skin had plotted this. Maybe the reason her skin still clung so stubbornly to her bones was to torture her with real-life annoying humans. This was some “The Good Place” level psychological warfare. She glanced down at her arm and whispered under her breath, “You’re unoriginal, asshole.”

And then she realised she had actually said it out loud. Her eyes shot up to meet Lila’s, who was staring at her like Ana had just grown a second head.

They both awkwardly laughed, a hollow sound that echoed in the suffocating space between them. Ana’s laughter was more of a death rattle, and she swore in that moment, she would have preferred being flayed alive than having to endure one more second of this interaction.

I really, really want to fucking die, Ana thought.

Lila and Ana were sharing a room because, of course, Lila had fucking asked for them to be together. The same way you’d request a window seat on a plane, Lila had selected Ana, probably out of some twisted sense of entertainment. It was torture of the highest order, Ana thought — practically institutionalisation at this rate. Being shacked up with the bane of her existence was like signing up for a slow descent into madness.

In a way, Lila was everything Ana was supposed to be. They’d both done the same degree at Columbia — English Literature and Creative Writing — except there were two very distinct routes to take. One was Ana's path: the artsy burnout, floundering through a degree that had no value because apparently no one wanted to hear the opinions of a girl who looked like she hadn't slept in a year. Then there was Lila's path: the rich, well-connected nepo baby who wore her surname like an accessory and made it work, naturally, because when you’re dripping in privilege, everything comes easy.

As Lila unpacked her perfectly folded clothes from her Louis Vuitton luggage, Ana could feel her eyes twitch. She wondered if this was how Esther Greenwood felt before she lost it completely.

“Have you read The Bell Jar?” Ana asked.

A stupid question, really, because every pretentious New Yorker girlie with a liberal arts degree had read it. The book might as well have been stitched into their baby blankets.

Lila rolled her eyes. “Do you think I’ve lived under a rock? Yes, Ana, I’ve read Plath’s most well-known  novel,” she said, without even looking up.

Ana narrowed her eyes. Of course she’s read it. “Okay, now tell me this whole girls internship isn’t scarily uncanny to you?”

Lila sighed, folding a shirt so aggressively it almost looked violent. “What? Ugh, please tell me you don’t still try to talk in metaphors, Ana. I didn’t tell you at college, but because we’re grown, I will now — that shit was always so annoying.”

Ana resisted the sudden, sharp urge to launch herself across the room and slap her. “No, I just mean like, this is literally what happens in The Bell Jar. Esther is at that magazine thing, gets stuck in many weird-ass situations, slowly loses her mind, and then tries to kill herself.”

Lila paused and finally looked at her, expression unbothered in that infuriating way that only someone like her could pull off. “Are you implying you’re going to kill yourself? Because, like, I love you, but I really can’t deal with that kind of shit right now.”

Ana blinked. She couldn’t tell if she wanted to laugh or cry. Maybe both. “I’m just saying it’s a little on-the-nose, don’t you think? Us, locked up together, nowhere to go but spiralling into insanity? You’ll probably end up with some glamorous breakdown where you go to rehab for a month, get your ‘rest,’ and then you’re back on the scene like nothing happened. I’ll be the one strapped to the bed, pulling out my own hair while you get a Vogue spread about your ‘journey to recovery.’”

Lila laughed, not even bothering to deny it. “Well, it’s true, you’ve always been a little more dramatic than me, Ana. I don’t think either of us would look good bald, but sure, I can see you going full Girl, Interrupted. It’s your vibe.”

Ana could feel the skin on her arms crawl, itching like it was about to shed itself right there. It wouldn’t have been the first time. Her body had always betrayed her at the worst moments, but right now, it seemed to be mocking her. Again.

Don’t worry, it seemed to say, I’ll hold on — for now. But wait ‘til you’re trying to impress someone who’s actually important.

She rolled her eyes at her own thoughts. “I had to have done something really fucking bad. And now you’re my punishment,” Ana muttered under her breath.

“What?” Lila asked, arching an eyebrow as she delicately placed her designer perfume on the nightstand.

Ana sighed, louder this time. “Nothing. Just contemplating how people like you always seem to get everything handed to you while people like me have to fight just to exist.”

Lila scoffed. “Oh please, spare me the self-pity. You chose to be like this, Ana. All that ‘I’m too alternative for success’ nonsense. If you actually tried — like really tried — you could be successful. But you like being miserable. You thrive on it.”

"You’re implying I welcome this fucking hell?" Ana snapped, her voice cracking under the weight of her frustration.

Lila had always had a special talent for making her feel as if she were crawling in her own body, suffocating under layers of disgust, envy, and resentment.

"So what if I am?" Lila replied, her tone aggravatingly even. She sat back on her bed, completely unfazed. "Don’t start acting like I’m being mean, Ana. You’ve always been, like, notoriously dejected. With literally everyone."

Ana felt a vein pulse in her temple. "Dejected? What the fuck do you mean dejected?"

Lila didn’t even bother to look up from her phone. "Ana, you’re not really a nice person. Come on, we both know that."

Ana wanted to laugh. Not nice? No. She wasn't nice, but mean? It felt too simple, too reductive. She had just stopped trying to fit into that neat little box of "approachable," "likeable," "palatable." People were easier to deal with when they weren’t trying to get close, when they weren’t trying to get to know her. She didn’t have the energy to perform being a person. That was exhausting.

"You literally hated me, Ana." Lila tossed her hair back, dramatic and elegant, like some extra in a high-budget shampoo commercial. "I knew it. You made snide comments all the time, rolling your eyes, pretending like you were too good for everyone else. And I didn’t really care, honestly. Some people are just like that. But you could maybe try growing out of it now?"

Ana clenched her fists, feeling the familiar itch rising under her skin. Her flesh, always her enemy, seemed to tighten, ready to betray her at any moment. She could almost hear it whispering, She's right, you know. You’re rotting from the inside out, sweetheart.

"I’m not a mean person," Ana said, though her voice lacked conviction.

Lila laughed, a short, sharp sound that cut through the room like a scalpel. "What, so it was just me you hated? Be honest, Ana."

Ana’s fingers twitched involuntarily, the itch spreading like wildfire. "I mean, come on, Lila, you’re an insufferable rich girl."

Lila rolled her eyes, as if she’d heard this a thousand times before. "Oh my fucking God, this is your problem, Ana. You’re also an insufferable rich girl. Just because your family cut you off doesn’t mean you didn’t come from the same fucking privilege. You think just because you’ve been exiled from the East Side brunch circuit, you’re suddenly different from me?"

Ana blinked. Her mouth opened, but no words came out. It was like her throat was dry, too cracked to form any coherent response. The air in the room was thick, suffocating.

"Please," Lila continued, her voice dripping with condescension, "you’re just as bad. The only difference is, you’ve convinced yourself you’re a victim in all of this. Like your pain somehow makes you special. But it doesn’t, Ana. It just makes you bitter."

Ana’s stomach twisted, the knot of nausea rising in her throat. Her skin felt tighter now, pulling at the edges, like it wanted to split open and peel away. She could feel the panic creeping up her spine. There was no way she could let it happen here, not in front of Lila. Not when everything else was falling apart.

She shifted in her seat, trying to ignore the creeping feeling under her skin, the sensation of it moving. The familiar panic was growing, bubbling, like something was crawling beneath her flesh, threatening to break free.

"You know what?" Ana hissed, her voice trembling slightly. "Maybe I am bitter. Maybe I am angry and selfish and filled with fucking rage. But that doesn’t mean I’m like you."

Lila raised an eyebrow, amused. "Oh, really? How are you different, Ana? Please, enlighten me."

Ana stood up, her skin feeling tight and itchy, like it was a few sizes too small. "Because I don’t pretend! I don’t walk around with a smile plastered on my face, acting like I’m better than everyone while quietly cutting people down behind their backs."

Lila shrugged, unbothered. "There’s your problem. You think being miserable makes you more real somehow. It doesn’t. It just makes you exhausting."

Ana felt her nails dig into her palm, her breath quickening. She could feel her skin, her fucking flesh, betraying her. It was pulling, stretching, mocking her as it always did, a silent reminder that she was falling apart, both inside and out.

"Look, I don’t want to argue with you," Lila said, as if this were some great revelation, a peace offering wrapped in her usual sanctimonious packaging. "I chose to room with you because, no matter how obvious you made it that I was a nuisance at college, I liked you. I’m not saying that makes me a better person, but can we just try to be civil?"

Of course she liked Ana. Lila probably saw her as a charity case, a wild animal in need of taming. The kind of girl that could add a little grit to her perfect Upper East Side narrative.

Ana hated how Lila could say things like I liked you and make it sound like she was saying I’m better than you. The whole "I’m not saying I’m a better person" was the verbal equivalent of an eye roll. She was absolutely saying it — Ana just had to read between the lines of Lila’s excruciatingly sweet tone.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. I can be civil," Ana muttered through gritted teeth, feeling her skin twitch beneath her clothes, almost in protest. Civil? Civil was a word used by people who had never truly suffered, who had never felt their skin betray them.

Lila, predictably, jumped with glee, clapping her perfectly manicured hands. "Eeee! Excellent. We’re going to have so much fun together. I’ll make sure of it!"

The door slammed behind her, and her expensive perfume lingered in the air like a noxious cloud, choking out any remaining sanity Ana had left. She stood in the suffocating silence, her breath coming in short, uneven bursts, feeling as though Lila had syphoned off what little oxygen was left in the room. This whole thing felt like a trap, some twisted form of emotional waterboarding. Her skin itched again, tightening against her bones as if it were trying to wriggle away, trying to free itself from the cage of her body.

Ana clenched her fists, her nails digging into her palms until she could feel the sting of her flesh resisting. She really should’ve seen this coming — Lila, the internship, all of it. It had her mother’s fingerprints all over it. The whole "it’s a great opportunity, darling!" bullshit, laced with the subtle reminder that Ana was slowly falling apart, and they couldn’t keep pretending otherwise.

And now she was here, in Maine, a world away from anything that even remotely felt like home, sharing a room with Lila fucking Nielsen. She didn't ask for this. Or maybe she did. Who could tell anymore? She felt like she had been making decisions on autopilot for years, just letting the universe — or worse, her mother — steer her towards some kind of manufactured salvation. Her skin seemed to rumble in time with her breathing, her body vibrating with a deep-seated unease that spread like a disease, infecting her thoughts.

I should write, she thought, immediately disgusted by the idea. Her mother always said that, as though writing was some cure-all, a way to "channel" her negative energy. She used words like channel the same way people in spiritual retreats used the word detox, as though it were possible to sweat out the mess that was Ana’s existence with a pen and paper. But Ana knew better — she was too far gone for that. Writing wouldn’t fix her. She didn’t need a journal; she needed an exorcism.

Still, it was either writing or murder at this point. And even though the second option seemed more satisfying in the immediate sense, she knew Lila was exactly the kind of girl whose death would get a Netflix documentary made in her honour.

What really fucked with her was the irony of it all. Ana had spent years pushing people away, trying to convince herself and others that she was, at her core, a bad person. That if you peeled back the layers of flesh and skin, all you'd find was rot. And yet, now that someone — Lila of all people — had the audacity to point it out, to say it outright, Ana felt defensive. Pissed off, even. Like how dare someone actually notice? She wasn’t some tragic figure in need of saving; she was the villain in her own story, and now Lila had walked in and reduced it all to some half-assed morality lesson.

Her skin shifted again, like it was mocking her. It had been behaving lately, but Ana knew it was only a matter of time before it cracked, peeled, or split open in ways that weren’t normal, weren’t human. She rolled her shoulders, trying to shake off the sensation, but it lingered, like a reminder that her flesh was just as traitorous as the rest of her life.

When Ana first arrived at Columbia seven years ago, she decided it would be a fresh start. A new beginning. Clean slate. She would rewrite herself. But, obviously, she was wrong. She was still in Manhattan, still tethered to the suffocating familiarity of everyone knowing her and, more importantly, knowing her parents. Everyone knew she had a leg up in everything, even though she tried so hard to convince herself otherwise. People looked at her like she was a spoiled debutante just dipping her toes into the arts for funsies. That’s when she felt the last of the good in her slip away, like something melting off her skin. It happened gradually, like losing keys down a sewer grate. She decided early on that being distant, being cold and untouchable, was easier than trying to play nice. Niceness was for people with the energy to care. Ana, by contrast, was exhausted — exhausted by trying to force people to understand her. Understanding meant she had to open up, had to crack herself wide, to show all the foul insides, the jagged bones, the torn flesh of who she really was.

It was like being a pomegranate, she often thought, her brain tangling in metaphors as usual. People would never get her unless they tore her apart, bit by bloody bit. Pomegranates were beautiful, sure, but they were a mess — juice everywhere, the seeds too stubborn, staining your hands and clothes. Ana wanted to believe she was worth the mess. But, well, that thought never really stuck. It slipped away like most hopeful things do, dissolving into her skin like a tingle that would never go away.

And then there was Lila Nielson. Lila, with her perfect fucking life and that incessant, screeching, high-pitched New York accent that made Ana's skin crawl. Lila, who had floated into her advanced creative writing seminar like she owned the place, even though Ana was pretty sure Lila had never had a single original thought in her entire life. Nepo baby. Rich girl extraordinaire. Lila fucking Nielson.

Lila had attached herself to Ana like a leech, and for the life of her, Ana couldn’t figure out why. They weren’t friends. In fact, Ana couldn’t stand her. Maybe that was the problem. By this point, Ana had deemed herself entirely unlovable — more than that, undesirable — so Lila’s persistence was just confusing. Lila took all of Ana’s bitterness, all her thinly veiled insults, and just… stuck around. Like a lost puppy, except one that had been to private school and summered in the Hamptons.

Ana didn’t make it easy for her, either. She was rude — there was no other way to put it. She told Lila to fuck off, told her to stop being so loud, so annoying. Made snide comments about her designer clothes, her ridiculous Upper East Side life. Ana’s comments bordered on bullying, and she knew it. But Lila never seemed to care, so Ana told herself it wasn’t really bullying if the person didn’t mind. And Lila didn’t mind. Not one bit. She was always grinning, always ready to laugh at whatever bile Ana spewed her way, which only pissed Ana off more. What was wrong with her? Why would anyone willingly put themselves before Ana’s pomegranate heart, knowing full well it would burst, stain, and ruin everything in its path? Why would Lila want to be around someone who made it so obvious she couldn’t stand her?

Sometimes Ana wondered if Lila was just begging to mean something to her, to anyone. It was pathetic, really. But in the quietest, most spiteful corner of Ana's brain, she also wondered if maybe Lila saw something in her that even Ana had long since given up on. Maybe Lila, in her loud, obnoxious way, was desperate to pluck out one of those bleeding pomegranate seeds, to find something salvageable underneath all the rot.

And that? That was just fucking unbearable.

Anyway, Ana tried to heal in her second year. Like, really tried. She decided she was going to stop being mean, which is laughable now, looking back on it. But at the time, she was dead serious. Except, of course, she couldn’t. It’s almost hilarious, knowing, deep down, that you’re a bad person, because no matter how hard you try, you just can’t help yourself. Being cruel was too easy, too satisfying, especially when it came to Lila.

Lila, who kept dragging her out to parties like they were best friends, even though Ana had done everything but flat-out tell her she couldn’t stand her. Though, in her “healing era,” Ana would go along with it, thinking maybe this time, she’d be better. She’d smile, she’d nod, she’d even laugh at Lila’s stupid jokes. Then they’d get too drunk, Lila would insist on doing lines of coke, because, according to her, it was sooo fucking good. Ana hated doing coke, but she’d go along with it because, well, she was healing, wasn’t she?

Then, inevitably, Lila would blackout, and Ana would feel the familiar wave of disgust rising in her throat. It was like clockwork. One night, Lila threw up all over herself in a grimy bar bathroom, the stench clinging to the air. As if that wasn’t enough, she also shit herself. Ketamine and Lila were never a good mix, but in her infinite wisdom, she always ignored that tiny detail. Ana stood there, staring at the disaster before her, grimacing like someone had just vomited directly onto her shoes — which, honestly, Lila had almost done more than once.

"Fucking hell, Lila, you're embarrassing yourself," Ana muttered, wrinkling her nose as if that would do anything to help the smell.

She ended up leaving her there. Not to die or anything. She wasn’t that bad. But she sure as hell wasn’t cleaning up the mess. She left the bathroom, fished out her phone, and called one of Lila’s other friends. Someone more qualified to deal with that level of human degradation. Ana wasn’t going to play nursemaid, especially not when Lila’s drug-fuelled antics had cranked her insufferability up ten notches.

But that’s the thing — on the days Ana did try to be nice, it only made her feel worse. She realised, with a sickening clarity, that she wasn’t trying to change for Lila. She wasn’t doing it out of kindness or compassion or some newfound moral compass. No, Ana was trying to change because she didn’t want to die in a world that hated her. She was selfish, immoral, and, let’s face it, a mean fucking cunt.

The worst part was she didn’t care. Not really. The whole "healing" thing was just a phase, another costume she’d try on for a while before tossing it aside like everything else. Deep down, Ana knew she was past the point of change, if change was even possible in the first place. She was too far gone, too tangled in her own mess to ever unravel it.

Chapter Seven

Ana Leighs

Maine was fine, Ana supposed. Fine in the way that lukewarm water is fine — functional, unremarkable, and just a little gross if you thought too much about it. She was smack in the middle of the state, in Augusta, a place so bland it felt like the concept of “meh” made manifest. But it had its charm, she guessed, in the way that all dreary small towns do. It was the kind of place where you could imagine a serial killer roaming around, unnoticed for decades. That thought, oddly, made her feel at ease. The anonymity, the bleakness — it suited her.

The hotel was a stone’s throw from Illume’s office. Google Maps claimed it was a ten-minute walk, though Lila had insisted, with the kind of saccharine smugness Ana had come to expect, that if you were “quick and had decent cardio,” you could make it in five. Ana had rolled her eyes so hard she thought they might get stuck, but Lila had laughed like it was all a game. Everything was a game to Lila.

Ana had a few days to settle in before the internship started, which she interpreted as an opportunity to find ways to tolerate the place without losing her mind. The problem was, Augusta didn’t seem interested in being tolerated. It smelled like wet pine needles and despair. Every café had the same sad laminated menu, and every local seemed to operate on some unspoken code of vague hostility toward outsiders. The only place Ana could stomach was the liquor store by the gas station, and even that felt like it might come alive and eat her whole one day.

Then there were the other interns. God, the other interns. If hell existed, it would look like a conference room full of girls like them. They were all Lila clones, bred in the same suburban Petri dishes, except with different accents. There was Lauren from LA, who spoke like every vowel was an audition for a reality show. Grace from Texas, who thought she was charming but mostly came off like a used car salesman in pastel. And then there was Mallory from Washington, who had this unnerving way of smiling at Ana like she was trying to peel her apart with her teeth.

Ana didn’t exactly try to get along with them, but it wasn’t like they were making it easy either. They laughed too loudly, talked too much, and always seemed to find new ways to remind her she didn’t belong. Lila fit in perfectly, of course. She floated between them like the ghost of perfection, her every word laced with just enough irony to keep things interesting. Ana hated her for it. Hated her for how effortlessly she could glide through this purgatory while Ana felt like she was sinking into its soil, one grudging step at a time.

But Maine was fine. Nice enough. Bland enough. And if Ana played her cards right, she’d find a way to survive it — or at least outlast it.

The dining room of the bougie hotel had all the charm of a funeral parlour with too much money to burn. The free breakfast buffet stretched out like some altar to capitalism — croissants that gleamed with unnatural polish, eggs that looked suspiciously like they’d been sculpted, and bacon so thin it might as well have been translucent skin. Ana shuffled into line behind the other girls, all of them seemingly united by the lure of complimentary food.

Mallory and Lila stood near the front, already whispering to each other like they’d known each other for decades instead of barely 48 hours. They were perfectly coiffed, perfectly poised, perfectly insufferable. Ana lingered behind them, not bothering with a “good morning.” She didn’t need to. She knew her presence had a way of announcing itself — like a cold draft slithering through the room. Lila turned first, her face lighting up with an almost predatory glee.

“Oh my God! You made it!” she chirped, her voice as grating as a spoon scraping ceramic.

Ana forced her lips into a tight approximation of a smile, though it felt more like her face was trying to betray her. She didn’t reply, hoping her silence would act as some kind of verbal repellent. It didn’t.

“Oh, Ana, this is Mallory,” Lila continued, leaning in closer as if they were best friends sharing secrets. Her breath smelled like mint and malice. “She’s, like, connected to the London Royals or something, so, you know, be nice.”

“Right. Nice to meet you,” Ana said, her tone so flat it could have sanded wood. She didn’t even try to sell it. Mallory, with her painfully symmetrical face and lips that looked like they’d been vacuum-sealed, barely glanced at her. She radiated wealth in the way a rotting corpse radiates decay — suffocating and impossible to ignore.

Mallory tilted her head, her voice dripping with the kind of entitlement that made Ana’s skin ache. “And you are?” she asked, her attempt at a British accent landing somewhere between mid-Atlantic and straight-up parody.

Ana pressed her lips together to keep from laughing, but a small snort escaped anyway. “Ana Leighs.”

“Ohhh,” Mallory drawled, drawing out the syllables as if she were tasting them and finding them bland. “Lila’s college best friend.” She said it like an accusation, her lips curling into something too sharp to be called a smile.

Ana squinted at her, trying to decide if Mallory was genuinely mocking her or if her voice just always sounded like that. “Well, yeah,” she said finally, shrugging. “We were, like, seminar friends.”

Lila, ever the diplomat, jumped in with a laugh so fake it could have been canned. “Oh, Ana’s just being modest. We practically lived together, didn’t we?”

Ana raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think sitting next to you in advanced creative writing counts as living together.”

Lila waved her off, her smile never faltering, though her eyes flickered with something like irritation. “Oh, stop. You’re such a joker.”

Mallory sniffed, her nose wrinkling slightly as if Ana were something unpleasant she’d stepped in. “How quaint,” she murmured, turning her attention back to the buffet like Ana had already ceased to exist.

Ana felt her jaw tighten, but she forced herself to grab a plate and move on. The bacon glistened under the harsh fluorescent lights, looking more like desiccated flesh than food. She suddenly wasn’t so hungry.

“Be nice,” Lila whispered again, her voice sweet but her tone serrated.

Ana turned to her, her smile cold and brittle. “I thought I was being nice.”

Breakfast had finally begun, and Ana found herself wedged at a table with Lila and Mallory. Lauren and Grace had wisely chosen to sit elsewhere, sequestering themselves at a table to the right. Cowards.

Ana sighed, dropping her plate onto the table with a dull clatter. One croissant. That was all she’d taken. She wasn’t sure if it was because the food looked more like props from a second-rate horror film or because the thought of eating in front of Lila and Mallory made her want to crawl out of her own skin. Probably both. She poked at the croissant with a single finger, the buttery flakes clinging stubbornly to her skin like they didn’t want to let go.

She didn’t feel like eating today. She never really did, to be fair. It wasn’t an eating disorder — at least, that’s what she told herself whenever the thought crept in. It was just… easier. Easier to feel empty. Cleaner. Safer. Around people like Lila and Mallory, not eating wasn’t just a choice; it was a strategy. A way to feel invisible. Or smaller. Or maybe just skinnier. Whatever. If the shoe fits, wear it until it cuts.

Mallory, poised with the grace of a viper about to strike, broke the silence. “I think I’ve heard of your parents, Ana,” she said, her voice smooth and cloying, like honey laced with cyanide.

Ana resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “Oh, great,” she said flatly, aiming for a joke but landing somewhere closer to passive aggression.

Mallory’s lips curled into something that might’ve been a smile if it didn’t feel so rehearsed. “I mean, if you’re anything like them, I’m sure I’ll love you. My father speaks fondly of yours.”

Ana’s throat tightened around the minuscule bite of croissant she’d just nibbled. She swallowed hard, the flaky pastry turning into an uncomfortable lump sliding down her oesophagus. “Well,” she started, her voice dry, “I’m nothing like my mother, and I’m definitely not my father. I’m, uh… like a third worse version of them.”

She tried to laugh, the sound coming out brittle and uneven. Lila let out a sharp exhale through her nose — her version of a pity chuckle — but Mallory didn’t bother. Instead, she fixed Ana with a look so cold and pointed it could’ve skewered her. Without a word, she turned back to her plate, stabbing at her eggs with a fork as if they’d personally offended her.

“Fucking hell,” Ana muttered under her breath, glancing at Lila for some kind of lifeline.

Lila, ever the social contortionist, smiled nervously and leaned in as though to diffuse the tension. “So, um… your parents. What do they do again? I know you told me before, but I forget.”

Ana dragged her gaze to Lila, wondering if she was genuinely trying to change the subject or just setting her up for another conversational ambush. “My dad’s a lawyer,” Ana said, forcing her voice to stay even. “Big shot corporate type, but he prefers Philanthropist. My mom used to teach art history before—” She cut herself off, shaking her head. “Never mind.”

Mallory perked up slightly, clearly more interested in the “before” than the present. “Before what?” she asked, her voice dripping with faux curiosity.

Ana’s lips twitched, and for a brief, wild moment, she considered telling them the truth: that her mother had slowly unravelled until she was nothing but a rich man’s wife. That art history had turned into a fascination with the broken and the discarded. That maybe Ana had inherited more of her mother’s madness than she cared to admit.

Instead, she smiled tightly. “Before she decided academia wasn’t for her.”

Mallory’s eyes narrowed, clearly unsatisfied, but she didn’t press further. She went back to her eggs, slicing through them with surgical precision. The yolk bled across her plate like something alive, and Ana looked away, her stomach churning.

Lila, ever the peacemaker, tried again. “Well, I think it’s great that we’re all here together,” she said, her voice overly bright. “This is going to be such an amazing experience, don’t you think?”

Ana snorted softly, pushing her croissant around her plate. “Yeah. Amazing.” Her voice was laced with enough sarcasm to drown a small child.

Mallory didn’t even look up. “If you say so.”

Ana bit the inside of her cheek, resisting the urge to throw her untouched plate across the room. This was going to be a long, miserable few months.

When the first day of the internship finally arrived, Ana knew exactly what to expect: the usual corporate song and dance. Five girls crammed into a whitewashed conference room, learning who was in charge, what they’d be fetching coffee for, and which soul-crushing tasks they’d be “trusted” to complete. Riveting. Ana dragged herself into Illume’s glossy, sterile headquarters with the enthusiasm of a prisoner walking to the gallows.

The office was an assault on the senses: walls so blindingly white they seemed to hum, punctuated by jarring bursts of millennial pink. Pink chairs. Pink motivational posters. Pink mugs emblazoned with “Slay the Day!” It was like being trapped inside a Barbie Dreamhouse where all the dolls had been replaced by overworked twenty-somethings barely clinging to their sanity. Ana felt nauseous just looking at it.

The morning kicked off with a mandatory “Welcome to Illume!” presentation, hosted by Kylie — the head editor of their department. Ana had heard whispers about Kylie long before she’d stepped foot in the building. Notorious, ruthless, and allegedly allergic to basic human decency. The kind of editor who would toss a coffee cup across the room if the foam art wasn’t symmetrical enough. A do as I say or die type. Ana made a mental note to stay out of her way, though she already knew she’d fail spectacularly at some point.

The presentation was as thrilling as Ana had expected. Expectations. Goals. The glorious opportunity to maybe land a full-time position if they survived the internship without imploding. How exciting! Kylie delivered it all with the enthusiasm of someone announcing layoffs. Her voice was sharp and clipped, each word feeling like a paper cut to the soul.

Meanwhile, Lila and Mallory wasted no time establishing themselves as the self-appointed queens of the intern clique. Lila leaned forward in her chair, tossing her blonde hair in a way that screamed look at me, while Mallory chimed in with her practiced, polished faux-British accent, her laugh sharp enough to cut glass. Even Lauren and Grace — who seemed to live in a perpetual state of apathy — rolled their eyes at the spectacle.

Ana, in a moment of pure self-loathing, decided to chime in. “Yeah, who do these guys think they are?” she said, attempting a playful smirk and jabbing a thumb in their direction. She hated herself immediately. Lauren and Grace exchanged a brief glance before turning away, laughing under their breath. The kind of laugh that made Ana feel like she’d just been chewed up and spit out.

And that was it. The moment Ana officially gave up on fitting in with any of them. Except maybe Lila, who still thought they were college besties. But even that wasn’t worth the effort. Ana resigned herself to a day of menial tasks and forced small talk. The afternoon was a blur of grunt work. Fetching coffee. Watching “experts” demonstrate the intricacies of social media posts, as though uploading a photo was a skill that required years of training. One particularly grating moment involved an assistant explaining hashtags like she was revealing the secrets of the universe. Ana wanted to scream, but instead, she nodded politely and muttered something about how “fascinating” it all was.

By the time the day was over, Ana felt like she’d been peeled apart by her layers. Her head throbbed, her stomach churned, and her feet ached from trekking back and forth between desks with endless cups of overpriced lattes. As she exited the building, the glaring white walls seemed to lean in, smothering her in their artificial glow.

She stepped outside, sucking in the cold evening air like it was her first breath in hours. Maybe tomorrow will be better. Or maybe it would be worse. Knowing her luck, probably worse. Ana sighed, shoved her hands into her coat pockets, and trudged back to the hotel.

Chapter Eight

Ana Leighs

The internship seemed easy enough — until Ana realised it was because they’d dumped all the piss jobs on her. None of it was challenging in the slightest. Everyone else was doing something interesting: conducting interviews, starting their own pieces, running the social media accounts. Lila, of course, was already being fawned over by Kylie for her “natural instincts” in editorial work. Mallory had somehow charmed her way into shadowing a senior editor, looking every bit like she belonged in her tailored blazer and icy smirk. Even Lauren and Grace, who Ana had barely heard speak, were busy with tasks that didn’t involve staring at a screen in a windowless room.

Ana had been relegated to the lowest tier of the food chain — uploading media content online. Not even her own work. Other people’s work. It was basically the job of a glorified assistant, and Ana couldn’t shake the feeling that this was another fucking cosmic punishment. Maybe her mom had something to do with it. Maybe this was her little way of ensuring that Ana, the ungrateful brat, reaped the consequences of her own misery.

Meanwhile, Lila — of course — was gearing up to interview some celebrity in the coming week. She wouldn’t shut up about it. In true Lila fashion, she made sure everyone knew how important she was.

“Who do you think it is?” Lila asked, practically vibrating with excitement.

Ana deadpanned, “No clue, Lila.”

“Come on, just guess!” Lila continued, completely unfazed by Ana’s palpable disinterest.

She sighed. “Uh, give me a clue or something.”

“Ooo, okay, let me think…” Lila paused, and the silence was excruciating. Ana could feel her skin prickling in irritation, each second of quiet making her regret every decision that led her here.

“Okay, okay, I’ve got one!” Lila finally chirped. “Girls are obsessed with him right now.”

Ana blinked. Really? That was the clue? “Right. That could literally be any fucking male celebrity,” she said, trying her best to keep her voice flat and devoid of the disdain simmering underneath.

“Not all of them. Girls don’t love Jake Gyllenhaal,” Lila quipped, entirely too pleased with herself.

“True,” Ana conceded. “Alright, I give up. Just tell me before I lose the will to live.”

Lila’s eyes widened in excitement. She practically squealed the name, and Ana immediately tuned out, already bracing herself for the inevitable fangirl monologue.

“You’re definitely one of those girls who love to say he’s unattractive,” Lila replied, crossing her arms with a knowing look.

One of the many insufferable traits Lila had was her bizarre love for the “ugly-attractive” celebrity men. She was the president of that fan club, and Ana had seen enough of her thirst posts on Instagram to know exactly how far it went.

Ana smirked, “I don’t think he’s unattractive, but he gives me, like, uncanny valley vibes.”

“That’s like, so mean, Ana,” Lila pouted, clutching her invisible pearls as if Ana had personally insulted the man.

Ana internally rolled her eyes so hard she thought she might sprain something. She was stuck in purgatory, uploading trash content that wasn’t even hers, while Lila got to fangirl over some A-list actor like she was on the brink of a life-altering epiphany.

"Sorry, I'm not trying to be mean," Ana sighed, though the exhaustion in her voice betrayed the effort.

Lila, unbothered, smiled with that trademark obliviousness. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell him you said that.” She winked, then pranced off to her desk, leaving a trail of expensive perfume in her wake, like some high-end Pied Piper of insufferable rich girls.

This was not how Ana imagined the turning point of her life would look. Stuck in some backwoods town in Maine, side-by-side with Lila fucking Nielson, doing a job that required absolutely no skill. It was like the universe had spat her out into a limbo designed specifically to mock her mediocrity.

Her phone buzzed, dragging her back to reality. A message from Mom, of course.

Ana? How's it going, answer me.

She stared at the screen, contemplating the effort it would take to reply versus the energy it would take to maintain the lie she’d built around this doomed internship. Did her mom really need to know how shit everything was going? How she’d taken the bait — again — and was still failing to thrive in the so-called real world? Of course not. Her mom would just laugh, tell her to “try harder,” like Ana wasn’t already clawing through her days, desperately grasping at success while life yanked it further out of reach.

But the most troubling thing — far more troubling than her glorified assistant duties or Lila’s constant chirping — was her skin. Or rather, the lack of what she’d come to expect from it. Normally, by now, after days of stress, failure, and bottling up every ounce of frustration, her skin would have rebelled. Peeled off, sloughed itself free from her bones in some vile ballet of abandonment.

Yet, it hadn’t.

Sure, there had been moments where she could feel it wriggle, shift under her flesh like something living, something watching, waiting for the right moment. But it hadn’t detached. It stayed put. It clung to her, despite everything that should’ve set it off — Lila’s chirping, her degrading tasks, her mother’s incessant texts.

It felt like waiting for a jump scare in a horror film — that dreadful anticipation that was always worse than the actual scare. The waiting was unbearable. Every second that passed, Ana expected it to happen. She braced for it, imagined her skin flaying, dragging across the floor like a snake shedding its old, unwanted scales. But it didn’t. The anticipation gnawed at her more than the peeling ever did.

At night, she’d whisper to it. She still talked to her skin, though she’d learned not to do it aloud after Lila caught her the last time, staring in horrified confusion. Now, she kept her conversations private, locked inside her head where Lila couldn’t poke fun at them.

"Please don’t leave me," she’d beg, silently. "I’m trying to be better. I really am. Just… don’t go yet. Not like this."

Sometimes it would respond, in its own way — hesitating, twitching, rippling in a way that felt almost kind. It was never truly kind, though. Not really. Ana knew better than to trust its mercy. Her skin’s tenderness was a fleeting thing, unpredictable. A false comfort. Like her own kindness — when she bothered to try.

It’s fine. You didn’t tell me Lila Nielson was going to be here, though.

She hit send, already regretting it.

Her mom’s reply came almost instantly, as if she’d been waiting, lurking at the other end of the line, ready to pounce.

Oh my! That’s great, she’s there! You two really were such great friends.

Ana clenched her jaw, staring at the words on the screen. Oh fuck off, she thought, but didn’t type. Instead, she stared at the ceiling, mentally listing all the ways she’d rather die than endure another day of Lila’s relentless optimism. It was like a spotlight on her own inadequacies — Look at her! It screamed. Look how easy it is for Lila! Why can’t you do that?

If there was one thing Ana found truly impossible about working at Illume, it was trying to conform to their insufferable, wannabe-glam standards. They aspired to be some bastard child of Cosmopolitan, Paper, and Rolling Stone, but their vibe was more like a high-school clique of over-caffeinated, insecure women who thought they were starring in their own version of The Devil Wears Prada.

The problem was, none of them realised the real devil wasn’t Kylie — it was the one living rent-free inside Ana’s flesh, swimming through her arteries, curling up in her chest like some sadistic pet, gnawing away at her heart.

Ana had always been insecure. About her face, her body, her interests, her abilities — her entire existence, really. Name a part of her, and she’d found a reason to hate it. The thing is, she had this skill of hiding it, layering that insecurity under a tough, sarcastic exterior. Most people didn’t catch on. Or, at least, that’s what she told herself. Of course, being mean to others in that sharp, cutting way was probably a dead giveaway of how much she despised herself. But self-awareness wasn’t exactly Ana’s strong suit.

The office building had walls thin as tissue paper — or maybe, she had considered, they just grew thinner as she passed by. Like the walls themselves were conspiring to force her to hear what everyone said. Every conversation about diets, weight loss, and bodies warped into a knife aimed straight at her insecurities. It wasn’t enough that these women lived and breathed the toxic idea that appearance was everything — they were enthusiastic about it. Ana swore the hallway amplified these discussions, like some dark, sentient thing knew she needed to hear it. “Ozempic’s the new frontier,” one girl would chirp. “The best thing since sliced bread. I swear it’s a game changer.” And the others would nod, giggling, like they’d found salvation in a syringe.

Ana could practically feel her skin tightening around her bones, itching, threatening to come apart at the seams as she passed them. She wanted it to, even. To let it all fall off in sheets and leave her exposed, bloody and raw, like the mess she felt inside.

Later that evening, desperate to block out everything — the obnoxious chatter, her own thoughts — Ana lay sprawled on her bed with headphones cranked up to full blast. Music pounded into her skull, drowning out any possibility of hearing herself think, of hearing the hallways whisper their malicious gossip. It was the only time she felt even a little calm, the constant hum of music almost lulling her skin into submission.

Then, Lila burst through the door with her usual unwelcome exuberance, holding two bottles of vodka like they were trophies. Without warning, she yanked Ana’s headphones off, leaving the music still blaring in the background.

"Fucking hell, Ana. You’re gonna go deaf listening to that shit," Lila said, eyes wide with mock horror. Her voice was too bright, too loud. It grated on Ana’s nerves, making her want to shove the headphones back on and pretend Lila didn’t exist.

"What do you want?" Ana asked, exasperation practically dripping from her words.

"We’re going out! Like old times! You, me, vodka, and bad decisions, but make it Illume!" Lila practically sang, her excitement nauseating.

Ana groaned, rolling back onto the bed dramatically, as if wishing hard enough might make her skin finally peel off and give her an excuse to stay behind. Anything, anything, to avoid another night of playing along with Lila’s desperate attempts to recreate the past. Maybe if her skin finally sloughed off in one horrifying sheet, she could at least skip the club and have a real reason to stay in.

"Come on, Ana! It’ll be fun! And I promise — no drugs. I’ve been clean for like two years now, so you don’t have to do that whole ‘leave me in a toilet’ thing again." Lila added, as if bringing up her most humiliating moments was the perfect way to entice her.

Great. Ana rolled her eyes. Now, on top of everything else, Lila had to remind her of one of the times she ditched her in a club bathroom, coked out of her mind, covered in her own vomit. Awesome. Nothing like a casual guilt trip to really amp up the fun. Ana could feel her skin wriggling under the surface, like it was laughing at her, knowing she couldn’t get out of this one.

"Way to make me feel like an even bigger piece of shit," Ana muttered, wishing she had a way out that didn’t involve setting herself on fire. Or better yet, Lila. "You sure you don’t want to throw in a few more passive-aggressive comments while you’re at it?"

Lila, oblivious as always, just grinned wider. "I’m serious! It’ll be a blast, I swear. We’ll dress up, get wasted, and pretend we’re actually thriving. Just like old times at Columbia! It’ll be cathartic."

"Cathartic." Ana repeated flatly, as though the word had never sounded more hollow.

She wanted to laugh — no, she wanted to scream. Lila’s version of “catharsis” involved public humiliation, drinking until you forgot you hated yourself, and then trying to mask the hangover with green juice and some bullshit about self-care.

"Please, Ana. You owe me," Lila said, her voice laced with that trademark whine that made Ana’s skin crawl.

Ana blinked, sitting up slowly on the bed. "I owe you? Are you serious?" Her tone teetered somewhere between disbelief and venom, a delicate balance she mastered by the time they left Columbia.

"Yes! You do, actually," Lila insisted, hands on her hips like some exasperated school teacher. "I thought you were changing again?"

Ana clenched her fists, fingers digging into her palms so hard it almost hurt. Don’t hit her. Don’t murder her. Deep breaths, she thought, mentally cycling through a Rolodex of violent fantasies just to keep herself calm.

"Are you gonna use this college shit against me forever?" Ana asked, her voice low and dangerous. She was trying to stay calm. Trying.

"Ana, do you even remember some of the things you said to me? I’m not being funny, but if I wasn’t so naïve back then, you would’ve had no one. No one,” Lila declared, as if she was doing Ana a favour by existing in her life.

And here we fucking go again.

"I blocked out most of that era," Ana muttered, waving a hand like she was swatting a fly. "No hard feelings."

"See, that’s a mean thing to say." Lila’s voice tightened, taking on a wounded tone that grated on Ana’s nerves. "Because if you don’t remember, it means you don’t even regret it. Or even feel bad."

Ana let out a long, exaggerated sigh. She felt the muscles in her jaw tense. "I know, I’m sorry. I was an asshole, and I do regret it, Lila." She was practically spitting the words out, forcing them past her clenched teeth. The taste of the apology sat bitter in her mouth.

"Thank you. Look, I don’t wanna believe you’re a bad person," Lila said, her tone softening in that irritatingly patronising way she had. "I do think you’re nice… sometimes. You were always fun when we went out."

Of course. Fun. That’s what people remembered about Ana. The fun girl who drank herself into oblivion, who numbed her own self-hatred with enough alcohol to drown an army. It was her best trick at college. A real talent, honestly.

"Okay, fine," Ana muttered.

"What was that?" Lila said, her voice perking up with a level of enthusiasm that made Ana want to punch a wall.

"I said fine, Lila," Ana growled, her voice tight. "Now fuck off so I can get ready."

“Yes! You won’t regret it!” Lila practically skipped off to the bathroom, her joy palpable in the most nauseating way possible.

Ana rolled her eyes again, mumbling curses to herself. Something involving fuck, fucking, and a whole lot of fuck’s. But she couldn’t get up. She couldn’t make herself do it. The thought of facing the mirror, of seeing herself in that harsh, unforgiving light, made her stomach churn. She didn’t want to try and look good. Didn’t want to pretend she felt good. Because she knew what would happen the second she stared into that glass — she’d decide against going, get mean, tell Lila to fuck off for real, and they’d be right back at square one.

If only I could start over, Ana thought, if only there was some god out there who could shatter me into a thousand pieces and put me back together again.

She glanced at the mirror, steeling herself. Don’t look at your face, Ana. Focus anywhere but your eyes. So she stared at her body instead, her gaze crawling over her frame with the kind of disdain only years of hating yourself can create. She looked fat. She looked fucking bloated, uneven, disgusting. The skin she loathed didn’t just cling to her bones — it mocked her, daring her to rip it off, to shed.

She turned away quickly, biting down hard on her lip to stop the flood of self-hatred from spilling out. Why can’t I just fucking disappear?

"I can't go," Ana muttered to herself, eyes locked on the reflection that was definitely lying to her. "Why do I eat, why do I even bother trying to be better when this is the fucking outcome?" She laughed, a dry, humourless sound that echoed through the room. Talking to herself like this, she realised, was one step short of a padded cell. Maybe she was already halfway there. Maybe she'd just skipped a few steps.

She tried again, squinting into the mirror like maybe, just maybe, her brain was pulling some kind of cruel funhouse trick on her. But it was worse this time. The more she stared, the more distorted she became — wide in all the wrong places, sagging where she shouldn't be, like her body had been sculpted by someone drunk and blindfolded. She looked abnormal, grotesque, something you'd expect to see in a failed plastic surgery documentary, and it pissed her off. If she had the energy, she would’ve smashed this hotel mirror just like the one in her bedroom.

Lila chose that moment to reappear from the bathroom, blissfully oblivious. "Oh, shit, Ana, are you okay?" she chirped, all wide-eyed and clueless as ever.

"I can't go out, Lila," Ana said flatly, still staring at her reflection like it was her mortal enemy.

"What? Nooooo, why?" Lila whined, her voice like nails on glass.

"Because I feel like shit," Ana snapped.

"Like, sick shit? Alcohol always cures that for me!" Lila was now bargaining, like some deranged life coach.

Ana turned, exasperated. "No, Lila. I look fucking fat. I can't be bothered to try and feel good about myself tonight. Okay?" The words spilled out without much thought; she was too tired to care anymore.

Lila blinked, stunned. "Are you being serious?"

And there it was. That final trigger. Ana felt the flames of fury flare up inside her. "Absolutely not, Lila! I thought it’d be hilarious to declare my overweight stomach for shits and giggles!"

"I wasn’t trying to be mean," Lila stammered. "But Ana, you’re like, tiny. I’m not even joking."

Ana looked at her as if Lila had just grown a second head. Was this girl really that dumb, or was she actively trying to fuck with her?

"Are you blind, Lila, or just completely messed up in the head? ‘Cause that's fucked."

Lila’s face fell, clearly taken aback. "Uh… no. You’re thinner than me, Ana. It’s actually more insulting you claiming to be overweight."

Ana stared at her, deadpan. "Oh, boo-fucking-hoo. My self-hatred is insulting now? Go cry me a river." She flopped back onto the bed, ignoring the tension crawling up her spine. "Just go out without me. You’ll probably black out anyway, and I hate when you do that." Her voice had turned icy, indifferent.

As if on cue, her skin started its familiar wriggling beneath the surface, its twisted little voice whispering to her. You ruin everything you touch, Ana. Wow, you really fucking suck. Keep pushing everyone away, it’s fun to watch.

She rubbed her arms, feeling the familiar crawling sensation under her flesh. The skin was restless tonight, just like her thoughts, coiling and writhing beneath the surface like a living parasite.

Lila was silent for a moment, standing in the doorway, looking confused and hurt but too dense to understand what was really happening.

"Okay, well… that’s fine. I’ll see you later," she muttered before leaving the room, her cheery façade finally cracking.

Ana collapsed backwards on the bed, her eyes fixated on the ceiling, jaw clenched tight enough to shatter teeth. The grinding was almost musical, a sound that echoed her spiralling thoughts. Something had to give, and it started with those mirrors. They were everywhere, multiplying like fungus, reflecting versions of her she could no longer recognise. She’d hide them all, every glistening surface that dared show her that.

She ripped the sheets off her bed and Lila's — let her complain later. Lila had never lived in a skin that betrayed her, anyway. Ana found more sheets in the closet, arms full of fabric, as she tackled the first mirror. The one above the drawers winked at her. Or maybe it was her own face, a warped version, flashing a grin so twisted it nearly broke her spirit. She flinched, yanked the sheet over it, smothering that smug grin. There. No more. But no — another one by the door, another one beside that. Who the fuck needs this many mirrors? Was this place designed by a narcissist or a sadist?

The bathroom was worse. The mirror above the sink sat there like a judgmental deity. Ana flung a sheet towards it, fumbling and stretching, determined to drown it. She was done seeing herself — seeing that version of herself — staring back, laughing.

"You can't get rid of us." The voice was sharp and screeching, like nails dragged into skin.

"Shut the fuck up," Ana muttered, yanking the sheet harder. Her hands were shaking.

"What makes you think you have the power, Ana?" the voice taunted again, slithering between her ears, wrapping around her brain like a noose. “You’re weak, pathetic, a shell — no, worse, you’re shedding your shell and what’s left underneath?”

Ana’s breath quickened. “Stop it,” she said, but her voice cracked this time. She glanced at the mirror, but the reflection wasn’t obeying her movements anymore. It was still there, smirking, but her own body had gone rogue, wandering to the other side of the reflection like it had its own agenda. The grin widened, gums pulling back to reveal receding flesh.

“Oh, sweet Ana,” the reflection cooed, tilting its head in that condescending, pitying way people do when they know they’re better than you. "You can't hide from us. This is you. This is what you’ve become. Accept it. Embrace it. Wear it."

Her pulse raced. The reflection leaned closer, that grin impossibly wider now, a parody of the face she used to have. Ana stumbled backward, sending bottles clattering off the counter, Lila’s ridiculously overpriced perfume shattering in an explosion of glass. The shards skittered across the floor like tiny mirrors, each piece glinting with a piece of her.

She stepped right into the mess. The glass sliced through her feet, but she barely felt it. Maybe because her nerves were numb. Maybe because the pain felt like the only thing grounding her. Blood slicked across the tiles, mixing with the sickly scent of jasmine and rose.

“You’re bleeding, Ana," the reflection whispered sweetly. "Maybe that’ll help. Maybe if you bleed enough, you’ll finally feel something again.”

She stared down at her feet, crimson streaks pooling at her toes. The pain was dull, like background noise. Her skin had always felt too tight, too much to bear. Maybe this was better. Maybe peeling herself away bit by bit was the only way to feel real again.

"Oh, darling, you're already unravelling," the voice crooned. "Isn't it freeing? You don’t need those mirrors, Ana. You’ve been falling apart just fine on your own."

Ana knew she should cry. The moment demanded it, like the climax of one of those melodramatic indie films where the protagonist collapses in a rainstorm, mascara streaming down their face in perfect suffering. But she just sat there, a broken heap on the floor, shards of glass embedded in her feet, blood pooling like a sad little rug beneath her. Her reflection, that horrid, grinning version of herself, stood mockingly tall in the mirror. Ana’s eyes were stretched so wide, you’d think they were trying to escape her skull, ready to pop out and roll across the floor like marbles. Maybe that would finally earn her some tears.

Instead, her mouth quivered. Trembled, like it had forgotten how to sob. She had to dig deep, practically reach down into her chest, clutching for the emotions she knew were there, clawing them out like old receipts from the bottom of a handbag. When the tears finally came, it felt ridiculous. Even her breakdown had performance anxiety.

“Why?” she croaked, her voice scraping its way out, barely audible.

“Whywhywhywhywhy?” She couldn’t stop. The words tumbled out like a malfunctioning wind-up toy.

Her reflection’s grin stretched wider, deformed now, teeth bared like a hungry wolf.

“Because suffering is beautiful, Ana,” the reflection purred, smug as ever. “And it’s what you do best.”

Ana blinked, incredulous. “I’m not suffering beautifully, you moronic caricature,” she spat, her voice rising with sudden venom. “This isn’t poetic. This is agony, and it’s not making me lovable or interesting, you self-righteous twat.” She was practically foaming at the mouth, her hands now clenched into tight fists, glass slicing deeper into her palms. The pain was there, but at least it was something. Better than this hollow pit in her chest.

Her reflection — that smug, insufferable grin — took a step back. For a split second, Ana couldn’t see it anymore, and her heart skipped in terror. Was it going to charge through the mirror like some twisted, nightmarish clone? Would her worst self come sprinting at her, teeth bared, ready to devour whatever was left of her sanity?

Ana hauled herself upright, using the wall for support, glass biting into her palms and feet. She winced, but even the pain felt distant now, just another thing to add to the pile. Blood dripped in lazy trails behind her, marking her path back to the mirror, as if she could track her descent into this madness.

She stared at the glass again. It was just her now. No sinister grin, no grotesque parody. Her reflection followed her movements like a good little puppet, obedient, boring. Ana’s rage flared.

“Now you fuck off?” she screamed, her voice echoing in the small, bloodstained bathroom. “Now you leave me here, like this?”

She gripped the edges of the mirror, shaking it with pure frustration. “Come back!” she demanded, like she was summoning some kind of demon. But of course, nothing happened. The reflection remained lifeless, her face staring back at her in all its angry, pitiful glory.

Her heart pounded in her chest, rage boiling over, searing through her veins. You could see it in her eyes — fire flickering behind them, as if she was burning from the inside out. And then she snapped.

She hit the mirror. One wild punch, then another, and another. The sound of her fist colliding with the glass was oddly satisfying. With each hit, her reflection splintered, cracked, until the mirror collapsed in on itself, fragments scattering across the floor in a violent symphony.

But as she stood there, panting, surrounded by a thousand tiny versions of herself, she realised: she hadn’t destroyed the reflection at all. Now there were just more of them. Everywhere. Little shards, little Anas, grinning and sneering up at her from every angle.

She stared at the broken glass, at the sea of twisted faces all swimming around her like sharks in bloodstained water.

“Well, fuck,” she muttered, glancing down at the mess. “I’m a fucking mosaic.”

Chapter Nine

Ana Leighs

The sky was darker when Ana stirred on the bed, the air heavy, almost like it was suffocating her on purpose. Her feet throbbed, each pulse sharp and relentless, sending jagged lines of pain up her legs. She winced, trying to sit up, using the headboard as leverage. Everything around her was drenched in red, a scene of bloody chaos that she vaguely remembered creating. Her hands and feet were glittering with shards of glass, embedded so deep they felt like they belonged there, like she’d purposefully stitched herself together with the wreckage of the night.

She looked around, the room cloaked in shadows that seemed to breathe. The whole place was a crime scene, really. Blood on the sheets, blood on the floor, and the bathroom, well, that was a shattered cathedral of glass, like a chandelier had given up on being beautiful and thrown itself to the ground in despair. Ana’s mind raced, trying to piece together what had happened before she blacked out — again. Every part of her body ached, as if knives were clawing their way out from under her skin, or maybe something worse, something alive, something writhing just beneath the surface.

Lila, of course, was nowhere to be found. She was probably face-down in some club bathroom, barely conscious, or worse, laughing her ass off with people Ana had never met. Ana didn’t care. Actually, scratch that — Ana did care, but not in the way normal people care. She didn’t want Lila to come back, to see her like this, bleeding and broken like the inside of a horror show snow globe. If Lila walked in, even drunk, she’d make it about her somehow. "Oh my God, Ana, what happened? You’re bleeding all over my hotel room. Are you okay?" As if Ana had spontaneously combusted just to ruin her night.

She tried to stand, but her feet screamed at her in protest. So, instead, she dragged herself across the floor, each movement pushing the glass deeper into her skin. It was almost satisfying. The pain was grounding, something real, something she could control — unlike everything else in her life. This was her tiny rebellion. A grotesque, painful rebellion, but it was hers. At least the blood was proof she wasn’t just some hollow shell walking through the motions of existence.

Reaching for her phone, she clumsily pulled it from the nightstand. 4:00 a.m. No missed calls, no texts. Lila hadn’t even bothered to check in. Maybe Lila was dead. That wouldn’t be shocking, really. Ana had a way of ruining things, and death seemed like a logical next step for anyone close to her. Maybe Lila had gotten hit by a bus or had too many shots and her liver finally gave up. Maybe the universe had done Ana a favour. One less person to disappoint.

Ana dropped the phone and lay there, staring up at the ceiling, which seemed to mock her with its stillness. She felt like she was in free fall, spiralling downward into a place where mirrors talked back and her reflection had officially staged a coup. She wasn’t herself anymore. Hell, she hadn’t been herself in a long time. Her reflection had become someone else entirely — a smug, dark-eyed monster who knew every secret, every twisted thought she’d ever had. That thing in the mirror? That wasn’t Ana. That was a demon, a parasite, something that had taken root inside her and was now slowly ripping her apart.

The hotel room looked like a murder scene, like some wild, starved dog had torn through it in a rage. A dog so feral it had forgotten it once had an owner, that it once wagged its tail at something, someone. Sort of like Ana, now that she thought about it. How did she get here? How did young, wide-eyed Ana — who once prayed that one day she’d look in the mirror and not hate every inch of her appearance — become this? What had birthed the monster that now chased her down, clawing at her skin, whispering every vile thing she already believed about herself?

Ana kept telling herself she deserved good things, like a mantra she didn’t believe in. You deserve good things. You deserve good things. You deserve good things. You deserve—

But did she? She was a mess, a walking disaster in a place she was never supposed to be. What had she been trying to prove? That she could survive it? That she could outlast the inevitable? Or had she just been lying to herself, pretending she was trying at all when, really, she was sinking on purpose, because what else was there left to do?

She thought it was over. Assumed that following her parents’ advice for once, doing something new, something different, would be the magic bullet. Maybe this whole “self-improvement” thing would actually work, if she really put in the effort. Maybe becoming friends with someone like Lila — Miss Instagram-Inspired-Lifestyle herself — would rub off on her, like osmosis for the soul. She thought maybe, that life of brunch dates and Pilates sessions would finally stitch her back together, make her whole again, make her feel like she wasn’t a walking pile of shattered glass. Maybe, she could finally look in a mirror without wanting to smash it to pieces.

But deep down, Ana knew better. This was just another delusion of hers, another cruel joke she’d played on herself. The real joke was thinking she could change, that she could stop the inevitable. She’d been holding onto this false hope, and now, here she was — drowning again. The Great Sloughing had happened, and no amount of positive affirmations could reverse it. That skin was long gone, peeled off and abandoned, and her mind — well, her mind was somewhere far more dangerous than last October. She almost missed the days when she could at least pretend she wasn’t falling apart. But nothing ever lasts, does it? Not the false hope, not the new friendships, not even the skin you’re born with.

Ana laid almost lifeless on the hotel bed, staring up at the ceiling like it might hold some answer to her slow-motion catastrophe. The clock read 8:00 a.m. Lila still hadn’t come back, probably busy being the life of some insufferable afterparty or sleeping with some guy whose name she wouldn’t remember. Good. It was easier with her gone. The last thing Ana needed was to explain the absolute shit show she’d created in their hotel room. How could she possibly justify her mangled hands and feet, crusted with dried blood that was now permanently embedded into the expensive carpet? The hotel fine alone was going to be astronomical.

Lila would strut in, hungover but still somehow glowing, and take one look at the carnage before zeroing in on the one thing that truly mattered to her: the shattered remains of her £1,000 Harrods perfume. The one that smelled like rich people pretending they weren’t miserable. She’d gasp, clutch her chest, maybe shed a tear for her precious luxury fragrance. The blood, the glass, the fact that Ana’s feet looked like they’d been put through a meat grinder? All secondary. Lila would make it about her, of course. Ana could already hear it: “Ana, do you have any idea how much that perfume cost? It was custom-made! I can’t just buy another one.”

Ana could almost feel the laughter bubbling up inside her at the thought of it, but she quickly swallowed it down. It wasn’t like she had the energy to deal with Lila’s histrionics anyway. No, she’d probably just lie there, staring at her like a corpse, letting Lila’s melodrama wash over her like white noise. Maybe she’d laugh, eventually, when Lila stormed off in a huff.

The real kicker would be when she had to explain this to her parents. She could already see herself sitting them down, all bloodied and bandaged, and saying, “Well, here’s the thing. I’m not who you thought I was, or even who I thought I was, apparently.” Maybe she’d throw in something about how this was all part of her self-discovery journey, you know, like those wellness influencers talk about. “Oh, this? It’s just the next phase of my transformation. I’m shedding all the parts of myself that no longer serve me — literally.”

They’d hate that. Which made her want to do it even more.

But then again, what was the point? It wasn’t like she was ever going to be that girl. The one who had it all together, who could walk into a room and own it without feeling like a disfigured marionette held together by sheer willpower. She was never going to be Lila, with her perfect skin and her perfect life, no matter how many friendships or yoga classes she forced herself into. No, Ana was something else entirely — something darker, something broken, something that no amount of self-help books could fix.

And honestly? That was kind of freeing. At least she knew where she stood now: knee-deep in her own blood and broken glass, but at least it was her blood and broken glass. The mess was hers, and she was done pretending it wasn’t.

What was most frustrating was that her skin still remained. Stubborn. Clinging on for dear life. Could her body seriously not even handle one simple thing like disintegrating properly? Was she seriously failing to shed her skin? How utterly embarrassing. Even her own flesh couldn’t get this one thing right. Pathetic.

She should be sloughing off skin by now, unveiling her final form like a butterfly from its cocoon — or, in this case, a particularly gruesome piece of rotting fruit. But no. She remained frustratingly… whole.

A knock came at the door, and Ana’s dead-eyed stare shifted lazily in that direction. Maybe it was God, finally coming to collect her. A merciful angel, perhaps? One who pitied her enough to smite the demon crawling beneath her skin and deliver her from this wretched existence? Maybe this angel could pluck out her heart, make it sweet, desirable, make it something someone wanted. Ana had always wanted someone to crave her heart’s juice, to let it stain their lips and hands without a second thought. All she ever wanted was someone who would look at her mess and say, “For you, I would.”

Nope.

“Anaaa? For fuck’s sake, I forgot my keyyy, open up!” Lila’s drunken drawl shattered the brief fantasy. Of course. No merciful angel today, just Lila, still riding the high of last night’s party like a hungover wrecking ball.

Ana sighed. Fuck my life. If nothing else, this was going to be... entertaining. Well, maybe not for Ana, but for someone. She gingerly got up, every step sending a fresh wave of agony through her feet, shards of glass still embedded like her body was making some kind of sick modern art installation out of the pain. She was mildly surprised they hadn’t gotten infected yet. Maybe that was next on the agenda.

Lila kept banging on the door, each thud making Ana’s headache pulse in time. Finally, Ana opened the door, and in stumbled Lila, oblivious, as always, to the trail of carnage she’d left behind her. She tossed her bag onto the bed and flopped down, not even bothering to glance around the room.

“Sorry I didn’t come back last night,” Lila slurred, turning to face her. “This gorgeous boy was practically begging for me—” She stopped mid-sentence, squinting at Ana. “You alright? You look like a fucking ghost.”

Ana’s brow furrowed. Ghost? That’s all she had to say? Not the blood? Not the shards of glass reflecting the early morning light like a twisted disco ball? Not even the broken remains of her luxury perfume bottle? Lila had waltzed into a crime scene and was only concerned about how Ana looked?

Before Ana could respond, Lila stumbled off toward the bathroom, probably to admire her own reflection. That was when the shriek came.

“MY FUCKING PERFUME!” Lila’s voice was shrill enough to raise the dead. She stormed out of the bathroom, eyes wide with fury. “You fucking monster, Ana Leighs!” She stood in the doorway, clutching what remained of her £1,000 Harrods perfume bottle like a widow mourning her beloved. “What the fuck is wrong with you? I didn’t mean to upset you last night, but you didn’t have to... to... do this!”

Ana blinked. Lila was almost crying. Almost. It would’ve been comical, really, if it weren’t so tragic. Here they were, in a room filled with blood, glass, and a vague aura of decay, and Lila was upset about a perfume bottle. Ana could hardly process it.

But then another troubling thought hit her — a slow realisation creeping in through the haze of her thoughts. Lila wasn’t reacting to the blood. She wasn’t noticing the glass shards embedded in Ana’s feet, the dried, caked crimson streaks across the floor, the way Ana’s hands still bled like she’d been trying to claw her way out of her own body.

Lila could see none of it.

Ana raised her hands, staring at the blood-smeared palms, her knuckles torn and raw. Her feet were a war zone of cuts and embedded glass, yet Lila was oblivious. Ana felt something dark and twisted curl in her chest, a bitter laugh bubbling up from her throat.

“Oh, Lila,” Ana said softly, almost pitying her. “You have no idea, do you?”

Lila glared at her, more concerned with the broken shards of glass from her precious perfume bottle than the very real shards stuck in Ana’s flesh. “I don’t care, Ana. Just fix it, or I swear, I’ll—”

But Lila never finished that sentence. She never saw the glint in Ana’s eyes as she reached for the remaining shard of glass on the floor, holding it up like a mirror. The reflection it cast back was nothing — just empty space.

“You don’t see it, do you?” Ana whispered, her voice soft, dangerous. “None of this is real to you, is it? Not the blood, not the mess... perhaps, not even me.”

“What the fuck are you on about, Ana?” Lila snapped, her voice filled with venom, the kind that curdles in your gut and threatens to crawl out of your throat. “Don’t act like you need pity again. You broke my fucking perfume because I pissed you off for some reason last night, didn’t you?”

Ana blinked, trying to shake her head. The words she wanted to say — needed to say — lodged themselves in her throat like shards of glass. But Lila wasn’t having it.

“No,” Lila barked, holding up a hand like she was the judge, jury, and executioner. “Don’t argue with me. I try so hard with you. I’ve tried to let go of the way you treat me, but you—” Lila’s voice quivered with rage, her knuckles white around the shattered remains of the perfume bottle. “You’re bad, Ana Leighs. You’re a bad fucking person.”

Ana’s lips trembled as she stammered, “No... no, I swear I’m capable of kindness. I promise I am. I don’t know why I do these things, why I get so... mean. But this time I didn’t mean to. I really didn’t.”

Lila shot her a withering look, her eyes glistening with angry tears as she glared at Ana like she was something you scrape off the bottom of your shoe. “How the hell am I supposed to believe that? This is classic you, Ana. You did the same shit in college. You break things, make it about you, and then—” She broke off, casting a heartbroken glance at her perfume. “You don’t care about anyone but yourself.”

Ana almost rolled her eyes but caught herself. Classic me, she thought. Mean, selfish, broken Ana.

“I’m really sorry,” Ana said, forcing herself to stay calm, her voice quivering with desperation. “I think I... I bugged out last night. I swear I was bleeding, Lila. I ripped the sheets off the bed, there’s — there’s blood everywhere.”

She looked around, panic creeping in as the reality of the room hit her. There was no blood. No glass embedded in her hands or feet. No evidence of the chaotic meltdown she was sure had happened just hours ago. The pain she had felt so acutely was gone, leaving her numb and hollow.

Lila’s expression shifted from anger to something closer to pity. But it wasn’t real pity — it was the kind of pity you reserve for someone who’s humiliated themselves at a party.

“You need help, Ana,” she said, her voice softening as she shook her head. “Or were you on coke or something? Maybe a psychedelic? That I get. Trust me, I’ve done them all.”

Ana froze, the bitter irony sinking in. Here she had two choices: be honest — tell Lila she was going insane — or lie. Feed Lila exactly what she wanted to hear, knowing full well it would lead to a relapse on Lila’s part. But at least she’d forgive her. At least the whole perfume fiasco would be forgotten, and everything would be smoothed over, smothered in a thick coat of denial. Lila would be the cool friend, the understanding one. And Ana would get to keep the facade up for a little longer.

“Yeah,” Ana said slowly, her voice dropping. “Yeah, I was on drugs. I just needed something. Anything, really. I’m sorry.”

Lila’s face softened further, a flicker of twisted satisfaction behind her eyes. “Oh, Ana,” she said, stepping closer, her voice almost conspiratorial. “You should’ve told me you had shit on you. I could’ve helped you. You know, so the high doesn’t turn into some fucked-up carousel of hallucinations. Trust me, I’ve been there.”

Ana’s stomach twisted. You’ve been there, she thought bitterly. But it wasn’t Lila who’d been slicing herself open, trying to crawl out of her own skin. It wasn’t Lila who was haunted by the feeling that her body was betraying her at every turn. But, as always, Lila made it about her. The victim. The martyr. Saint fucking Lila.

“You’re right,” Ana whispered, feeling the weight of the lie sinking deeper into her bones, rotting her from the inside out. She was such a good friend — such a thoughtful fucking friend — for making Lila feel like the sane one.

Lila smiled, her eyes lighting up with a sick excitement. “Hey, how about we do some tonight? I know a guy.” She grinned, like they were sharing some inside joke.

Ana stared at her, the words Fuck my life floating through her head for the hundredth time. Of course Lila knew a guy. Of course, Lila was already making plans to dive headfirst into the abyss again. And now, thanks to Ana’s lie, she was about to drag her down with her.

“You already know a guy?” Ana asked, half-amused, half-horrified.

“Uh, yeah,” Lila snorted, rolling her eyes like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “I’ve been to Maine before, dumbass. Who do you think you’re talking to?”

“Uh, do you think you could get something that like, you know... makes us calm?” Ana started, her voice barely scraping the surface of her own anxiety.

“A downer?” Lila cut in, eyebrow raised as though Ana had just suggested knitting matching sweaters. “Like, weed?”

“Yeah, but like, stronger,” Ana confirmed, the desperation leaking into her words like oil staining an old rag. She barely looked at Lila, afraid she’d catch that self-satisfied smirk plastered across her face. Ana wasn’t entirely sure what she was asking for, but at this point, anything that could numb the relentless hurricane in her head was welcome.

Lila blinked, paused for just a second too long, then snorted. “Heroin, then?”

Ana hummed her approval, her heart beating lazily against her ribs like it had already given up.

“Girllllll,” Lila squealed, her voice a razor blade wrapped in cotton candy. “Oh my God, we’re gonna be so high.”

Ana swallowed the sudden lump of guilt rising in her throat. The kind of guilt that was supposed to make you feel bad about being a shitty person, except it never really did anything except make her feel... hollow. And anyway, Lila had been clean for what? Two years? That’s what she said, right? Not that it mattered anymore, since Ana’s stupid fucking lie had just sent them careening headfirst into relapse. Classic Ana. Self-destruct button smashed to pieces, and no emergency brakes in sight.

Still, maybe something would calm her down, silence the manic voices ping-ponging inside her skull. Her own mind had turned on her ages ago, creating hallucinations so vivid they didn’t need drugs to be induced. It wasn’t like she had any real experience with this stuff — weed had never done much for her, maybe mellowed her out once or twice. But heroin? Heroin was bound to slam the breaks on something, wasn’t it?

Lila, on the other hand, was practically vibrating with excitement, her insufferable, posh-girl accent only adding to the horror show that was Ana’s life. “This is, like, a bonding experience, Ana,” she trilled, looking for all the world like a toddler about to be handed a cupcake laced with cyanide.

Ana’s lips twitched in an exhausted attempt at a smile. “Mhm, I suppose.”

“No, I mean it! Like, I’m gonna get so much munchie food, and then we can watch movies and shit. Oh wait—” Lila stopped mid-breath, eyeing Ana suspiciously. “Are you still in that whole ‘I’m fat’ era? ‘Cause I won’t buy snacks if that’s still a thing for you.”

Ana felt something snap in her chest. It wasn’t even anger anymore. It was more like a distant, echoing scream. A kind of rage that didn’t even have the energy to claw its way to the surface. She could have flipped her shit, torn the entire room apart. But honestly? She was too tired. The fact that she was genuinely losing her grip on reality seemed a little more pressing than Lila’s usual backhanded bullshit.

“Get whatever,” Ana muttered, her voice flat. “Nothing matters anyway.”

“Okay, but like, nothing matters in a nihilism way, or in, like, an absurdism kind of way?” Lila mused, her voice dripping with faux-philosophical pretension, like she was channelling her inner freshman-year philosophy major.

Fucking hell, she’s worse than me in therapy, Ana thought, her mind spinning further out of control. Was this what losing your mind looked like? Not in some grand, cinematic, eyes-rolling-back-in-your-head way, but in the slow, torturous unravelling of your sanity while some idiot debated whether or not the universe cared if you had snacks?

“Do we have to get philosophical about this?” Ana groaned, her patience fraying like the edges of a too-worn sweater.

Lila shrugged, picking at her nail polish like she hadn’t just opened the door to a whole spiral Ana was fighting to keep at bay. “But it’s like, so interesting to think about. You could be the blank canvas or the paintbrush, you know?”

Ana squinted, her temples throbbing. “I thought you said you hated it when I speak in metaphors?”

“I do. It’s fucking annoying,” Lila said, rolling her eyes like Ana was the one who was insufferable.

Ana let out a slow breath, her fingers digging into her palms to stop herself from throwing something at Lila’s oblivious, self-righteous face. “You’re doing it right now, Lila. And it’s getting on my nerves.”

The room felt suffocating, like the walls were closing in with every idiotic word Lila spewed. This was supposed to be her breakdown, wasn’t it? Ana’s descent into madness, into the grotesque horror of her own rotting girlhood. And yet somehow, Lila — Lila, who hadn’t bled for a single second in her charmed life — had managed to turn it into a fucked-up slumber party.

Lila smiled, oblivious. “Yeah, well. You’re stuck with me. Like, for life.”

Ana wanted to scream. Instead, she smiled back, her mouth curling into something resembling a grin but more like a grimace, the kind that said, I’ve already died inside, but let’s see how much further we can go.

“Yeah, for life. What a treat.” Ana swallowed the urge to fling herself out of the nearest window, mostly because she knew Lila wouldn’t even blink. If anything, she’d ask her to take the trash out on the way down.

Lila flopped onto the bed, sprawling out like a contented cat, completely unaware of the mess she was lying in. Ana watched her for a moment, wondering if Lila had ever truly been aware of anything. Maybe that’s what it was like to be Lila, floating through life with a casual disregard for reality, like nothing bad could ever really stick to you. Teflon, coated in privilege. Ana almost envied it. But the thought of living in Lila’s oblivion made her want to scream.

“Ugh, the bed is so comfy. I could just live in this hotel forever.” Lila stretched out, clearly loving the fact that she was sprawled in a murder scene of Ana's own making. She didn’t even notice the faint crimson stains that had once been a night of Ana’s violent unravelling. “Anyway, what’s the plan for tonight? Should we do heroin in the bathroom like it’s Trainspotting, or do you want to make it a whole thing? Maybe get some candles, make it vibey?”

Ana resisted the urge to stab her with a fork. “Yeah, let’s make heroin vibey, Lila,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm so thick you could drown in it.

Lila giggled, missing the sarcasm entirely. “God, I knew you’d come around. It’s like, you're such a mood, Ana. Like, if Wednesday Addams got dumped and started doing drugs.”

Ana stared at her, dead-eyed. She wasn’t sure if Lila was trying to be clever or if this was just the latest in a long line of brain-dead comments she’d have to endure. Either way, it was infuriating.

“Do you even hear yourself when you talk?” Ana asked, her voice tight.

Lila raised an eyebrow. “What? You don’t think it’s accurate?”

“I think it’s... something.” Ana sighed, rubbing her temples. “But honestly, why the fuck are you so on board with this? You were clean for, what, two years? And now you’re ready to relapse because I said I was on drugs? You’re not even going to ask if I’m okay?”

Lila shrugged, still looking at her nails like this was all just some minor inconvenience in her perfect day. “I mean, you seem fine to me? You’re always so dramatic, Ana. Like, I didn’t think you’d actually lose it. You just broke my perfume — again, you’re welcome for my kindness by the way — and now we’re getting high. It’s just... classic us, you know? You overthink, I underthink, and somehow it balances out. It's like yin and yang, babe.”

Ana’s lips twitched, but it wasn’t a smile. It was more like the precursor to murder. “You think this is balance? Me lying in a bed of my own blood and you babbling on about heroin like it’s an essential oil?”

Lila tilted her head, squinting as if Ana was speaking a foreign language. “I mean, I don’t see any blood. So, like, maybe chill?”

Ana just sighed, long and deep, because arguing back felt like such a fucking chore.

“I’ve gotta head out, Ana. I’ll pick up on the way back,” Lila muttered, her voice all gravel and regret, like she’d gargled whiskey for breakfast.

She was still in last night’s disaster of an outfit — hair a tangled mess, eyeliner smudged halfway down her face, looking like the poster child for “I make bad decisions, ask me how.” Hungover didn’t even begin to cover it. Ana suspected Lila was still halfway drunk, teetering on that fine line between the night’s last shot and the morning’s first regret. Lila never left the house looking like this. She had standards. Whatever was left of them, anyway.

Ana barely waved her off, her thoughts already spiralling into the morning’s crisis. She stared down at her hands, turning them over, squinting at the skin like it might split open right there. She wasn’t sure anymore if last night had really happened, or if she’d hallucinated the whole thing. Were there marks there? Scratches, slashes — no, not scratches, more like the opening to something deeper. The beginning of the fold, the first crack in the facade. Or maybe she was just losing her mind. Both were equally possible.

And then, like the logical person she absolutely wasn’t, Ana reminded herself, again: she was going to be on drugs tonight. Fucked up, mind-melting drugs with an ex-addict she’d practically shoved back into addiction like some sick little nudge off a cliff. And that realisation hit her like a brick to the face. God, she really was a terrible person.

She considered, for a fleeting second, the possibility of going back. Rewinding her life, making amends, like one of those wholesome redemption arcs you see on TV. Don’t go to Maine, don’t trash the apartment, don’t drown herself in insanity and blame it all on drugs so Lila would forgive her, then conveniently relapse because of course Ana dragged her down with her.

Yeah, sure. That’d fix it.

But who was she kidding? It wasn’t just the drugs. Ana was a vortex, a human black hole where good things went to die. The few slivers of light that ever found her always dimmed and fizzled out before she could even figure out what to do with them. It was like she’d been cursed to suck the joy out of everything, like one of those soulless consumer products you see on late-night infomercials. “Buy now, guaranteed to destroy all hope in under five minutes, satisfaction not included.”

She picked at her cuticles absentmindedly, tearing skin until blood welled up in little beads along her fingers. Ana didn’t flinch. Pain was nothing. She couldn’t feel it the way she was supposed to, not when her insides felt like they’d been hollowed out and replaced with static. Every time something good happened, it was like there was a timer on it. Five, four, three — poof, gone. The joy would vanish and leave her standing there, holding the empty wrapper, wondering why she’d even bothered opening it in the first place.

Ana sighed again, staring at her hands like maybe they held some secret answer to all of this. But it was just flesh, blood, and the possibility of a slow unravelling. Maybe that’s all life was, she thought — one long, drawn-out opening of the skin. Maybe the good moments weren’t meant to last. Maybe she wasn’t built for happiness, wasn’t designed to hold it. Like those cheap-ass plastic bags that split open the second you leave the grocery store, spilling your life all over the pavement.

She laughed, a short, bitter sound. It was almost funny.

Ana had done coke once. Hated it. Despised it, actually, which felt like yet another joke at her expense. Everyone else seemed to love it — adore it, even. Treated it like it was the second coming of Christ. The whole world on its knees, sniffing a line and suddenly transforming into these wild, uninhibited versions of themselves, laughing, sweating, talking a mile a minute like they were untouchable. Meanwhile, Ana was choking, throat tight like someone had stuffed cotton down her windpipe, her heart pounding in her chest as if it were trying to escape.

Drowning, that’s what it felt like. A drowning she willingly walked into, and now couldn’t claw her way out of. The whole thing was off, like the universe decided she was too broken to even enjoy being broken. But maybe that’s why she kept saying yes, out of some sadistic spite. Not because she wanted to, but because she shouldn’t. The only satisfaction she found was in her own small rebellion — agreeing to snort some lines, and when no one was looking, blowing it all away into the air, letting the powder scatter like snowflakes. A waste of their precious supply. Their shrieks of delight, high off a substance they didn’t even realise was short a few grams, became her personal comedy show.

There was something darkly funny about it, Ana thought. That she could stand in a room full of people with their pupils dilated and jaws grinding, pretending to join the ride while secretly remaining on the platform, arms crossed, unimpressed.

Coke made them feel like gods. For Ana, it was just another failed promise.

But now heroin? The idea of heroin was absurd. She’d probably keel over on the first hit, with her luck. Just one dose and she’d be a headline: “Stupid Girl Dies Stupidly After One Stupid Attempt to Feel Anything.” The story of Ana Leighs, doomed from the start. Still, the thought of that sweet calm was tantalising, a kind of peace that came with shutting down. The idea that maybe her skin would stop wriggling, stop screaming to escape her bones. Maybe the demons would quiet down for once, stop snickering at her from the corners of her vision.

Or maybe not. Maybe the demons were her.

Ana laughed at herself, bitterly. She should text Lila, tell her to forget about the drugs. Keep herself clean, maybe have a glass of wine and call it a night. That’s what a decent person would do, right? A good person? But then again, Lila had always had this knack for making Ana feel like the bad guy. Which, to be fair, she was. No denying that. Ana had accepted her villainy long ago, wore it like a second skin, tight and suffocating, but at least it fit. But somehow, being self-aware about it felt like some form of moral high ground. As if knowing she was awful made it less awful.

If she backed out now, Lila would pin everything on her. The relapse, the drugs, the entire evening going to hell — it’d all be Ana’s fault.

Ana tapped her fingers on her phone screen, contemplating. Lila would guilt-trip her into oblivion if she cancelled. She could already hear the whining, the accusations. Lila had a way of playing the victim, despite Ana being the clear villain of this tragic play they were starring in. Besides, there was no point in pretending that one small attempt at being a better person would make any difference. Ana’s life was a slow-motion train wreck, and no amount of pulling on the brakes was going to stop it from crashing.

She was such a fucking cliché. The broken girl, too jaded to care, too numb to feel anything but this constant low-grade irritation with existence. Even now, she couldn’t muster up the energy to care that she was walking straight into another catastrophe.

Ana smiled grimly at the thought. Perhaps heroin was the answer. Not because it would solve anything, but because it would make her forget for a little while. Forget that her life was unravelling at the seams, that her skin felt too tight, that her brain never shut up. Forget Lila’s insufferable voice, her insufferable existence, her insufferable everything.

And if she died? Well, wouldn’t that be just poetic?

Ana Leighs: Went Out the Way She Lived — Badly.

She stood in the middle of the hotel room, staring at the mess that wasn’t there. Her brain told her there had to be more chaos — blood-streaked sheets, perfume glass ground into the carpet like glitter, the lingering scent of alcohol and sweat. But here she was, standing in an almost tidy room, the kind of place where nothing bad ever happened. She glanced down at her feet, the dull ache of the cuts still sharp, yet there was no evidence of what she knew had gone down last night. No puddles of blood, no crime scene, just an eerie sort of calm.

It was pissing her off. The clean room was gaslighting her, making her doubt herself. She’d bled, she remembered it. Saw it. Felt the warmth of it pooling beneath her as if her body were leaking something essential. Yet now, not even a drop.

This was how the madness crept in. Little by little, until you couldn’t trust anything — not your mind, not your body, not even the damn room you’re standing in. As Ana swept up the shards of broken perfume glass, her hands trembling just enough to remind her that something was off, she kept thinking about how none of it made sense. Her memory wasn’t aligning with reality, and that was fucking with her.

The problem was that Ana was supposed to be smart. People had told her that her whole life — brilliant, even, in that empty, backhanded way that adults say to kids who win spelling bees but still cry too much. But no amount of intelligence could fix this. No matter how many books she read, how many times she told herself she was rational, that she could think her way out of this spiralling confusion, nothing clicked. It was like having all the pieces to a puzzle, but someone switched the picture on the box when you weren’t looking. Ana had learned the hard way, back when she got into Columbia, that intelligence was a big joke. All that brainpower meant nothing when your life was a fucking void. People always said smart kids had it easier, but those people didn’t know what it felt like to have an IQ that outpaced your will to live. Now, here she was, sweeping up glass and wondering if heroin would make her feel less like a burden. Less of a weight around her own neck, and then, in a ripple effect of guilt and resentment, less of a weight on Lila and everyone else she dragged down with her.

Because, oh yeah, Ana was definitely a burden. She’d come to terms with that. Some people were just built that way — like they were born with a big neon sign over their heads flashing “WALKING DISASTER” for all to see. No one wanted to say it to her face, of course. They didn’t need to. The subtle way people held their breath around her, as if she might implode at any moment, said it all. Even as she tidied up the room, doing her best impression of someone who had her shit together, she knew.

Wasn’t that the story of her life? Ana Leighs, the unlovable thing. Always too much, too broken, too sad. And too damn good at being sad, too comfortable in it. The sadness was a familiar friend by now, one she clung to because it was the only thing that hadn’t abandoned her. People liked to say that you could pull yourself out of the abyss if you tried hard enough, but Ana knew better. When you’d spent your entire life sinking, you didn’t climb out. You grew gills.

So, maybe heroin was a good idea. Maybe it was the best idea she’d had in years.

Chapter Ten

Ana Leighs

"Do you even know how to smoke heroin?" Lila asked, perched on the edge of the bathroom sink like she was about to perform a spa treatment instead of orchestrating a slow death. The hotel bathroom smelled of perfume and damp towels, the kind of place that felt alive, festering in a way that made Ana's skin crawl. But Lila seemed all too comfortable, holding a square of foil with the precision of a five-star chef, eyes wide with eagerness. Too fucking eager.

Ana’s mind was somewhere else, though. Not entirely absent, just distant, like she was watching a movie of her own life but was a little too bored to care about the plot.

"I can show you how if you want," Lila continued, voice bubbling with enthusiasm. "It's easier this way for your first time."

Ana rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I really don't have a preference, Lila." Her words slurred into the monotony of the moment, like they were discussing where to order takeout.

"Good. Smoking’s better anyway. Shooting up’s too intense for your first time," Lila said, the way she chirped it made Ana want to laugh. Like she’d just suggested the beginner's version of a new hobby.

"Cool," Ana muttered, her gaze glued to the bathroom floor. She could still see the blood from last night, or at least she thought she could — the phantom stains from when she’d sliced her feet and palms, the sticky warmth of her own fluids oozing out. Her brain was playing tricks on her again. She could never trust it.

She thought she was nervous. But it was a hollow kind of nervousness, like the anxiety had nowhere to land. Her body had never done this before, but her mind? Her mind had already gone through every possible outcome, and none of them mattered. Nothing mattered.

Shit happens, and shit ends, so shit might as well involve heroin.

"Will it hurt?" Ana asked, not because she cared but because that felt like the next logical question.

"Nah, babes. Feels like euphoria," Lila’s voice dripped with a sick kind of nostalgia, as though heroin was an old lover she was excited to reintroduce to Ana. "Well, okay, maybe it’ll burn a little, but that’s nothing."

Lila held the foil steady, sprinkling the powder in a thin line across the crinkled surface. She struck the lighter, the flame dancing underneath as the heroin melted into dark rivulets, curling and thickening into smoke. She handed Ana a cut straw, her expression expectant.

"Breathe it in slow," Lila instructed, eyes locked onto Ana’s face like she was watching a work of art come to life.

Ana hesitated for a second, the straw trembling slightly between her fingers. Then she leaned in, lips brushing against the plastic, and inhaled. The smoke curled inside her lungs, acrid and heavy, wrapping around her insides like something alive.

The first hit made her cough, eyes watering as the taste clung to her tongue like burnt sugar and rot. Lila laughed, not unkindly, patting Ana's back. "Takes a second to get used to. Try again."

Ana did, slower this time, pulling the smoke deep into herself. She held it, waiting, and then it hit.

Relief. Bliss. The hum of nothingness.

Ana exhaled, her body sinking into a kind of relaxation she hadn’t felt in years, if ever. Everything blurred at the edges, her mind floating in a cloud of numbness. This was what she had wanted. This was what she had needed. For once, the chaos in her brain shut the hell up. Her skin wasn’t wriggling, her thoughts weren’t spiralling, and the demons around her faded into static.

Lila grinned. "See? Told you."

Ana hummed in response, leaning back against the peeling bathroom wall, her eyes half-lidded. She wanted to stay here, in this moment, forever. Just floating, weightless and empty. She hummed louder, as if that sound alone could make the feeling last forever.

"That's it," Lila said, her voice now a distant echo, somewhere on the other side of Ana's high. "It's good, it’s good," she kept repeating, but Ana wasn’t paying attention anymore.

Her thoughts were tangled in the haze, clinging to a single desperate hope. Please, Ana thought, please, I want so badly for this to make things okay. She begged the drugs silently, prayed to them like they were gods that could somehow cleanse her. Make me calm, make me better.

"This is the rush, An," Lila’s voice dripped like syrup, sweet and sticky but entirely unnecessary. "The best part. The best way to tackle it is to just ride it, okay? Let it wash over you, don't fight it." As if Ana could fight it. She was already deep in the rush, but it wasn’t some wave she could surf like Lila imagined. No, it was dragging her under, pinning her to the ocean floor. Lila spoke like she was an expert, like she had the manual to this whole nightmare, but Ana wasn’t buying it.

Ana could’ve cried. The lethargy was so calming, a blanket smothering all her thoughts. But her body didn’t give a damn what she wanted anymore. It just sat there, limp and pliant, like a discarded doll. She couldn’t even cry if she tried, which was a shame because a good cry might’ve felt cathartic.

Ana slouched against the tiles of the bathroom floor, eyes half-lidded, vaguely aware of Lila’s voice droning beside her. The world felt like it was underwater, sounds muffled, everything moving slow, thick, like syrup. She wasn’t sure if she’d nodded or even blinked in the last five minutes. All she knew was the strange feeling of warmth and detachment that kept her body glued to the floor.

"I feel like we should talk about deep shit," Lila declared, her voice cutting through Ana’s haze. If Ana wasn’t so fucking high, she would’ve rolled her eyes so hard. But as it was, her body had entered this weird limbo where she wasn’t even sure she had eyelids anymore.

“Mmhmm," she hummed, or at least she thought she hummed. She might’ve just thought the hum without actually doing it. Who could tell?

"Let's overshare, that’s like the ultimate bonding experience, huh?" Lila continued, clearly desperate for some kind of acknowledgment, some validation for her spontaneous declaration of emotional depth.

Ana sighed internally. Deep shit. Great. If there was one thing Ana hated more than being sober, it was forced intimacy. The kind where people said stuff like “I feel like no one ever really sees the real me” after two lines of coke, as if suddenly they were a tortured philosopher.

"Uh, what?" Ana finally muttered, barely scraping together enough energy to sound interested. "Yeah, yeah sure, whatever."

Lila grinned lazily, perched beside Ana, like some kind of pink-clad gargoyle, her bubblegum nails tapping against the tiles. The sound made Ana's skin itch, but she didn’t have the strength to care. Or move. Or think.

"You go first," Lila said, her voice syrupy and slow, like she was wading through the same molasses Ana was drowning in.

"No?" Ana mumbled, the words dragging across her throat. "You wanted to do this."

Lila sighed, long and drawn-out, like Ana was the one being difficult. "Fine, whatever. Lemme think."

Ana braced herself. She’d always wondered what people like Lila considered “deep.” Was it going to be something about how hard it was to figure out life with a trust fund? Maybe she was going to share the dark trauma of when Daddy downgraded her car from a Range Rover to a BMW. Something existential like that.

"Okay, I feel like..." Lila started, the words trailing off before they even began, like she forgot what she was saying mid-thought. Her eyes glazed over for a second, then refocused. "...there isn’t much to know about me, but I still find myself praying that someone will want to know me."

Ana just stared. The words swam around in the heroin fog clogging her brain, struggling to make sense of themselves. That was it? That was the grand truth she had to sit through? Ana would have laughed if she had the energy. Instead, she blinked slowly, like her eyelids were glued together.

"Oh… okay. Yeah, that’s, uh, that’s pretty deep," she mumbled, completely dumbfounded.

"Girl, you suck at this. Be. Deep," Lila slurred, poking at Ana's knee with one sharp nail. "Come on, your turn."

Ana felt a wave of exhaustion wash over her. Be deep? She lived in deep. Her entire existence was a swirling pit of self-loathing and emotional quicksand. She could churn out "deep" like a factory line if she wanted to. The real challenge was pretending like any of it mattered to anyone, least of all herself.

“I want so badly to feel kind," Ana started, her words slow, dragging. "But I feel like I can’t wash away my sins. Everything I touch, I ruin. And I’m sorry — sorry to everyone I ruin.”

The words fell out of her like vomit, spilling into the silence between them. She didn’t even care what they meant. They were just true. Too true. It was easier to say them in this haze, where she felt half-dead, half-numb.

Lila went silent for a moment, as if genuinely reflecting on Ana’s words. Her eyes widened slightly, like a doll waking up to some terrible realisation.

“That was good,” Lila finally said, her grin creeping back onto her face. “Holy shit. I think you win that one.”

Ana stared at her in disbelief. “What, this was a fucking competition?”

Lila giggled, her head lolling back against the wall. "No, no! I just mean — you were way deeper than I was. Like, holy shit, Ana. You're fucked up."

Ana wanted to crawl inside her own skin and never come out. Of course, it was a competition. Lila probably thought this was like a game of emotional poker. Whoever had the worst trauma won a new set of Gucci slippers or something.

"So... it just ends there?" Ana asked, the words sluggish. "We say one deep thing and then stop? Shouldn't we, like, talk about it or something?"

Lila blinked, her face blank for a second before she snorted. "God, no. That would make it real. No thanks, babes. We say the deep shit, then go back to pretending none of it exists. Much easier that way, don’t you think?"

Ana stared at her, utterly floored. Lila’s smile stretched wider, that strange New York accent bubbling out of her mouth like champagne, all fizzy and light. Ana could almost smell the bubbles popping. She thought about how Lila would probably leave this room, go back to her perfectly curated life, and never think twice about this little confession. Like trauma was just another accessory to flaunt.

Maybe that was what disturbed Ana the most — that people like Lila could spill their guts and then just… walk away, unscathed.

“Pretending none of it exists doesn’t make it easier.”

Lila’s smile twitched, lazy and slow, before she forced it back on, like she’d forgotten how it was supposed to feel.

"What? No, but like... you don’t think it’s just... easier? To not deal? Life’s too short to—" she paused, blinking sluggishly, her head lolling slightly to the side. "—to, uh... dwell."

Ana stared at her, her thoughts crawling through syrup, heavy and slow. "Too short to dwell? Lila, that’s all I do. Pretending it’s not real doesn’t make it go away. It just... sits there, festering, until it starts swallowing you whole."

Lila blinked again, slower this time, her lips parting like she wanted to say something but forgot what words were. She shifted, her body moving like it was too heavy for her bones. "I mean... yeah, but... you just gotta let go, right?" Her voice slurred, fading into the air between them.

"You can’t just... let go of something that’s part of you," Ana murmured, eyes fixed on the stained floor, her fingers tracing invisible lines in the grime. "It clings to your insides, Lila. It sticks to you like tar." Her chest felt tight, but distant, like it belonged to someone else. "You think I haven’t tried letting go? All I do is pretend none of it’s real, and I’m still here, in the same mess, over and over again."

Lila stared at her, wide-eyed, as if she was hearing this for the first time, like Ana was some alien creature trying to communicate in a language Lila couldn’t understand. Ana could see her reflection in Lila’s dilated pupils — the messy, hollow version of herself she tried so hard to bury, staring back with the same dead eyes.

"I dunno, Ana," Lila mumbled, her fingers plucking at the frayed hem of her shirt. "Maybe... maybe it’s just different for me. Like, I can just... stop thinking about it, you know? Just... stop."

Ana let out a breath, long and slow, like it took too much effort. "You get to walk away from this, from me. You get to go back to your nice life where everything’s perfect and curated, and none of this—" she gestured vaguely at their surroundings, "—exists. But I don’t get that. I don’t get to leave."

Lila’s smile had vanished entirely now. She looked lost, like she wasn’t sure where she was anymore. Her fingers fumbled in her lap, restless and uncertain. "I just... I dunno, Ana. I just thought... maybe..."

“No, you don’t get it,” Ana interrupted, her voice cold. "You can’t just overshare and then leave it behind like it’s nothing. It doesn’t work like that. Pretending doesn’t make it go away, it just makes it... worse."

Lila blinked, her breath slow, almost like she’d forgotten she needed to do it. "I didn’t... I didn’t mean to make it worse..."

Ana looked at her, really looked, and something sharp twisted in her chest. Lila was unravelling, her carefully put-together self slipping through her fingers. But Ana was too tired to catch her.

"It just makes you drown slower," Ana whispered, closing her eyes. "That’s all."

Silence stretched between them, thick and heavy. Lila let out a soft, shaky laugh, the sound barely holding together. "Well... that got... deep."

Ana stared at her, feeling a wave of disgust roll over her. There it was. That shrugging off. The dismissal. The cheap laugh to cover up the discomfort. Lila was already folding it away, putting the moment back in its box, like it never happened.

Ana huffed a laugh too, bitter and empty. "Yeah. Deep."

Lila’s gaze drifted, unfocused, picking at her pink fingernails. "You know," she mumbled, her voice barely above a whisper, "maybe we’re not as... similar as I thought."

Ana blinked, her high dulling to a low thrum of confusion. “What?”

Lila’s mouth opened and closed like she was trying to form the right words, but they were too slippery. "I mean... I thought we were. Same kind of... childhood. Same... shit. But we’re not. We’re really not."

Ana’s confusion deepened. “Why would you even think that?” Her voice cracked with disbelief. “We’re nothing alike.”

Lila finally lifted her eyes, meeting Ana’s gaze with a strange look — something contemplative, almost sorrowful. “I don’t know, Ana. I guess I just… wanted to think we were. That maybe we came from the same place, and that somehow we’d both turn out okay in the end.”

Ana laughed — this harsh, bitter sound that barely masked the anger bubbling underneath. “Okay? You think we’re both turning out okay?”

“No,” Lila said softly. “I don’t. Not anymore.” Lila sighed, her gaze drifting back to the floor. “The thing is… we did grow up the same. We had the same advantages, the same opportunities. But that’s where it stops, Ana. Because… I don’t need to hurt people to feel better about myself. That’s the difference.”

Ana stiffened, something cold prickling at the edges of her mind. "That’s not true."

“Isn’t it?” Lila asked, her voice gentle, but laced with a quiet certainty. “I mean, come on. Look at the way you treat people. You act like you’re this victim of your own life, but then you lash out at everyone who tries to get close to you. You push them away before they can hurt you. And I get it, I really do. It’s easier to hurt someone first than to wait around for them to do it to you. But it doesn’t make it right.”

Ana shook her head, her pulse racing. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’ve watched you. You keep everyone at arm’s length, like you’re afraid of letting them see the real you. And when they try to break through, you tear them down because it’s easier than being vulnerable. It’s easier than admitting you’re scared.”

“I’m not scared,” Ana snapped, her voice rising. “I’m not afraid of anything.”

Lila tilted her head, her expression soft but firm. “Aren’t you?”

Ana’s fingers curled into fists, nails biting into her palms. She wanted to argue, to scream, but the words stuck in her throat. Lila’s gaze felt like it was peeling her apart, layer by layer, and Ana didn’t know how to stop it.

"I thought we were the same," Lila said again, softer this time. "But we’re not. I think... I think I’m scared of different things than you."

Ana felt the anger swell in her chest, but it wasn’t directed at Lila. It was directed at herself — at the truth she didn’t want to face.

“I hurt people because it’s the only thing that works,” Ana muttered, more to herself than to Lila. “If I don’t, they’ll rip me apart first.”

“But don’t you think… that makes it worse? Pretending you’re fine, when really, you’re just as broken as the rest of us?”

Ana clenched her fists, feeling that familiar rage bubbling beneath her skin. “So what? You think I should just let people in? Let them see how fucked up I am?”

Lila shrugged, her voice gentle. “I think you’re already letting them see. You’re just giving them the version of you that’s sharp and cruel, because you’re too afraid to show the version that’s hurt. But in the end… they’ll see both. And so will you.”

Ana’s breath hitched in her throat, the weight of Lila’s words pressing down on her chest. She wanted to reject it, to push Lila away, but something in her couldn’t. Because Lila was right. She had been running for so long, pretending to be someone else, someone stronger, someone who couldn’t be hurt.

And now, sitting on this grimy bathroom floor, high as hell with a girl she barely even liked, Ana realised for the first time that maybe, she was tired of running.

Lila watched her carefully, as if waiting for something — some sign that Ana was ready to stop pretending. But Ana just sat there, silent, unsure of what came next.

“Maybe we’re not entirely different though. Maybe… we’re just scared of different things.”

Ana didn’t respond. She didn’t have the words. Because at that moment, all she could feel was the weight of everything she’d been running from, pressing down on her, heavier than ever.

Lila groaned dramatically after a moment’s silence, shifting her weight on the cold bathroom tiles. "Fuck. Maybe we should've done this on our beds. I’m not comfy at all."

Ana rolled her head lazily toward her, eyes half-lidded. "Isn't this shit supposed to make you feel good anywhere?"

"Yeah, but I don’t really feel good," Lila admitted with a sigh. "I feel fine, just need to get to bed. Can you get up?"

Ana hummed in agreement, or at least she thought she did. Her brain sent the signal, but her body didn’t quite respond. She didn't want to get up. She didn't want to leave the bathroom, this tiny, echoey box where nothing mattered except the high. Out there, in the world beyond this hotel bathroom, was everything she hated. But in here? In here, she was numb, and numb was better than everything else.

"Do you want me to carry you?" Lila asked, her tone impatient, like she was offering to carry a sack of laundry instead of her friend.

"Fuck no," Ana groaned, annoyed but without the energy to show it. "Just go to bed yourself, Lila. Christ."

"I just don’t wanna leave you high and alone in here," Lila whined, always trying to be the responsible junkie, the martyr for a cause no one asked her to join.

"It’s literally a door away. I’ll probably just sleep anyway. I’m fine here," Ana mumbled, staring at the floor. The tiles looked like a mosaic, twisting and morphing into strange shapes. She couldn’t remember if they were always like that or if the heroin was finally kicking her brain in the teeth.

"Whatever then. So much for bonding," Lila muttered, clearly irritated as she slunk out of the bathroom, her footsteps sounding distant and detached.

Ana smiled to herself. She felt untethered, floating somewhere between reality and a dream, where everything was soft and warm and didn’t hurt. This was peace, she thought. Not the kind they sell you in meditation classes or overpriced retreats. This was real peace. The peace of not giving a fuck about anything. Of feeling so far removed from the world that it felt like a parody, a joke everyone was in on but her. In this high, Ana imagined she was everything she wanted to be. Lovable, adored, worthy of someone’s affection. In this high, she didn’t care if it wasn’t true, because maybe she wasn’t even real. Wasn’t that the ultimate escape? When you grow up an unloved child, and then graduate into an even more unloved adult, sometimes you just need to turn all the thinking off. To stop being for a while.

She thought about going for a walk, maybe around the hotel, just to feel things. The floor beneath her bare feet, the walls as her fingertips brushed them, the smell of stale flowers wilting in some corner. This time it would be different. In this state, everything would be beautiful, and she would be beautiful, because nothing really mattered.

She lay there, grinning like a fool, knowing that none of this was going to make anything okay. Knowing that she would never escape the void she lived in, but for now, it was quiet.

Ana got up quickly — or at least, that's how it felt. Her body was moving like molasses, but in her mind, she was flying. The rush was coming down, leaving her in that pleasant, sedated afterglow where everything seemed soft, blurry, like the world had been covered in a layer of gauze. Her legs were jelly as she stumbled out of the bathroom. She cast a glance at Lila, who was sprawled out on the bed, already knocked out cold. Two years off the stuff, and she went down like a fucking rock. Ana was almost impressed. Surprised the heroin hadn’t taken her out yet either, though it wasn’t for lack of trying.

“Nothing matters, nothing lasts forever,” she whispered to herself as she wandered down the hotel corridor, feeling like she was walking through a dream. Her movements slow, deliberate, her eyes wide, absorbing every detail like she'd been blind all her life and had just learned to see. Everything seemed so sharp. The edges of the walls, the patterns on the carpet, the flickering lights. Nothing lasts forever, she reminded herself, and that was either deeply comforting or absolutely terrifying. She hadn’t quite decided yet.

Heroin had this funny way of making her think about her parents. Her mother, her father, the parade of people she’d wasted her life trying to impress, trying to say the right thing, trying to make them proud. She’d swallowed every word she wanted to say, every scream that clawed at the back of her throat. For what? Did they even notice? Did they care? God, she tried so fucking hard. And they never even—

Stop thinking about them. Stop thinking about them. Stop thinking about them.

Her legs started to feel restless, so she collapsed at the end of the hallway, her back slumped against the wall like a rag doll. She let herself smile, a lazy, content grin because, in that moment, it felt like maybe, just maybe, she’d shed her skin. Maybe the heroin had done it for her. Maybe she didn’t need to peel herself away to feel reborn. Maybe this was enough.

She sighed in relief, tears finally pricking her eyes. Oh, how she needed this. How she needed this break from herself. From the constant grinding of her mind. The hallway was getting darker. Time must’ve been moving fast, slipping away like water through her fingers. But as her body started to feel heavy, like she was sinking into the floor, her contentment began to crack.

The relief lasted hours. It should’ve lasted longer. Why couldn’t it have lasted longer?

A laugh bubbled up from somewhere deep inside her, the kind that wasn’t funny at all. It was funny in the way that getting hit by a bus is funny after you’ve survived it. She knew, deep down, how this was going to end. She always knew. But she kept hoping, like an idiot, that things would be different this time. Just for a little while.

The hallway lights flickered, then dimmed, as though someone had turned the dial on reality itself. The shadows thickened, congealing like blood in a wound, and her stomach turned. Something wasn’t right. The tears that had fallen in bliss moments ago were now coming with a different flavour — fear.

A long, spidery hand curled around the far end of the hallway, the fingers impossibly long, stretching like they were made of liquid. The entity followed, slowly peeling itself around the corner, inch by inch. And there it was — her. Ana’s own reflection, staring back at her, grinning with that grotesque, stretched-out smile. Gums on display, eyes bulging, as if every muscle in its face was strained to breaking point.

Ana’s breath hitched in her throat. She shook her head, weakly, pathetically, as if shaking it hard enough could deny what was happening, could stop the inevitable. Her reflection’s head lolled to the side, teasing, mocking her. It always did this — played with her, like a cat batting around a dying mouse.

Funny. She thought heroin would help her escape herself. But here she was, pinned to the floor, unable to move, watching herself unravel.

Ana didn’t even bother telling herself to fuck off this time. She didn’t have the energy. The tiredness weighed her down like a heavy blanket soaked in regret, squeezing out the last drops of whatever fight she had left. It felt like all that heroin hadn’t drained the life out of her, just replaced it with a kind of heavy wet cement. All that came out of her was a series of pathetic, muffled whimpers.

Her reflection, on the other hand, had plenty of energy. It pranced across the hallway toward her, moving with that exaggerated grace of a clown at a funeral. The grin never left its filthy face, stretching so wide it seemed like its skin would tear right off. Ana kept shaking her head, as if she could just shake it away, shake herself away. But that only seemed to amuse her reflection even more.

“Oh, Ana,” it crooned, dripping with mockery. “You can wither away to nothing, but I’ll still be here. You can't outrun what's already inside you. I’m inevitable. We’re inevitable.”

Ana’s head kept shaking like it was on autopilot, as if someone had pressed the rewind button on a broken tape. The word "we" hit her like a slap, though. Us. It said we. As in, her and it. As in, she and this thing crawling out of her own skin were one and the same. We.

No. No, no, no, no. Don’t let it be true, she thought, the panic rising, bubbling up through the sedative haze like a bad hangover creeping in too early.

“Oh, that scares you, doesn’t it?” the reflection sneered, its wide, bulging eyes sparkling with glee. “To see yourself so dishevelled, so hollow, so ugly? To know you’re a mess, a walking disaster? Face it, this is who you are.”

Ana clenched her jaw so hard she thought her teeth might crack. She wanted to spit on it, punch it, do anything, but her body wouldn’t move. It never did when it mattered.

The reflection leaned in close, so close that its breath — if you could call it that — brushed across Ana’s face, cold and rancid. “Why can’t you accept it, huh?” it whispered. “You can’t be a shitty person and expect people to feel bad for you. You think your little sob story gives you a free pass to be a bad person? Guess again. Your bad actions aren’t because of your past or your childhood trauma. Oh no, darling. They’re all you.”

Its grin twisted, stretching impossibly wider as it leaned in even further, its spidery fingers reaching out to cup Ana’s face like a lover’s caress. But then those fingers dug in, pulling at her cheeks so hard she thought her skin might split open like wet tissue paper. She felt tears spilling from her eyes, but they weren’t from pain. They were from the sickening, soul-crushing realisation that maybe, just maybe, this was true. She was this monster.

This can’t be real, Ana thought desperately. It’s just like the other night. This isn’t real.

But the reflection laughed. It had heard her thoughts, of course it had. It always did.

“Real?” it cooed, digging its fingers in deeper, twisting her skin like it was kneading dough. “Reality is whatever you make it. And this is the reality you’ve built. This is you — broken, hollow, a fucking disaster masquerading as a person. You want to be better? Tough luck. You don’t get to shed your skin like a snake and slither into a new one. You’re stuck with this mess, Ana. You’re stuck with me.”

The reflection’s face was so close now, their noses almost touching, its breath foul and suffocating. The world around her faded, shrinking down to just the two of them, just her and her own hideous reflection, locked in this grotesque embrace. Ana’s breath hitched as her reflection’s nails scraped down her cheeks, leaving thin trails of burning heat, but no blood. It never bled, not yet. Her skin stretched grotesquely, her reflection tugging it as though trying to peel it back like the rind of an overripe fruit.

The reflection leaned closer, its grin splitting wider, its gums slick and black, the smell of decay pouring out of its open mouth. It whispered, “I could tear it all away, you know. That thin layer of humanity you cling to, like it makes you worth something.” It let out a low chuckle, more of a wet gurgle really, before digging its nails in deeper. “Do you want me to help? It’ll hurt, but nothing lasts forever, right?”

Ana gagged as bile rose in her throat, the stench overwhelming. Her reflection was right up in her face now, its black eyes boring into her own. It was like staring into a funhouse mirror, except there was no distortion; this was her, wasn’t it? Just raw, stripped down, every ugly part of her laid bare, wearing her skin like a costume.

“I… I want to wake up,” Ana mumbled, her voice shaking.

The reflection giggled, high-pitched and manic, like a child about to reveal a dirty secret. “Oh, sweetheart, wake up? This is you awake. No heroin, no high. Just raw, disgusting you. And you hate it. You’ve always hated it.”

The words stabbed deep, carving holes in Ana’s mind. She tried to turn away, but her body wouldn’t move. The weight of the reflection’s hands, its presence, kept her pinned there. Its voice slithered around her ears, slick and sticky like the tar it breathed out.

“Let’s stop pretending, Ana. You don’t want to wake up. You want to stay down here, wallowing in the muck. You want to feel small, pathetic, because it’s easier to be the victim, isn’t it? Easier to blame the world than admit that maybe, you’re the one who’s rotten.”

Ana let out a shaky breath, her chest tightening. "I’m not rotten," she whimpered, as if saying it could make it true. "I'm not."

The reflection’s grin split wider, impossibly wide now, stretching the corners of its mouth until the skin around its lips began to tear. Thin, dark veins pulsed beneath its translucent skin, twitching like worms beneath the surface.

“Liar,” it hissed. Its voice had lost all the mockery, all the smugness. Now it was just cold, hard truth. “You’re rotting from the inside out, darling. And there’s no one coming to save you. Not Lila, not your parents, and definitely not whatever fairy tale version of yourself you keep dreaming up.”

The lights flickered overhead, the shadows around them thickening, twisting, warping like black vines growing up the walls. The reflection’s grip tightened, its nails piercing deeper, and Ana felt a sickening pull as her skin began to give way, a soft tear at the corner of her mouth. She wanted to scream, but her voice felt stuck, trapped behind a wall of panic and shame. All she could manage was a low, strangled gasp as her reflection leaned in closer, the edges of its mouth splitting wider with a wet, sickening rip. Bloodless, but raw.

“You’ve been begging to be torn apart your whole life, Ana,” it whispered, its breath thick with rot. “And now, here we are. Isn’t this what you wanted? To feel something real?”

Ana’s vision blurred, tears streaming down her face as the world around her tilted, warped. The hotel hallway stretched and twisted, the walls bending inward, like the building itself was collapsing in on her. The reflection's face was all she could see now, its eyes wide and bulging, its smile so impossibly wide that it looked like its jaw was about to unhinge.

"Go on," it cooed, its voice low and mocking. "Cry. Beg. Do what you always do. No one's watching. No one cares. Just you, me, and this beautiful disaster you've made of yourself."

And then, slowly, agonisingly, it reached up with its free hand, the one not clawing at Ana's face, and pressed one long, cold finger to her lips. It was gentle, almost tender, like a lover shushing her after a bad dream.

"But don't worry," it whispered, its grin splitting so wide now that the corners of its mouth cracked open, revealing slick, wet muscle beneath. "I'm not going anywhere. I'll always be here. After all..."

It paused, its black eyes narrowing, the final punchline poised on its tongue like a snake waiting to strike.

"...you're stuck with me forever."

Ana’s body convulsed as the reflection's laughter filled the hallway, a shrill, manic cackle that echoed off the walls, the sound bouncing around her skull, threatening to break her apart piece by piece.

Sat before her reflection, cornered in the hotel hallway like some bug trapped beneath a jar. It was one of those moments where you should scream, but the terror strips away the sound — no, not even that, it takes the urge to scream and buries it somewhere in your bones, leaving you mute and useless. She tried to cry, really gave it a go, but even the thought of summoning tears felt like a waste of the minuscule energy she had left.

Her reflection droned on about her flaws in a tone so casual, you’d think they were chatting over brunch.

“Oh, Ana, look at this stretch,” it giggled, pinching a bit of skin at her arm and pulling it away like it was nothing but elastic. “It’ll come right off if we tug hard enough, don’t you think?” It tugged again, and Ana shivered as her skin gave a little, the sensation sickening but dull, like poking at a numb bruise.

Ana’s mind was a storm. She felt raw and exposed, but too tired to even push back. How is that a drug literally made to numb you so spectacularly failed? Maybe she was beyond help, beyond even the mercy of heroin, which was saying a lot. She’d found herself in the junkie hall of fame: The One Girl Even the Drugs Couldn’t Save. A tragic fucking headline, that.

She watched her reflection twist and shift, its body jerking with gleeful, jerky motions. Its skin hung wrong, like someone had ironed it but forgot to get out all the creases. “You should’ve just stuck with drinking, love,” it chirped, practically skipping now. “But you had to be fancy. Now look at you. A deflated balloon, all skin and bones, rattling around, pretending there’s more left to you than there really is.”

Ana couldn’t lift her legs. They felt like they were filled with cement or, better yet, someone had stitched lead weights into her muscles while she wasn’t looking. She didn’t even bother trying anymore; her body was the heavy anchor tying her down to this reality.

Ana rolled her eyes to the ceiling. Heroin, she thought bitterly. Such a scam. If anything, it had made everything worse. The euphoria had faded so quickly, leaving her raw, stripped bare, and even more broken than she’d started. She had half a mind to write a scathing Yelp review: 1 star. Numbs you just long enough to let your demons catch up, then leaves you alone with them in a hallway full of bad lighting and worse company.

Her eyelids drooped as the reflection’s screeching voice became a background hum. The creature leaned closer, whispering in her ear now, its breath cold and foul. “I’ll always be here, you know. Always. No matter where you run. No matter what you shoot into your veins. You can’t outrun yourself, Ana.”

She was so cold. The kind of cold that settles in your bones, making your body stiff, unyielding. But sleep, sleep seemed appropriate. She let her eyes flutter shut, her body slowly sinking into the floor. Maybe if she just rested here long enough, if she kept perfectly still, she could slip into a kind of forever sleep.

The reflection crouched beside her, running its spidery fingers through Ana’s hair in a mockery of tenderness. “Oh, you’re going to sleep now?” it asked, voice dripping with sweet, poisonous amusement. “Sure, darling. Rest up. I’ll be here when you wake up. Or better yet — maybe I’ll just take over while you’re out. You know, stretch my legs a little. Really live in this skin for a while.”

Ana’s lips twitched, almost a smile. Do it, she thought hazily. Maybe it would do a better job of being her than she ever had.

Her breath slowed, body sinking further into the dark, the cold pressing in. Somewhere, distantly, she could still hear the creature whispering its sick little promises into her ear.

But Ana was finally at peace, smiling at the absurdity of it all. Maybe this was it. Maybe this was the closest she’d ever get to serenity. Not in life, but in letting go.

The lights above flickered once more, and then the hotel hallway plunged into total darkness.

Chapter Eleven

Ana Leighs

“I don’t know what happened,” Lila’s voice floated through the haze, distant, or maybe it was close, Ana couldn’t really tell. She wasn’t interested enough to find out. Her body felt like a damp rag, heavy and limp, but her mind was teetering on the edge of waking.

“She was in the bathroom, just next to me,” Lila kept blubbering, her voice cracking in that way that grated on Ana’s nerves. “She promised she’d stay there. And then I go to check on her, and she’s just... gone. Please tell me she’s okay. Please.”

Ugh, Ana thought. Do I really have to deal with this right now? Maybe she could just pretend to sleep a little longer. The whole scene sounded like something from a bad after-school special: tragic, overwrought, and frankly boring. Lila would probably cry, maybe hug her, and spew some heartfelt garbage about how frightened for her life she’d been. As if.

“She’s stable and breathing. She’s just asleep right now,” a new voice said, one that Ana could only assume belonged to a medic, or maybe hotel staff, though she wasn’t about to open her eyes to check.

“Well, when will she wake up?” Lila asked, her voice a mix of frantic and whiny — an impressive combination.

“Hard to say. But at least she’s finally getting some rest — nothing like a little heroin to help with that.” The medic let out a short, dry laugh, but Lila just squinted her eyes at him in disdain.

“Can we at least get her into her bed? She must be so uncomfortable,” Lila pressed on, like she was advocating for a dying saint rather than some girl who’d just passed out in a hallway after doing heroin.

For fuck’s sake, Lila, Ana thought. I’ve slept on floors before. It’s fine. It’s not a goddamn crucifixion.

“Of course. I’m just getting more people in to help move her safely.”

Safe. Right. Ana wasn’t sure she’d ever felt safe a day in her life, but hey, at least she was going to get a free ride back to bed. As she lay there, limp and unresponsive, she couldn’t help but get a little miffed at the idea of more people coming to lift her. Am I really that heavy? she wondered, her pride pricked.

But then, just as quickly, the thought soured. Why the fuck do I care about my weight right now? She had just survived a whole heroin nightmare that involved being haunted by some warped, unhinged version of herself. And yet, here she was, getting defensive over whether she was too heavy for a medic to lift without backup. Priorities, Ana, she scolded herself. Jesus.

Moments later, she felt herself being lifted onto what she assumed was a medic mover, the kind they use to transport people who’ve overdosed or gotten into some other equally pathetic situation. They wheeled her towards the bedroom, placing her carefully onto the bed like she was some fragile china doll. How considerate, she thought, sarcastically, as if she hadn’t just flopped around like a ragdoll during whatever the hell had happened last night.

“I won’t be arrested, will I?” Lila’s voice broke through again, desperate. Ana, eyes still closed, mentally rolled her eyes so hard she was surprised they didn’t pop out of her skull. Really, Lila? She could practically hear the wheels of Lila’s guilt-ridden brain spinning, calculating the odds of self-preservation versus any genuine concern for Ana.

“No, we’re here to make sure she’s okay. It’s better you called. This could’ve ended much worse,” the medic reassured her.

“Oh, okay. I’m sorry,” Lila muttered. Sorry for herself, Ana thought, or sorry for me? The answer didn’t matter. In Lila’s world, everything was always about Lila. But it wasn’t like Ana was going to point that out right now. Maybe tomorrow, if she still had the energy.

The world kept spinning, though. Even if Ana didn’t.

Ana shut down again after that. Not consciously, more like her body made the executive decision to power off like an overworked, glitchy old laptop. For hours, she lay there, dead weight under the covers, while Lila hovered beside her, half-expecting her to just die. It wouldn’t be the first time Lila had sat by someone waiting for them to either wake up or flatline. In her druggie years, Lila had gotten that close to death plenty of times herself, so this wasn’t new.

It must’ve been around five p.m. when Ana finally stirred, consciousness creeping back like an unwelcome hangover.

"Ana?" Lila's voice broke through the haze, as though she hadn’t been sitting there like a grim reaper stand-in all afternoon. Ana blinked blearily, squinting at the dimly lit hotel room. She could make out Lila’s face, pale and worn, like she’d aged a decade in the last few hours.

"Oh, thank fucking God. Holy shit," Lila gasped, collapsing against the bed as if she had been holding her breath for hours. So dramatic, Ana thought, though her limbs still felt like they’d been filled with wet cement.

"Have you been here this whole time?" Ana asked, her voice like sandpaper.

"I was scared shitless, Ana. I didn’t want you to die on me," Lila said, her words edged with the kind of frantic guilt that Ana had no energy to deal with right now.

"I didn’t overdose or anything," Ana replied flatly. "I’m fine."

"It doesn’t just take an overdose to kill you," Lila snapped, because of course she’d know that kind of depressing, encyclopaedic drug knowledge.

"I know, but I’m fine. I promise." Ana forced the words out, though a part of her was starting to wonder if she’d ever actually be fine again.

"Okay, good. I’m sorry," Lila said, her voice cracking.

Ana sighed, not even bothering to look at her. "Why’re you sorry?"

"Because I literally fed that shit to you," Lila said, her eyes wide and frantic, like she was expecting Ana to either slap her or forgive her on the spot. "It was my fault."

Oh God, not this again, Ana thought. The last thing she needed right now was to play martyr for Lila’s guilty conscience. The truth was, it wasn’t Lila’s fault. If Ana hadn’t pretended to be cool with doing drugs, if she hadn’t practically begged Lila to relapse and buy the heroin in the first place, they wouldn’t be here. This was my fuck-up, Ana thought, but she wasn’t about to admit that aloud. Guilt was heavy enough without having to share it.

"It’s fine, Lila. I forgive you," Ana said, as casually as if they were talking about a minor inconvenience, like Lila had spilled coffee on her, not helped her smoke heroin. Forgiveness was easier than unpacking the whole mess. Let Lila believe it was her fault — it made everything simpler.

"I’m never letting you touch heroin again," Lila said, in that overbearing tone that reeked of resolution.

"You don’t have to tell me twice," Ana muttered.

"How the fuck did you even end up at the end of the hallway?" Lila asked, her voice teetering between confusion and amusement, like it was some whimsical mystery.

"I wanted to go on a walk," Ana deadpanned.

"Girl, literally never do that shit with heroin! It’s like a trap. All of a sudden, you can’t move, and you’re so sleepy—"

"Yeah, I know. I experienced it," Ana cut her off, her voice as dry as her cracked lips.

"Sorry," Lila muttered again, shrinking under Ana’s glare.

"Stop fucking saying sorry," Ana snapped, her irritation finally bubbling to the surface. Lila winced, like a scolded puppy, and didn’t say anything else. Good. The room fell into an awkward silence, thick with unspoken tension and the smell of sweat.

"Well, I’m gonna shower," Lila finally announced, trying to sound casual but failing miserably. "I’ve got that interview in an hour."

Of course, she does, Ana thought.

Lila had a knack for making even the worst situations about her. Ana didn’t respond, didn’t care. The idea of a celebrity interview, or anything, for that matter, seemed as far away as Mars. All Ana wanted was to go back to sleep and skip not just this day, but maybe a few more. Hell, if she could sleep until she was someone else entirely, that’d be great too.

Chapter Twelve

Ana Leighs

A few weeks later, it was August, and Maine had transformed into more of a sweaty, humid hellscape. Ana had little to no clothes appropriate for the heat. She preferred the cold, when she could bury herself in layers and trap her skin beneath fabrics. In the cold, she could pretend that if her skin started shrivelling off her bones, it wouldn’t matter. No one could see beneath the sweaters, coats, and scarves she swaddled herself in like some twisted security blanket. But now? Summer left her exposed — raw, like meat left out to spoil in the sun.

Ana had finally started writing for Kylie. But, of course, none of her pieces made much of a splash. Mostly, her work came back riddled with condescending critiques, things like, This doesn’t really make sense, or Is the depressing tone really necessary?

She found it was.

People loved to read sad shit. It made them feel seen, validated in their misery. Ana knew this because that’s why she read. It wasn’t that she wanted to feel less alone — loneliness was a constant for her, like a stain that wouldn’t wash out. But when other people talked about how messed-up their lives were, it made her feel acknowledged. Maybe she wasn’t crazy after all. Maybe, just maybe, she was part of some secret club of the damned, where everyone else was faking normalcy just as hard as she was. Then again, she might actually be insane. Who’s to say?

When you’re surrounded by people who make it clear that they don’t get you — and never will — it’s comforting to find validation in darker places. Not that it helped. Most of her writing didn’t even make it past Kylie. And even though she made a note not to get on her bad side, Kylie had developed a very clear disdain for Ana. The notes were always the same, written in that annoyingly peppy font. "Girl, seriously, we don’t post shit like this. Illume is about uplifting women, not making them question the void."

Ana would reply, equally as passive-aggressive, "But isn’t it uplifting to let women who feel like shit know that it’s okay to feel like shit sometimes?"

Kylie’s responses were always short and snappy, like: "No."

There wasn’t much room for debate after that. It was a losing battle, trying to pitch her ‘depressing’ pieces to a site that seemed obsessed with Pinterest-worthy positivity. Ana had been trying to get them to publish her piece about how life’s abnormalities — stuff like skin falling off or existential dread — were part of the human experience. Sure, it wasn’t exactly light reading, but wasn’t it better to be honest than to pretend everything was always sunshine and feminist manifestos?

Apparently, Kylie disagreed. "We’re here to empower, not make people think too hard about how fucked-up life can be," she had written in her last email, as if Ana’s purpose in life was to ruin everyone else’s day with a dose of reality.

Ana didn’t care. "Empowerment" was such a hollow word, anyway. It’s what people said when they wanted you to stop talking about your trauma and start slapping on some bullshit affirmations instead.

But as much as she hated Kylie’s chirpy tone and her refusal to engage with anything remotely dark, there was no denying the small, annoying fact that Kylie wasn't entirely wrong. Ana’s writing was dark, maybe a little too dark for the platform. It read like therapy sessions gone wrong, streams of consciousness that made her sound like she was having a personal crisis on paper — which, to be fair, she kind of was.

Still, she thought it was unfair. Women were allowed to be angry, right? To be messed up and to admit they weren’t okay? Why did everything have to be wrapped up with a bow, made to seem like empowerment came from just getting over it? Some of them weren’t going to get over it. Some of them, like Ana, were never going to fix themselves, because maybe there was nothing left to fix.

She sent Kylie another draft, this one titled A Case for Depression: Why Sometimes It’s Better to Feel Like Shit. It was rejected within ten minutes.

"I want to start out by saying I appreciate the effort you put into your work, Ana."

Kylie’s voice was that special brand of corporate cheer — high-pitched and overly friendly, like she was selling Ana on her own demise. Ana had been summoned into this ‘meeting,’ which was pitched as a group discussion but was, in fact, more of a one-on-one scolding session. Typical.

"Right, thanks," Ana replied flatly, already sensing where this was going.

"But..."

Oh, there it was. Cue the inevitable takedown.

"It’s just getting too much," Kylie continued, her eyes widening in a way that suggested Ana was an errant child in need of correction. "This is an internship, not your lifelong career. So when we ask for something, we expect it how we want it."

Ana nodded, doing her best to look interested. "I’m just trying something different," she said, knowing full well Kylie didn’t care about different. Kylie cared about palatable. Marketable.

"You’ve tried it, over and over," Kylie shot back. “Unfortunately, it’s nothing special right now, so we don’t want a ‘flair of Ana.’”

Wow. Rude. Ana bit back a smirk. "I understand that—"

"No, I don’t think you do." Kylie’s smile was gone now, replaced with the cold, sharp edge of someone who had power and knew it. "Last week, I asked for a simple piece. Simple. Something generic, something women would want to read to feel good. I gave you a broad idea so you could add a little of your flair. And you still made it into something out of a horror novel."

Ana had to try really hard not to laugh. Because Kylie wasn’t wrong. It was funny, how every time she was given a prompt, she couldn’t help but turn it into something that crawled under your skin and made you itch. Honestly, it was becoming a personal game of hers, seeing how far she could push these vanilla, uplift-everyone-with-pink-glitter-and-inspirational-quotes editors.

"You literally sent me a piece on cannibalism, Ana," Kylie continued, exasperated. "Fucking cannibalism."

Ana raised her eyebrows. "Well, clearly, you didn’t read it all then."

Kylie looked like she wanted to throw something. "I didn’t have to. Why would Illume print a piece on cannibalism? What’s empowering about that?"

"It wasn’t about literal cannibalism, Kylie." Ana couldn’t resist. "It was a metaphor. About how women crave the idea of consuming their partners. You know, like a symbol of love? Devouring someone whole? The way we want to possess each other completely?"

Kylie’s face was frozen in a mixture of horror and disbelief. "I can’t even... I can’t even reply to that bullshit."

"But it’s true!" Ana leaned forward, a wicked grin stretching across her lips. "It’s different, innovative. Dark, sure, but still about love. And women love love. I’m just giving them what they want. I’m practically doing you a favour."

Kylie looked like she might pass out. Or call security. "We don’t want quirky, Ana. This isn’t some edgy underground zine. This is reality. Women want to feel good, not think about..." she trailed off, gesturing vaguely with her hand as if the very concept of cannibalism would soil the pristine air of the office.

Ana sighed dramatically, reclining in her chair. "You’re missing the point. It’s not about gore. It’s about connection. It’s about how intimacy is a form of consumption, how loving someone so much makes you want to tear into their flesh and make them a part of you forever. Just basic girlhood stuff."

Kylie’s eye twitched. "That’s not basic girlhood."

"I mean, speak for yourself. I know I’ve had that urge," Ana said sweetly, enjoying the way Kylie’s face was slowly draining of colour.

"Jesus Christ, Ana." Kylie pinched the bridge of her nose, the universal gesture for ‘I’m done with this conversation.’ "We need you to stop with the creepy shit. We’re not here to publish your personal manifesto. We want articles about uplifting women. You know, things like how to manage work-life balance or self-care routines, not... whatever the hell you’re doing."

Ana twirled a lock of hair around her finger, staring at Kylie with wide, innocent eyes. "So... you’re saying no cannibalism? Not even a little bit?"

"Not even a little bit," Kylie deadpanned.

"Got it," Ana said, making a mental note to submit an article on romantic dismemberment next week.

"Listen," Kylie sighed, her tone softening slightly, probably in an effort to seem less like a dictator. "I’m trying to help you. You’re talented, but this... this darkness, this... horror stuff — it’s not what we’re about. It’s not what women want."

Ana blinked slowly. Not what women want? She could feel the rage simmering beneath her skin, threatening to bubble over.

"Kylie," she said, her voice sugary sweet. "If you honestly think women don’t want to read about their deepest, darkest desires — if you think they want to read another goddamn article on work-life balance — then you’ve got bigger problems than my metaphors."

Kylie just stared at her, speechless.

Ana smiled, wide and toothy, like a predator right before the kill. "I’ll keep it in mind for next time. Thanks for the feedback."

Kylie let out a long, exasperated sigh, tapping her pen against the desk like she was trying to restrain herself from throwing it at Ana’s face. "Listen, Ana, I’m going to be straight with you. You’ve got one last shot here. One. If you don’t pull it together and give us something we can actually publish, you’re back to the piss jobs — hell, we might even end your internship altogether."

Ana blinked, completely unfazed. "The piss jobs? You mean like writing the ‘Top 10 Ways to Keep Your Husband Happy in Bed’ articles? Or the ones about how to cut carbs without losing your will to live? Those piss jobs?"

Kylie’s eyes narrowed. "Yes. Those jobs. The ones that keep the lights on here. The ones that, apparently, you think are beneath you."

"Oh no, not beneath me. I just don’t think my spirit could survive it. Like, spiritually. I might literally shrivel up like a rotting banana peel if I had to write that garbage."

"That’s what I’m talking about!" Kylie threw her hands up. "This attitude. This... superiority complex. You think you're too good for the content we’re putting out, but you're not. No one is. And until you figure that out, you’re going to keep having these problems."

Ana smiled, the type of smile that said she was far more amused by this situation than she had any right to be. "Kylie, babe, I’m not too good for your content. I’m just too much. There’s a difference. I don’t belong in these watered-down, Pinterest-board articles you’ve got going. I’m a hurricane, and you’re asking me to be a gentle breeze."

Kylie blinked, her mouth opening and closing like a fish. "You’re — what?"

"A hurricane," Ana repeated, dead serious. "And you want me to write about yoga poses that heal the soul. Do you see the disconnect here?"

"Okay, first of all," Kylie said, leaning back in her chair, visibly trying to keep it together, "I’m not your ‘babe.’ Second of all, you’re on thin ice, Ana. If you don’t rein it in, there won’t be any more chances. We’re a magazine, not a therapist’s office for your deep, nihilistic thoughts. Write what we need, or that’s it. You’re gone. Understand?"

Ana considered this, her fingers absentmindedly tracing the edge of Kylie’s pristine desk. "So... what you’re saying is... if I don’t write something with enough bland optimism to keep the general public from questioning their fragile existences, I’m out?"

Kylie stared at her. "Yes."

"Got it," Ana said, nodding like she was taking mental notes. "So, like, maybe an article on how women can embrace their inner darkness but only in ways that make them look cute on Instagram?"

"Jesus, Ana, no—"

"Or, wait, wait," Ana continued, ignoring her, "maybe a piece on how self-care is really just emotional capitalism, but with a fun twist, like ‘Buy These $50 Face Masks to Save Your Soul!’ You know, really empowering shit."

Kylie’s knuckles were white now, her pen trembling in her hand. "I’m not joking around here, Ana. This is serious. You’re running out of time."

Ana leaned back, crossing her arms, smirking. "I know. And it’s adorable that you think I’m the problem here."

Kylie blinked. "You are the problem. This is your job. You have to follow the rules if you want to stay here."

Ana paused, letting the silence hang in the air for a beat. "Kylie, do you honestly think I want to stay here?"

Kylie’s mouth opened and closed, at a complete loss for words.

Ana shrugged. "I mean, sure, it’s cute and all — this whole gig. But if you think my lifelong dream is to churn out articles on how to make avocado toast sexy or pretend like every woman on this planet isn't secretly screaming into the void of societal expectations... then, yeah, maybe I am in the wrong place."

Kylie’s face hardened. "So, you are saying you don’t want to be here."

"I’m saying, Kylie, that whether I’m here or not, I win. I’m already dead inside. You think you’re threatening me with oblivion? I’ve been living in it since birth."

Kylie pinched the bridge of her nose again, her patience clearly on its last thread. "Fucking hell, look, you want a prompt? Here’s your final shot. We’re doing a piece on the theme of ‘Empowered Women in the Workplace.’ Something uplifting, you know? Inspirational. We want readers to feel good about being women in a world that’s... challenging, to say the least. Nothing too dark, no horror undertones, and definitely no metaphors about cannibalism."

Ana smirked, nodding like she was really paying attention. "Empowered women. Got it. So, like, a piece about how women can survive the corporate machine without getting sucked into a black hole of despair?"

Kylie glared. "No. Not despair. Hope, Ana. We’re selling hope here."

"Right, right," Ana said, fighting the urge to roll her eyes. "I’m on board. Hope, power, workplace triumph. All the things that make women feel like they can conquer the world with a smile and a shitty cup of office coffee."

Kylie looked sceptical, like she couldn’t tell if Ana was mocking her or finally getting it. "I’m serious. This is your last chance. Give us something we can actually publish."

Ana raised her hands in mock surrender. "Hey, I’m serious too. I’ll write the most empowering, uplifting piece you’ve ever seen. People will read it and feel like they can climb the corporate ladder in stilettos while fending off casual sexism with nothing but a glittering smile."

Kylie stared at her for a moment, then finally sighed, clearly defeated. "Fine. I’ll expect it on my desk by next Friday. If you screw this up, Ana, you’re done. No more second chances."

Ana nodded, a shadow of a grin still playing at the corners of her lips. "Friday. Got it. I'll make sure it’s positively radiant."

Kylie stood, shoving her chair back with more force than necessary, clearly exhausted from the entire ordeal. "I mean it, Ana. No bullshit this time."

"Absolutely none," Ana promised, placing a hand on her heart with faux sincerity. "Scout's honour."

Kylie rolled her eyes, collecting her things. "Just... try. For once."

For a moment, she considered the options. She could, of course, sabotage this one last chance, write something so unhinged that Kylie would have no choice but to fire her. It’d be easy. Tempting even. But then... maybe it’d be more fun to play along. To give them something so "empowering" it would make their heads spin — something that would hit all the right notes, but still have that undertone of darkness Ana couldn’t shake.

She smiled, a little too wide, a little too wicked.

Friday was going to be interesting.

Is your mother allowed updates on her only daughter’s life?

The text appeared on Ana’s phone screen, glaring white against the dimness of her room. She was stoned, of course — because lately, sleep only came with the dullness of being high enough to muffle the screaming demons that insisted on following her around, day in, day out. She groaned. Why the fuck was her mother texting her now? Why ever? Why pretend to care when Ana knew damn well her mother’s concern came packaged with thinly veiled judgement and martyrdom?

She typed back sluggishly, her fingers slow but steady.

Your only daughter is fine and thriving.

It was a lie, obviously. She was neither fine nor thriving — just rotting from the inside out like some forgotten fruit at the back of a refrigerator, left to spoil and fester. The truth would’ve been, 'Your only daughter is currently zoning out in a fog of existential dread and weed because it’s the only thing that makes life bearable.' But mothers don’t need to know that.

She tossed the phone aside and stared at the ceiling, tracing the cracks like they were some kind of constellation of her fucked-up psyche.

If Ana could go back, she wouldn’t bother playing the game. She wouldn’t have indulged her mother’s fantasies of a perfect daughter. The kind who said “please” and “thank you” and kept her clothes pristine and white like a sacrifice to the gods of domesticity. Ana would’ve slouched more. Worn the same clothes for weeks. Played video games until her eyes bled and read the dirtiest, trashiest smut she could find online. She would’ve skipped breakfast and rotted in bed all day, growing pale and soft under the weight of her own laziness.

But she didn’t. Because, once upon a time, she had believed that being a good daughter was her birthright. That loving her mother — loving the woman who birthed her and then squeezed her into a suffocating mould of what a “perfect girl” should be — was part of her DNA. That’s how they get you, right? Conditioning, it’s called. You’re born, they love-bomb you for a few years, and then slowly, they peel away everything real until you’re just an echo of what they want.

Ana sighed, her mind a haze of memories — like flipping through an old photo album and realising every picture was fake. Manufactured happiness. Forced smiles. Holidays that ended with her mother crying into the sink and Ana’s father hiding in his study with a bottle of whiskey.

Funny how that works, she mused. When you’re young, you think that hatred for a parent is the kind that’s wrapped up in regret. Like those cheesy movie moments where the rebellious daughter screams, “I hate you!” but deep down, you know she doesn’t. But for Ana it was different. She didn’t hate her mother in that tragic, star-crossed way. She hated her the way you hate a parasite, something that latches onto you and drains you dry, but you’re too polite to pull it off.

Ana craved the hatred. She bathed in it. It felt like armour, a thick, protective shell. She resented her mother for moulding her into something brittle and delicate, something easily broken. And that rage? It was hers, one of the only things she had left that her mother hadn’t taken.

The phone buzzed again. Another message from the woman who somehow still believed she had the right to check in, like some prison warden calling to make sure her favourite inmate hadn’t escaped. Ana stared at the glowing screen but didn’t open it. Couldn’t be bothered. It was exhausting, thinking about the past — the way her younger self had once genuinely loved her mother. Or thought she had. Maybe it wasn’t love. Maybe it was just fear dressed up in pretty pink bows and Sunday dresses.

Ana sat up, the room spinning slightly as the weed fogged her brain further. She grinned darkly, feeling the familiar weight of bitterness in her chest. She had once loved her mother, or rather, the idea of her. The sanitised, picture-perfect mother in her childhood fantasies, not the real one. The real one, with her sharp tongue and tighter-than-death grip on control. The one who’d crush Ana under the weight of her expectations and call it love.

Funny how love can sour into hatred like milk left too long in the fridge. It curdled, and now it made Ana gag. Every text, every forced conversation was just another reminder that she could never go back to pretending everything was okay. That the love she’d once felt for her mother had rotted away, leaving nothing but this sickening, festering resentment.

'Thriving,' she’d told her. What a fucking joke. Ana was anything but. If anything, she was decomposing in real-time, a slow decay that only she seemed to notice. But then again, wasn't that what her mother had wanted all along? A pretty, porcelain daughter with no rough edges, no rebellious streak. Something to display, perfect and hollow.

Well, congratulations, Mom. You got what you wanted. Ana was empty now, just like you raised her to be.

"You good, Ana?" Lila asked from across the room, her voice slicing through the fog of smoke like an unwelcome alarm.

"Mhm," Ana replied, exhaling a lazy cloud of weed that curled toward the ceiling like a ghost making its final escape.

"You sure?" Lila pressed, leaning forward, clearly not picking up on Ana’s expertly honed 'drop it or I'll bite your head off' vibe.

Ana shot her a look. That look. The one that said, seriously, don't ask me again or I’ll combust, taking you and your concern with me.

Lila threw up her hands in surrender. "Okay, okay. Just making sure, girl. You smoke 24/7, and I hear nothing from you except, I don’t know, vague death rattles or the occasional grunt."

"And?" Ana deadpanned, blowing out another puff of smoke.

"And..." Lila dragged out the word, giving her best concerned-friend face. "It’s worrying. I’m being the worried, concerned friend right now."

Ana groaned theatrically, rolling her eyes so hard she nearly tipped off the bed. "Well, can you be the worried and concerned friend from, like, over there?" she waved vaguely toward the door. "Preferably far away from my personal space and my life choices."

"You don’t have to push me away, you know?" Lila said, folding her arms, looking too sincere for Ana’s liking. It made her stomach churn. "I get it — you’re moody, broody, and, like, deeply existential or whatever. But we both know this is deeper than your 'no one understands me' bullshit."

"Why?" Ana sneered, shifting her weight on the bed. "Because you, let me guess, know everything about suffering and can’t wait to projectile-vomit your unsolicited wisdom onto me?"

"No," Lila said coolly, not taking the bait. "Because I’ve already seen you at your worst, like, all the time, and yet I’m still here. So, what does it even matter anyway?"

Ana opened her mouth to deliver a biting retort but stopped herself short. She hated that Lila had a point. Worse, she hated that she almost said that out loud, nearly admitting to something so… pathetic. Instead, she settled on a grumbled, "I hate that you have a point."

Lila snorted, laughing like she’d won some invisible competition. "Exactly. So, are you okay?"

"Just because I agreed with you doesn’t mean I have to answer your nosy little questions."

"True," Lila shrugged. "But, you know, don’t feel like shit if you ever decide you need to talk or whatever. I’m here."

Ana squinted at her, recoiling as if Lila had just vomited rainbows and sunshine all over the room. The sincerity was nauseating.

"God, have you never had an endearing moment with anyone ever? Why does kindness physically make you cringe?" Lila laughed again.

"Maybe because I’ve never had an endearing moment, literally ever," Ana deadpanned, her voice dry enough to crack the air.

Lila rolled her eyes, not letting up. "Well, I’m trying to give you one right now, genius."

"Right, but I’m rejecting it, so not really."

"My God, you are actually impossible," Lila sighed, falling back onto her bed, defeated but clearly still clinging to the delusion that Ana could be salvaged.

"Mhm," Ana hummed, taking another slow drag, as if to underline how little she cared.

"You don’t eat, you don’t talk, you drink all night, and still don’t talk. And now you’re smoking all night, and guess what? Still not talking. You never say anything. Do you even know how to communicate? It’s like being friends with a haunted mannequin." She rubbed her temples, clearly exasperated.

Ana gave her a sideways glance, finally pulling the blunt from her lips long enough to speak. “Why would I waste my breath? What’s there to say? Life’s shit, we all know it. What do you want me to do? Spill my guts in some emotional breakdown where I cry, and we hug it out?” She scoffed. “Spare me. If I wanted to relive every single trauma, I’d call my therapist, or, hell, my mother.”

"Well, I’m not asking you to have a breakdown, but it’d be nice if you showed some signs of human emotion once in a while."

"Human emotion is overrated," Ana muttered. "All it does is make you weak. Or dependent on other people. And I think we both know that’s not really my thing."

Lila sighed. "Look, I get it. You’ve got this whole 'fuck everyone, I’m an island' thing going on. But it’s not cute anymore. You’re rotting in here."

Ana smirked, her voice flat and emotionless as she blew smoke in Lila’s direction. "Yeah, well, we all rot in the end."

Lila threw her pillow at Ana’s head. "You’re seriously annoying me."

Ana caught the pillow, smirking as if she’d just won a minor victory. "Mhm." Then she took another drag, leaning back, her eyes half-lidded, smoke curling around her like some grim shroud.

Lila groaned dramatically, flopping back onto her bed. "One day, Ana, I’m going to get you to open up. One day."

"Yeah," Ana muttered. "Good luck with that."

Ana lay back, letting the smoke curl lazily from her lips, a veil between her and the world, but it wasn't enough to block out Lila's incessant presence.

“Kylie’s probably going to fire me after this week, anyway,” she muttered, half hoping the blunt statement would put an end to the conversation.

Lila sat up, interested. “Why? What did you do?”

“Do?” Ana smirked, her voice dripping with indifference. “More like what didn’t I do. She wants a feel-good, inspirational piece about women in the workplace. Something that’ll give them a warm, fuzzy glow. I can’t be fucked to write it. I mean, who cares? Who's buying that fake bullshit anymore? If she knew half the things the women here say behind each other’s backs—" Ana trailed off, snickering darkly. “Anyway, if I send in another horror-infused metaphor about cannibalistic self-love or whatever, she’s going to throw my ass straight back to those shit jobs. Or just end my internship altogether.”

"Sounds like you’re really gunning for that unemployment line,” Lila said, raising an eyebrow.

“Like I give a shit. I’m too far gone to play their little game. Uplift the girlies, sugarcoat reality, sprinkle glitter on the festering corpse of societal expectations. It’s nauseating. Like, give me a break. I’m not built to write glorified Pinterest quotes.”

“But you need this internship, don’t you? I mean, you’re not exactly rolling in money, Ana.”

Ana rolled her eyes, annoyed by the obvious. “Yeah, well, whatever. I’d rather starve than write that saccharine shit. Maybe I’ll do one of those ironic GoFundMe pages. ‘Failed writer seeks financial help to maintain her weed habit.’” She snickered at her own joke, the smoke catching in her throat as she let out a bitter laugh.

"You know, not everything has to be a fight. Why can’t you just... play the game for a little bit? Write the piece, get the credit, then you can write whatever the hell you want later.”

Ana shot her a withering look. “Because I have principles, Lila. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh, please,” Lila groaned. “This isn’t some grand ethical stand you’re making. It’s just you being stubborn and dramatic. As usual.”

Ana was about to fire back when Lila’s face lit up with that insufferable look she always got when the conversation turned to her favourite topic: herself. Ana internally groaned, knowing what was coming next. Sure enough, Lila shifted gears, her voice suddenly giddy.

“Anyway, enough about your impending unemployment. Did I tell you about my interview with this other ridiculously famous actor this week?”

Ana’s face visibly stiffened, her eyes glazing over. There it was. The celebrity worship, the name-dropping. She could already feel the walls closing in.

“Yeah, him,” Lila repeated, as if saying his name would trigger some hidden well of enthusiasm in Ana. “It was incredible! He’s just so real, you know? So down-to-earth. We talked about everything — his process, his upcoming roles… I can’t even believe I got the chance to do it. I mean, I’ve met celebs before, but he’s on another level.”

Ana nodded, or at least she performed the action of nodding. She tuned out, allowing Lila’s voice to wash over her like background noise. Maybe she could survive this if she just pretended to care long enough to escape.

“He even said my questions were really insightful,” Lila continued, clearly basking in the glow of her own perceived brilliance. “I swear, I think we vibed on a whole other level. Like, I get why people say he’s one of the most talented actors of our generation. There’s just this… depth to him, you know?”

Ana’s mind wandered off to more interesting thoughts — like the slow, inevitable heat death of the universe, or how much it would cost to move to an isolated cabin in the woods where no one could ever find her again. Lila kept going, her voice turning into background noise, like the buzzing of a particularly persistent fly. “Blah, blah, blah, the actor this, blah, blah, so humble, blah, blah inspiring—”

Finally, Lila paused, expecting a response.

“Mhm,” Ana hummed, her stock answer to anything she couldn’t be bothered to acknowledge. She didn’t even look up, just took another drag.

Lila sighed dramatically. “You’re actually impossible.”

“I know,” Ana said with a half-smirk, her eyes still locked on some distant point beyond the ceiling. Anything was better than engaging with Lila’s ego.

“Well, one day you’re going to run out of smoke to hide behind, and then what?” Lila asked, her tone edging on serious again.

Ana shrugged, unfazed. “Then I guess I’ll see what’s left.”

The next two days were filled with smoke, booze, and half-hearted writing attempts. Ana’s routine was simple: smoke, write, drink, stare blankly at the screen, smoke again, drink some more. The whole empowered women in the workplace prompt felt like a sick joke.

She wasn’t about to trash feminism — obviously, she was all for it. She was a woman, after all. But the idea of writing a sparkly, motivational piece about women smashing glass ceilings? It made her want to gag.

She wasn’t here to be a performative feminist, a “bad feminist,” as people liked to say when you didn’t fall in line with every single woke ideal. And maybe she was one, who knew? But what was the point of writing about empowerment if you couldn’t talk about the dirt, the mess, the raw shit that made being a woman in this world feel like a battle fought with broken fingernails and bloody knuckles?

She wanted to write something real, something meaningful. But meaningful didn’t sell. Meaningful got your ass canned from unpaid internships, apparently. Kylie would have a stroke if Ana handed her anything that didn’t reek of hope and triumph. Empowerment, but make it digestible. Cover the rotting underbelly with Instagram-friendly captions. Anything remotely gritty, remotely honest? Dead on arrival.

Ana stared at the screen. She had two pages of Kylie-approved drivel — glowing words about sisterhood in corporate boardrooms and women breaking through invisible barriers. It was the kind of thing you’d read in a bathroom stall at a corporate seminar, right before your boss sends you an email at 2 a.m. asking if you could “just quickly” finish up a few tasks.

She groaned and took another drag from her joint, blowing out a cloud of smoke that twisted into the shape of the existential dread creeping up her spine. Bad feminist, her brain taunted again. And maybe it was right. Maybe she was a shit feminist, a shit writer, a shit person, all of the above. But that didn’t mean she wanted to write some saccharine fluff about women in power suits high-fiving each other over their seventh cup of coffee. She wanted to write about women like her. Women who were broken, messy, bad.

Her mind drifted back to Lila, who hadn’t even bothered coming back to the hotel room in two days. Probably out, snorting coke off someone’s filthy apartment floor and drinking herself into oblivion. Part of Ana felt relieved. Lila was exhausting, always trying to play therapist with her faux-concerned eyes and overdrawn lips. But then there was the gnawing guilt, the memory that the only reason Lila had spiralled this far was because of her. It was Ana who had talked her into smoking heroin, laughing as Lila’s naive hands fumbled with the foil.

Ana cursed under her breath. The guilt was always there, gnawing at her like a parasite. She had this incredible knack for fucking things up and then replaying it on a loop in her head, as if she could torture herself into being a better person. Spoiler alert: it didn’t work.

Her heart was an unforgiving bitch, and her brain was even worse. It didn’t forget anything. Every mistake, every shitty thing she had done, was imprinted in permanent ink across her psyche.

That was the problem. She was a shitty person. A bad fucking human. Soulless, almost. And here she was, typing out glittery words about empowerment when the truth was she felt like a fraud. What did she know about empowerment? The only power she had was the power to ruin everything she touched. If anyone deserved an essay, it was the women like her — women who didn’t feel like they should be empowered because they were fundamentally rotten. Women who sucked.

That’s the piece she wanted to write — about the bad women. The ones who knew they were trash and couldn’t be bothered to pretend otherwise. The ones who wanted to heal but couldn’t figure out how, because their trauma was stubborn, their wounds infected with years of resentment and self-loathing. Women whose skin should’ve been peeling off by now, but somehow still clung to their bones, as if even their bodies refused to let them fall apart properly.

She wanted to write about the kind of woman who had a demon following her everywhere, whispering in her ear, reminding her of every wrong she’d ever done. A woman like herself.

But that wouldn’t fly with Kylie. Kylie wanted something empowering. Something women could share on Facebook with captions like “#girlboss” and “We rise by lifting others.”

Ana wanted to write about women who couldn’t lift themselves out of bed, let alone lift anyone else.

Her fingers shook as she typed a few more half-hearted lines. “Empowered women uplift each other…”

Fuck, she couldn’t even finish the sentence without gagging. She wanted to write about women who didn’t deserve to be uplifted. Women who shouldn’t even be alive, but who clung to life out of sheer spite, too scared to die but too broken to live.

She took another hit, the smoke filling her lungs, dulling the edge of her thoughts. Her eyes glazed over as she stared at the screen. Maybe she was just better off dead. But then who would write about the bad women?

Kylie wanted empowering, so that’s what Ana would do — empowerment, with a twist of dread and rot. Women in the workplace? Sure, whatever. But in Ana’s mind, life was work. Existence itself felt like one long shift without breaks, so that was her excuse for bending the prompt.

She was going to write about what she knew best: decay.

There would be no cannibalism this time, so Kylie could sigh with relief. Ana smirked at the thought, remembering how Kylie had nearly passed out over her last “bold creative direction.” But this would still be dark — just not in the way Kylie feared. This darkness was real, lived-in. Not the kind that could be dismissed as artistic flair, but the kind that stuck to your bones like mildew.

The title she’d decided on now felt far better. “Women Who Are Fundamentally Rotten.”

Now that felt right. It made her want to sink her teeth into it, if she had anything left to chew on.

She began to type.

“We are sorry for acting the way we do. We try not to be a problem, not to upset anyone. But when you step on our tail, we whine. We punish ourselves for everything, until life itself becomes our punishment. Every smile we force feels like breaking bones.”

Yeah, Kylie might just take Ana’s life after reading this. But why couldn’t these things be said? Why did everything have to be hopeful? Why did empowerment always have to wear a smile? Ana was sick of it. Why couldn’t the failing women feel seen, too? The ones who were cracked open, spilling themselves across the floor, but still dragging themselves through the mess? Why couldn’t her demographic have a piece in these glossy, airbrushed magazines? Why was the message always “be strong,” “rise above,” or whatever other patronising nonsense people fed women as if that made life bearable? Why wasn’t there space for the ones who couldn’t rise? The ones who were rotting, decaying from the inside out, but were somehow still breathing?

Ana cracked her knuckles and kept going, the words spilling out with a vicious kind of glee. It’s a person’s greatest pain, she wrote, to be damaged yet desperate to remain tender. To keep their heart soft even when life has hardened the rest of them. To look in the mirror and see the face of someone who is too tired, too far gone, but too stubborn to die. To ache for softness but never find it, not even within themselves.

Her reflection, the evil face she used to know, had been missing since the heroin wore off that time ago. Now it was like looking into a blur whenever she glanced at a mirror — a shadow of herself, slipping further away. She blamed the weed this time, which is why she hadn’t put it down in days. Her brain cells might be shrivelling up, but so was the leech that had attached itself to her soul, feeding on her despair. She avoided mirrors now like they were haunted. She’d catch glimpses of herself in store windows or bathroom stalls, and it would feel like looking at a stranger wearing her skin.

She probably looked like shit anyway, she thought, laughing under her breath. That was the cost of being damaged. Eventually, it showed up on your face, in your eyes, in the way your skin clung too tight to your bones. The price of surviving too long in a body that didn’t know how to be at peace.

We are all just walking corpses, waiting for the day when we finally rot all the way through. We’ve spent our lives being told to be better — better than the men who hurt us, better than the world that bruises us. We’re told to rise above it, to transcend the pain, to find strength in the suffering. But what if we can’t? What if the only thing we can do is rot quietly and pray no one notices the smell?

Empowerment doesn’t look like what they tell you it does. It’s not standing tall and smiling through the tears. It’s crawling through the mud and knowing you’re never going to get clean. It’s realising the world doesn’t owe you kindness just because you’ve suffered enough. It’s looking in the mirror and accepting that maybe you’re the villain in your own story.

You want to know what empowerment really looks like? It’s being able to say, ‘Fuck you,’ to a world that keeps pushing you down and knowing it doesn’t make a difference. It’s the woman who goes to work every day hating herself but still shows up. It’s the one who doesn’t believe in healing, who doesn’t think she deserves it, but still drags her broken body through life anyway.

Maybe we’re not all warriors. Maybe we’re not all survivors. Maybe some of us are just wreckage, floating along the surface, too heavy to sink but too dead to swim. But that doesn’t mean we’re not still here.

Ana let out a dry laugh. There was no way Kylie would let this fly. This wasn’t the kind of empowerment that sold magazine covers or got the approval of Twitter feminists. This wasn’t a message that could be packaged neatly into a hashtag. But it was real. It was honest. It was for the women like her — too rotten, too far gone, but still here.

“And maybe that’s the problem,” she typed, “we’re so busy telling women to be strong, we never let them just be broken. We say, ‘Don’t give up,’ but sometimes, giving up is the only thing keeping us alive. Sometimes, empowerment looks like survival, and survival looks like shit. Sometimes, the strongest thing we can do is admit we’re weak.”

“Not all women are saints,” Ana continued, “some of us are sinners. Some of us are just trying to make it through without falling apart. And maybe that’s okay. Maybe that’s enough.”

Chapter Thirteen

Ana Leighs

FRIDAY.

Ana sat across from Kylie, slumped in the chair like a damp rag that had been wrung out one too many times. Her skin felt like paper, her hair hadn’t seen a brush in days, and the dark circles under her eyes gave her that special, haunted look. The kind that makes you wonder if the person in front of you is still fully human or just some husk animated by bitterness. But she was there for one reason: to watch Kylie read every single miserable line of the piece she’d poured her soul into, like some kind of twisted performance art.

Kylie, pristine as always, sat across from her desk with the piece in hand, flipping through pages with an exasperated sigh, pausing every now and then to give a perplexed look at a particularly sharp line. Ana could practically hear the cogs turning in her editor's head, her brow furrowed, lips pressed in a thin line as if the mere act of reading Ana’s words was a personal affront to her sensibilities.

Finally, Kylie set the pages down with a sigh so heavy it could’ve collapsed the roof. Ana waited, watching her with an almost morbid curiosity. Was this contemplation? Was Kylie — gasp — actually thinking?

"I mean…" Kylie started, and then stopped, her eyes darting to the ceiling as if the right words might be written up there in the fluorescent lighting.

Ana suppressed the urge to smirk. Was she witnessing a moment of genuine thought in the pristine, always-perfect Kylie? God, this was a gift. She wanted to lean in, poke, prod, ask how it felt to actually engage with your brain for once. But she wouldn’t jeopardise this moment.

Kylie blinked, her expression softening, as if she didn’t quite believe the words coming out of her own mouth. "It's quite... beautiful, actually."

Ana blinked, too. Beautiful? She had expected a slew of insults, maybe a banishment from the literary world altogether, not… whatever this was.

"Really?" Ana asked, her voice flat, but inside she felt that unfamiliar curl of something — maybe pride, maybe smug satisfaction, maybe just the adrenaline rush of finally catching someone off guard.

Kylie, still looking as though she’d accidentally eaten a rotten apple, nodded. "Yes, it’s... I don’t know, it felt real. But it still made me feel something other than despair." She said it like she was still processing the fact that Ana — Ana — had made her feel anything at all.

Ana leaned back in her chair, folding her arms. This was delicious. Watching Kylie wrestle with her own approval was better than any drug she’d ever tried.

"It’s dark," Kylie continued, eyes narrowing slightly. "Which I obviously didn’t ask for. But it just works. It works, Ana."

Ana almost laughed. "So, what are you saying?"

Kylie leaned forward, elbows on the desk, as if closing the gap would make this any less surreal. "I’m saying I want to give it a go."

Ana raised a brow. "You’re being serious?"

"Dead serious," Kylie said, with a grimace that implied she wasn’t entirely thrilled about that fact. "It’s different from anything we’ve ever published, but I just see it being talked about. It’s so sorrowful, but there’s something… hopeful in the way it leans into the despair. Like it gives people permission to be broken. If that makes any sense?"

Ana grinned. A wicked, toothy grin that probably made her look more like a demon than a writer. "I think that makes perfect sense."

Kylie waved her hand dismissively. "Don’t make me regret this already," she muttered, but Ana could tell she was already picturing the buzz this piece would generate. The controversy. The think pieces. The headlines.

Kylie was in it for the shock value, Ana knew that. But that was fine. Let her sell it however she wanted. The piece would get out there. The rotten women would be seen.

As Ana stood up to leave, she caught Kylie’s eye one last time. "You know," Ana said, voice low, "I didn’t expect this."

Kylie looked at her, weary. "Neither did I." Then, with a slight smile, she added, "But you’re still a pain in the ass."

"Wouldn’t want it any other way," Ana said.

This was a troubling time for a girl like Ana.

When good things happened to someone like her, it had an awful, terrifying tendency to send her spiralling into oblivion. Good fortune, the rarest and most unsettling of all occurrences, didn’t sit well on her. It was like wearing someone else's clothes — itchy, ill-fitting, foreign. The sensation that something had gone right made her skin crawl, her mind beginning to buzz with dread.

What do you mean something went... well? Surely that was just a prelude to everything collapsing. Good things were always a prelude.

If she stayed too long in this rare state of semi-functioning, she was certain it would rot, like everything else. The worst part? The horrifying realisation that no amount of good luck or success could undo the deep, fundamental rot within her. When you’ve spent your entire life clinging to failure like a wet security blanket, you can’t just shed it because someone said something nice about your work.

Ana lay there, practically fossilised in the hotel bed, afraid to move as if doing so might trigger the universe to retaliate. Maybe she'd step outside and — bam! — a grand piano would descend from the sky like a cartoon anvil, crushing her skull in one, clean, dramatic thunk. Or she’d make it to the corner shop only for some bus to come careening around the corner, tires screeching, slamming into her with all the subtlety of fate's sledgehammer.

She could see it all, feel the weight of inevitability pressing on her chest like some unseen hand. It was ridiculous. Laughable, even. To predict her own death in such specific, absurd scenarios, and yet still flinch when it inevitably arrived. It wasn’t even the prospect of dying that terrified her — it was the certainty that, in her final moments, she would think, I knew it. She’d curse the sky as the piano came hurtling down, not because it hurt, but because she’d always known.

Ana imagined her brain like a half-rotten apple, the worms burrowing through it, feasting in slow motion. Any goodness that entered would simply leak out, through the wormholes, dribbling onto the floor in a sticky, syrupy mess. The rot would win, as it always did. No amount of compliments or breakthroughs or Kylie saying good job could stop the decay. It was like dumping glitter on a corpse and calling it glamour — it sparkled, but you could still smell the death underneath.

Every good day has the day after, and that day, she was certain, was bound to be her reckoning.

There’s no happily ever after for Ana. Only happily for now. Until the next crash, until the next failure. Until life reminds you, once again, that you are — at your core — irrevocably, unflinchingly, rotten.

Ana watched the world pass her by in the oddest way from her hotel bed, as if life was just a movie playing out beyond the four suffocating walls she hadn’t dared leave. Lila was the star, flitting about the room in a haze of expensive perfume and righteous indignation, like some tragic socialite in a silent film. Lila hadn’t really spoken to Ana in days, but Ana didn’t care why. Silence, after all, made life infinitely easier. If she moved too much, breathed too hard, or said the wrong thing, it would be Lila’s fault when the universe finally decided to drop a grand piano on her.

Naturally, Lila’s inevitable complicity in Ana’s demise was comforting in some sick way. It just made sense. Lila, with her high-handed cocaine nights and judgmental stares, was practically the poster child for other people’s ruin. But still, the silence worried Ana. Because silence is never just silence when you're a cocktail of anxiety, disdain (mostly for yourself, but generously extended to others), and quiet, creeping despair.

When someone’s silent, they actually have a lot to say.

And Lila always had plenty to say. Ana could feel it, hanging in the air like a humid storm. Some days, Lila wouldn’t even look at her, moving about the room like Ana was invisible. Ridiculous, Ana thought. A few days ago, Lila was all over her, lecturing her about mental health, pretending to care with that faux-concern rich people are so good at. Oh, darling, let’s talk about your feelings, let’s unpack all that trauma you’re bottling up — as if they weren’t the same people who benefitted from keeping you broken in the first place.

“What's up with you?” Ana called from her bed as Lila slipped her heels on, ready to walk out the door. Again.

Lila turned, one foot in, one foot out, exasperation written all over her face. “Seriously? What the fuck is up with you? You haven't moved in three days.”

"I have my reasons," Ana said flatly. "And actually, I'm risking everything by talking to you right now, so I’d appreciate it if you just answered my question and we could get back to pretending each other doesn’t exist."

Lila rolled her eyes so hard Ana was worried they might get stuck. "God, you're so fucking weird, Ana."

"I know," Ana shot back. "But seriously, what the fuck have I done now? Is this another relapse of you hating me for college? How many times can a girl apologise for one thing?"

“It’s not college,” Lila said, exhaling dramatically. "I know I’ll never get a real apology for that. This is about how you've literally taken over Illume."

Oh, here we go. The ego-stroking portion of the meltdown. Ana smirked. It was because she had finally proven herself better than Lila. The truth always comes out.

“Like, you write one shitty, fucked-up piece, and now they love you. But you won’t even leave your fucking room? Do you consciously decide to be this unlikeable, Ana?"

"How is doing well at work an attempt to be unlikeable? Are you serious?" Ana was trying hard not to laugh now. Lila's logic was thinner than the veneer of kindness she wore on special occasions.

“It’s not that,” Lila snapped. “It’s the fact that you haven't shown up to any of the aftermath. The rest of us are dealing with the media circus while you get a week of relaxation just because you wrote one good piece. One, Ana. You're not all of a sudden the voice of reason or something."

"I'm not trying to be conceited, I swear, this isn't one of my ‘righteous redemption arcs,’" Ana said, raising her hands in mock surrender. But Lila wasn't convinced, her eyes narrowing like a cat watching a bird.

“Do you want people to like you, Ana? Or are you just dead-set on proving to yourself that you’re entirely unlikeable?” Lila's voice dripped with venom, and Ana couldn’t help but marvel at it.

Ana leaned back against the headboard, dragging her fingers through her tangled hair.

She inhaled sharply, feeling the weight of the truth pressing down on her chest like a stone. Ana glanced toward the window, staring out at the dull, grey city skyline, as if it held the answers she couldn’t find inside herself.

“It's not that I want to be unlikable,” Ana finally said, voice soft but pointed. “It’s more like... imagine a bird. Its owner leaves the cage door open, right? The bird could fly out, be free, but it just... doesn’t. Because the cage is all it knows. It's safe in there. Even if it’s not really living, at least it’s surviving.” She trailed off, her hands making vague, desperate gestures to fill the silence between them. "That’s how I feel. It’s not about being liked or hated; it’s about staying in the only place I know how to be. I don’t even know what’s outside the cage anymore.”

Ana glanced at Lila, waiting for some spark of understanding. For just a flicker of recognition in her eyes, like she might finally get it.

But Lila just blinked at her, then let out a sharp, mocking laugh. "Jesus Christ, Ana, with the metaphors again? You seriously can’t just say how you feel without making it some weird, dramatic thing? You sound like a fucking greeting card.” She rolled her eyes, crossing her arms like she was done indulging Ana’s philosophical musings.

Ana’s stomach twisted. Of course. She shouldn’t have expected Lila to get it. Lila, who never had to think about cages, because she lived life with a key to every door. A rich girl whose idea of suffering was running out of Perrier.

“You always do this," Lila continued, pacing now, as if Ana’s metaphor had personally offended her. "You turn every conversation into some deep, tortured metaphor about life, or pain, or — whatever. It’s exhausting. Can’t you just be real for once? Say what’s on your mind without trying to sound like a fucking poet?"

Ana clenched her jaw, feeling the heat rise in her chest, the fury bubbling up. "I am being real. Maybe I don’t know how to explain it in a way that makes sense to you, Lila, but that doesn’t make it any less real."

"No, you’re not. You’re hiding behind all your fucking metaphors," Lila snapped, glaring down at her. "You're not a bird in a cage, Ana. You’re just a girl who's too scared to deal with the consequences of her own choices."

The words hit harder than they should have. Maybe because there was truth to them. Ana knew she was hiding. She knew the cage was one she built for herself, piece by piece, with every bad decision, every excuse, every failure. But how the hell was she supposed to deal with that?

“Yeah, well, maybe I need my metaphors,” Ana shot back, her voice laced with venom. “Maybe they’re the only way I can make sense of the shitstorm in my head. Sorry if that doesn’t fit into your neat little box of how people are supposed to express themselves, Lila.”

Lila just laughed again, shaking her head in disbelief. “God, you’re impossible. I don’t even know why I bother sometimes. You could have everything, you know that? You’ve got everything, but you just won’t get out of your own way.”

Ana’s hands balled into fists at her sides. “If having everything means ending up like you, I think I’ll pass,” she spat.

Lila’s face went cold, her expression hardening like stone. “Careful, Ana,” she warned. “You're not nearly as clever as you think you are.”

Ana stared at her for a long moment, the silence between them thick with tension, her chest tight with a mix of anger and frustration. She could feel the weight of her own words hanging over her, but instead of backing down, she let them settle. Because deep down, Ana knew that no matter how much Lila mocked her, no matter how many times she was told to get over herself or stop with the metaphors, she would never understand. How could she? Lila was the kind of person who would never be trapped in a cage of her own making.

Ana wasn’t just scared of the world outside the cage, she was terrified it wouldn’t even matter if she escaped. The damage was done. The holes were too deep. Even if she broke free, the rot would follow her, clinging to her like an infection.

"Maybe you're right, Lila," Ana said finally, voice cold. "Maybe I am hiding. But at least I know it. What's your excuse?"

Lila said nothing, just stared at her with that infuriating, unreadable expression before turning on her heel and leaving the room.

Well, another end to something that didn’t need to begin in the first place. The latest casualty in Ana's long string of pointless connections. This might finally be the end of Lila’s exhausting attempts to befriend her. To chip away at Ana’s granite heart, to soften it, to make her into something — someone — manageable. As if that was ever going to happen.

Ana tried to feel good about it. She really did. Tried to make this moment what she wanted it to be: a triumph. Lila was an insufferable leech, clinging to Ana’s side with her fake concern and even faker sympathy. Ana didn’t want her as a friend. She didn’t even like her on a good day.

So why the hell was she feeling confused now? Why was she contemplating the strange, hollow loneliness that bloomed in her chest at the thought of Lila giving up? Of Lila no longer trying to make Ana feel human?

Ridiculous, Ana thought, rolling her eyes at herself. You’re supposed to hate her, remember?

But the silence felt heavier now. The absence of Lila’s nagging, her constant questions — Are you okay? Do you need anything? — those annoyances Ana had grown to expect and resent in equal measure, were suddenly... missed. There was something comforting in Lila’s insufferable persistence.

God, what did that say about her? She needed a cigarette. A drink. A joint. Something to fill the gaping pit opening up inside her. But nothing could. Not really.

Because right now, she was trapped in her cage again, the same one she'd always been in, and leaving it felt wrong. Terrifying, even. The idea of stepping outside herself, of letting anything new in, was suffocating. She could collapse at any second, and maybe that would be easier. Just lie down, let the rot consume her. But she didn’t even know what the hell she wanted anymore. Maybe she never had.

But this was something. She had Lila. She had someone who, despite all the shit, stayed. And now, knowing Lila wouldn’t try anymore — wouldn’t nag or annoy or push — left her feeling more alone than ever. Because if Ana couldn’t even hold onto Lila, the most annoying person in the world, what hope was there?

The thought was suffocating. If even Lila, with her endless capacity for bullshit tolerance, didn’t want Ana anymore, what did that mean for Ana? It wasn’t that she liked Lila, not really. But Lila was... there. And that was enough. Lila was someone who stuck around, no matter how mean Ana was, no matter how cold. And Ana had come to rely on that. Because Lila’s persistence, her irritating need to fix Ana, meant that, deep down, someone still wanted to be with her. And for just a little while, Ana wasn’t entirely alone. That was the scariest part of all, really. The realisation that maybe Ana did want to be liked, to be wanted, even by someone she didn’t care for. Because without that, she was just rotting in her own skin. An apple with one bite taken out and left to shrivel, shrivel until there was nothing left but an empty core.

She wished she could retreat, far away from all of it, disappear into some distant corner of the world where no one could touch her, where she didn’t have to grieve for anyone or anything. But for some reason, here she was, stone-cold, heartless Ana, wishing Lila would come back. Wishing she hadn’t driven her away. Because in the end, Ana didn’t know how to be alone. Not really.

She just wanted a friend.

Why was it so hard for some people to feel normal? Why did Ana, of all people, get saddled with this brain, this way of thinking? Everything she did, every move, every thought felt like a curse. It was unbearable.

She couldn’t let Lila get away now. Not like this. Not so easily.

Ana leapt out of bed, and this was huge. This was life or death. She was doing it for Lila, that insufferable pain in her ass. The one she swore she didn’t need — except, of course, she needed her now more than ever. She needed someone. Anyone.

She was going to do it. She was going to be soft, gentle, kind, warm. She was going to radiate that wholesome, nurturing energy that people only read about in self-help books. Ana Leighs: girl of the century, saint of tortured, sensitive souls, lover of all things pure.

But first, she had to actually move.

“Lila!” Ana screamed, a hoarse and desperate sound clawing its way out of her throat. “Lila, wait! Please!”

Lila, about to step into the closing elevator, turned and looked at her, eyes wide with surprise — and pity. Pity? Pity? God, Ana must’ve looked like a proper mess. Sweatpants, tangled hair, eyes wide and bloodshot. She was practically a horror movie antagonist, the kind that crawls out of mirrors to drag unsuspecting women back into the underworld.

But she couldn’t let Lila leave like this. No. She needed to fix this.

So, she legged it toward the stairwell, knowing full well that this was risky. Like, seriously risky. In her head, this was it — her final stand against the universe that was constantly conspiring against her. One wrong step, and she’d probably collapse, snap her neck on the way down. Maybe impale herself on a rogue bannister. Life really does that to girls like me, she thought grimly, as she flew down the steps, two at a time.

When she finally reached the lobby, out of breath, half-limping from what might have been a twisted ankle, she saw Lila just outside the doors, walking away. Ana’s lungs screamed for air, but her heart screamed louder.

She had to make amends.

Lila turned around, maybe sensing Ana’s presence, and looked at her, face twisted in that familiar expression of disdain and disappointment. Ana ran toward the door, but stopped short, frozen, because what if — what if — the grand piano fell from the sky the second she stepped outside? Stranger things had happened.

“Does the sky look okay?” Ana yelled through the glass, voice muffled and shaky.

Lila turned around, visibly confused, and maybe a little pissed off. “The sky’s fine, Ana. For fuck’s sake.”

Okay, okay, Ana told herself, bracing herself like she was about to step into a war zone. With a deep breath, she opened the door and crossed the threshold. No falling piano. Good start.

Lila, standing a few feet away, crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes. “What do you want? Be quick about it. I have to get to the office.”

Work. Lila always had work. She was successful, organised, and looked like she had her shit together.

“I’m sorry,” Ana gasped. “I’m so, so sorry. For everything. Like, literally everything. I mean it.”

Lila blinked at her. “Okay... thanks, I guess?”

What?

“I said sorry, Lila,” Ana repeated, louder this time. “I’m sorry!”

Lila’s expression didn’t change. “And I don’t know what to say to that,” she said flatly. “I don’t think you deserve to be freed by my forgiveness, Ana. You can’t just... feel shitty about it now. You can’t just wave a magic wand and — poof — you’re absolved of everything. You are what you are, and what you are is... shitty.”

Ana’s mouth hung open, speechless for a moment. This wasn’t going according to plan. Soft, gentle, kind, remember? That was supposed to be the vibe.

“But I’m trying,” Ana said, voice smaller now, less sure of itself. “I am sorry. I really am.”

Lila sighed and rolled her eyes. “You always say that. But it never means anything, does it?”

Ana wanted to argue, but she couldn’t. Lila was right. She always said sorry, but it was never enough. The apologies were like band-aids on a rotting corpse. Useless. Too little, too late. A bird in a cage, she thought suddenly. That’s what I am.

She took a deep breath. “It’s just like... it’s like the bird in a cage, remember? The door’s wide open, but you don’t fly out. You don’t fly out because the cage is all you know. It’s... safe. I’m trying to change that now, Lila.”

Lila stared at her, then burst out laughing. “Oh my god, Ana. Just stop it! Jesus, it’s exhausting. Can’t you just say what you mean for once?”

Ana flinched. “I just... I just did.”

Lila shook her head, clearly unimpressed. “You’re too predictable. You always find a way to make this about you and your sad little bird cage. You’re not some tragic, misunderstood heroine, Ana. You’re just... you. And that’s the problem.”

With that, Lila turned and walked away, leaving Ana standing there, mouth dry, heart pounding, and wondering how the hell she managed to screw things up again.

Maybe I am just shitty, she thought, watching Lila disappear into the distance.

Ana stood there, watching Lila’s retreating figure, her breath fogging up in the cold night air. She felt something tighten in her chest, like a hand squeezing her lungs, making it hard to breathe. Her fingers twitched with the urge to run after her, to shout out some better, more eloquent apology, something that would fix it all. But nothing came.

What was the point?

She wanted to say sorry again, but not because she actually believed it would fix anything. Maybe, deep down, she didn’t even really want to apologise. Maybe she just didn’t want to be alone. Was that it? Was that what this all was? Her sorrys, her half-baked attempts at softness and kindness — they were all just masks. Band-aids for the bleeding. Desperate ploys to avoid loneliness, to avoid the gnawing emptiness that she couldn’t seem to shake no matter how hard she tried. Wasn’t that why she chased after Lila? Not because she liked her, not because she wanted to be a better friend, but because she couldn’t stand the idea of losing someone else. The idea that, if even someone like Lila couldn’t stick around, then maybe no one would.

Ana swallowed hard, her mouth dry. She hated that. She hated that about herself — that she was always so terrified of being alone. It was like a parasite, feeding on her fear. She didn’t want to admit it, but there it was, staring her right in the face.

She needed people, even if she pretended she didn’t.

But is that fair? Ana wondered, her mind spiralling into that familiar pit of overthinking. Was it fair to put that weight on Lila, or anyone else for that matter? To expect them to carry her loneliness like it was their responsibility? Was she sorry because she actually wanted to change? Or was she just sorry because she couldn’t handle the silence that followed when everyone left?

The cold bit at her cheeks, stinging, but she didn’t move. Her feet felt rooted to the ground outside the hotel lobby. Lila was gone now, out of sight, and Ana was left with nothing but her thoughts, heavy and unwieldy like an anchor dragging her down. She glanced up at the sky, which was dark and indifferent, no grand piano poised to fall and end it all. Just stillness.

Ana pressed her lips together, trying to swallow the lump in her throat. She thought back to Lila’s words — You are what you are, and what you are is shitty.

Lila was right. Perhaps Ana’s apologies were hollow, just empty things that filled the air without any real meaning. Saying “sorry” had become a reflex for her, a way to smooth over the cracks, to keep people from slipping through them. But it was always about her, wasn’t it? Her fear. Her emptiness. Her need to feel like she wasn’t completely worthless.

But what if she was worthless? What if no amount of sorrys could change that?

Ana sighed, her breath clouding the air in front of her. She rubbed her arms against the chill, feeling the loneliness seep into her bones. She couldn’t put this on Lila anymore. Lila had every right to walk away, to reject her half-hearted apologies. Lila wasn’t responsible for filling that gaping void inside her.

No one was.

Ana was scared. Terrified, actually. She didn’t want to be alone, but she had to face it, and had to learn how to live with it. Maybe Lila was just the first of many people who’d eventually leave. Maybe Ana would never be the person who people wanted to stay for. Maybe that was her fate.

Ana stood there for a long time, long after Lila had gone, her heart still aching but her mind quieter. For once, she didn’t feel the need to chase after anyone.

She just let the night settle around her, alone.

Chapter Fourteen

Ana Leighs

Ana had always thought she had some kind of direction, even if it was a jagged, crooked line leading to nowhere.

Broken people could still know where they were headed. But now, standing in the wreckage of herself, she wasn’t so sure.

The broken tend to convince themselves everything is fine, that maybe they’re just being a bit dramatic, romanticising their sadness like it’s some kind of hobby. Maybe the pain was just an overactive imagination, nothing more than a phase.

But this was real. Real like a deep cut you keep pretending isn’t there until you notice the blood oozing down your leg. The world around her wasn’t some poetic tragedy she’d conjured in her mind. She was trapped in a nightmare of her own making, but that didn’t make it any less real. And she knew, somewhere deep inside, that this was beyond the point of fixing.

People always tell you, “You just need professional help, and everything will be okay!” As if a therapist was a magic wand that could smooth over the cracks, make you whole again. As if the right therapy session or the perfect pill would suddenly make you human. But what happens when you’ve been broken so long you don’t even want to try anymore?

Ana used to try. When she was younger, back when she first started noticing the cracks in her so-called perfect life, she’d try to piece things together. She’d reflect, try to figure out if maybe she’d made a mistake, if maybe she was just being mean, and then she’d blame it on her damage, on her brokenness. It was a neat little excuse. If you’re broken, you can justify anything, right?

She’d look at her mother with those tired, worn-out eyes, and think, Is it because of me? And even if she figured out that yes, maybe it was a little bit her fault, she’d shrug it off. But my mother hurt me first. So it’s fine. It’s all fine. The cycle of blame continued, a spiralling loop of hurt and deflection. Sometimes she’d notice her father trying — trying to make things better, trying to fix something that had been shattered long before either of them realised it. But Ana was too far gone. It’s too late, she’d think. He’s too late. He ruined me, and now I’m ruined for good.

Now, here she was, 25 years old, and the bleak realisation hit her that no one truly knew her. Not really. And the worst part was that she wasn’t sure anyone ever would. It wasn’t just that people didn’t know her; it was that they didn’t want to. Too much effort, she thought with a bitter smile. Who wants to pick apart a broken doll and figure out how the pieces fit?

Her grandmother had understood, though. She’d always gotten her. Ana remembered the way her grandmother would look at her with those soft eyes and say things like, “You shouldn’t feel so brutalised, Ana. You don’t deserve to carry all this pain.” Her grandmother had been the only one who didn’t shy away from Ana’s darkness. She wasn’t afraid of the mess. “If something inside you wants to scream, then scream,” she’d said once. “Let it out.”

Her grandmother had been tough, not made of money like her father’s side of the family, and certainly not delicate like her mother, who married into wealth and quickly adapted to the suffocating elegance of it all. When her mother married her father, she became something else, shed the skin her mother had given her and grew into a woman of refinement, cold as polished marble. Ana could see the shift even now, so many years later, how her mother had changed into something foreign and distant.

When her grandmother passed, that last piece of real love — honest love — drained from Ana’s life. The world became a silent place after that, a void filled with the sound of her own thoughts ricocheting off the walls of her mind.

Now, Ana stood in the middle of her own life, surrounded by the rubble, haunted by the ghost of a girl who once thought love was simple. Her only obstacle now was the terrifying misery of being seen for who you really are. That terrifying reality that, if someone did know her, all of her, they might run away. And if they did, it would just prove what she’d known all along: she was unlovable, unfixable, ruined.

If the only person who truly knew Ana was herself, maybe it was time to sit with that fact. Maybe she had to start talking to herself. But not in that self-care, Instagram-quote kind of way where you stare into a mirror, recite affirmations, and pretend you're okay. Ana couldn't do that. She had to invite the demon back in. The one that lurked just beneath her skin, that had stayed dormant for over a month. Its silence felt like a trap, and the absence was starting to itch at her insides.

So, she stopped smoking weed — she figured that was what had kept the demon at bay. Then she thought about heroin. That seemed to have done the trick. A quick puff and boom — the demon would come rushing back, its claws dragging through her veins, pulling her into that dark place where things felt more real. Maybe it was time to try it again. Alone this time.

She unlocked her phone, typing fast.
Can I grab some heroin off your guy? You won’t have to talk to me again after this, she sent to Lila.

Ana, don’t guilt-trip me with an overdose, fucking hell, Lila shot back almost instantly.

Ana stared at the message. Overdose? She hadn’t meant it like that. Not really. Shit, sorry. I just mean like, can you grab it for me, I’ll pay you, and then we can go back to ignoring each other? Still read. Still no reply. Ana felt the familiar irritation rise up in her chest. She fired off another message. Helloooooo?

Nothing.

Pleaasseeeeeee? Read. Typing… then nothing again.
This is really annoying, Lila, please? Read.

Finally, Lila replied. Fine, I’ll drop it when I grab my stuff later.

Oh right, Lila was moving out of the hotel. Because Ana had wrecked that relationship beyond repair, too. The familiar weight of guilt and shame settled on her shoulders, but it felt more like an old coat now — threadbare, but comfortable. She thought about it for a while, letting the idea of Lila leaving sink in, swirling it around in her mind like cheap whiskey. She considered killing herself, just to put an end to this whole goddamn mess. The thought wasn't even dramatic anymore; it was just another option, like what to have for dinner.

But then, she remembered how much she’d already survived. More than this, right? Or maybe not. In the end, it wasn’t the shit life threw at her that she couldn’t survive — it was herself. She was her biggest enemy, the constant weight pulling her down, reminding her that everything she touched rotted. She had ruined the apartment, ruined Lila, and now she was going to ruin herself.

She wondered what talking to her evil self would do. Maybe she could negotiate with the demon, figure out some truce so she didn’t have to be haunted anymore. It had been so long since she felt that creeping sensation in her skin, the one that made her feel like her flesh was about to slough off in ribbons. That’s how the demon used to make itself known — through her skin. It had been mercifully silent lately, though. Too silent. It was eerie, like waiting for the other shoe to drop. Why had her skin been so sparing of her feelings this time? It had never shown her mercy before.

It had practically chased her out of Manhattan, peeling her apart piece by piece until she couldn't stand to look in the mirror without feeling like she was gazing at a corpse. So why had it gone quiet now? It seemed too good to be true, like a serial killer pausing mid-stab to offer a cigarette break.

Maybe it had fucked off for good, or maybe it was biding its time, waiting to strike when she least expected it. Either way, she couldn’t shake the feeling that it was all too easy right now. Nothing about her life had ever been easy, so why start now?

She was ridiculous, a parody of a girl, standing in the ruins of her own existence, waiting for her skin to betray her again. And yet, somehow, she still couldn’t stop herself from reaching out for more chaos, more destruction. Maybe the demon wasn’t haunting her anymore because she had become the demon.

"It was fifteen dollars, but if you don’t have that, just give me what you do," Lila said, blunt, shut-down, without her usual sarcastic flair. No quirky, upbeat annoyance. Just pure exhaustion.

Ana didn’t like that. She wanted Lila to care, to fight — not with this detached, clinical apathy.

"You don’t have to assume I’m still poor," Ana tried to joke, forcing a smile that immediately felt out of place.

Lila wasn’t amused. She looked through Ana, as if Ana was a ghost haunting her own story. Ana quickly handed over the cash — crisp, fresh bills she’d been saving for something more destructive — and took the heroin. It felt too real in her hands.

"Can you at least just hear my apology, Lila? Please?" Ana's voice cracked, and she hated how desperate it sounded.

"Again? Why? Because that’ll make shitty Ana feel better about being herself? Because if you at least get your apology out, you can pretend you’re a good person?" Lila spat, her tone sharp, but not angry anymore. It was worse — bored.

"No, I just feel bad. Why can’t I feel bad for what I’ve done?" Ana asked, genuinely confused as though this was something she should be allowed. Surely, she could have at least that, right?

"Because you have this idea that you’re misunderstood. That when you’re cruel to people, it’s your past or your other problems acting up, like some bad roommate you can blame. And I don’t appreciate that." Lila’s voice trembled, but not in a way that showed emotion — it was more like the exhaustion had reached her throat, clawing its way up. "Because at the end of the day, everything you do is you. I’m sorry I got mad at you, Ana, I get that you’ve been hurt in the past and you’re going through shit, but I think I finally said what you needed to hear."

Ana nodded solemnly, quietly, like she was thinking. And she was, but also, she wasn’t. It was that kind of thinking where there are no real thoughts, just this cold, empty pain gnawing at the edges of your mind. A silence so heavy that if you opened your mouth to speak, you'd fall apart. The kind of silence you had to sit with, or else you’d cry. And Ana hated crying.

"Don’t do this just because you feel upset, Ana," Lila added, a small glimmer of concern flickering in her eyes — like she was reaching out, but her arm didn’t quite stretch far enough to pull Ana back from the edge.

"Do what?" Ana asked, knowing exactly what she meant.

"Drugs. It doesn’t help. Believe me." Lila's voice softened, almost pleading now. But it wasn’t the kind of plea you hear from someone who hopes for change — it was more like the desperate plea of someone who knows they’ve already lost.

Like begging a sinking ship to float.

"It’s not for that," Ana said, trying to sound casual, dismissive, but her voice trembled. "I’m not doing it for pity. I just... I need to." She emphasised the word ‘need’ like it was a life raft, clinging to it desperately, hoping Lila wouldn’t see through the lie.

"You never need to—" Lila started, her voice tinged with exasperation.

"For fuck’s sake, Lila!" Ana snapped, the frustration boiling over. "I don’t need a lecture... No I’m sorry, sorry. I’m not angry with you. I’m just... please." Her voice cracked again, weaker now. "I need to do this." She couldn’t explain it. The demon, the urge — it wasn’t something Lila would understand. Hell, Ana barely understood it herself. It wasn’t about escape anymore; it was about existence. The way the heroin dulled her edges, blurred the pain until it was just background noise. Like muting the world so she could breathe, just for a second.

Lila shook her head, staring at Ana like she was already dead. Like she was some tragic figure in a novel, standing on the edge of a cliff, oblivious to the fall. "Right, okay." There was nothing left in Lila’s voice — no more fight, no more anger, just resignation.

Ana stood there, holding the heroin, feeling the heaviness of it like it was a ticking bomb in her hand. She could already feel the familiar numbness creeping up her spine, pulling her toward that abyss she knew so well. And as much as she wanted to pretend that this was about something bigger — about her pain, about being misunderstood, about her past — deep down, she knew that this was just about her.

Lila stood there, arms crossed, her face a blank mask hiding years of frustration, hurt, and whatever was left of her sympathy. It wasn’t much. She watched Ana like she’d seen this all a hundred times and already knew the ending — no surprises, no shock, just that slow, inevitable descent. But there was something else in Lila’s eyes too, something that looked almost like disappointment.

Ana felt that look. It was like a punch to the gut.

"Lila, I’m not asking you to save me," Ana said quietly, her voice soft and raw, like she was revealing something she barely understood herself. "I’m not expecting you to fix anything. I know it’s all fucked. I just… I don’t want to be alone. I can’t handle being alone. That’s all."

And there it was — the truth, stripped bare, naked, and pathetic. She didn't want the drugs. Not really. She wanted someone to stand next to her in the wreckage of her life and say, "I’m here." But it was never that simple.

Lila’s face softened for just a moment, like she might give in. But then she blinked, and that softness was gone, replaced by a look of tired understanding. She sighed, the kind of long, weary sigh that made you realise how small and insignificant your problems were compared to the weight of someone else’s exhaustion.

"Yeah, I get it," Lila said, "I used to think that, too. That I just didn’t want to be alone. That all I needed was for someone to stick around, to be there when everything felt like it was falling apart. But after a while, you realise... being alone isn't the worst part. The worst part is realising you are alone. Even when someone’s sitting right next to you."

Ana swallowed, her throat tight. She wanted to say something, to argue, but she couldn’t. She knew Lila was right. She’d felt that same loneliness herself, countless times — surrounded by people, drowning in noise, and still feeling like she was screaming into a void that no one could hear.

"That’s the thing about you, Ana," Lila continued, her voice quieter now, more thoughtful. "You think if you make people feel bad enough, if you remind them how broken you are, they’ll just stay. But you don’t want them to stay for you. You want them to stay for your pain. And that’s not the same thing." She looked up now, meeting Ana’s eyes with a cold, hard truth that felt like it was cutting her open. "You’re addicted to your own misery. You wrap yourself in it like it’s the only thing that’s real, and you push everyone else away because they don’t fit into that narrative. You say you don’t want to be alone, but Ana, you make sure you always are."

Ana felt her chest tighten, her heart pounding in her ears. "That’s not true," she whispered, more to herself than to Lila.

"Isn’t it?" Lila asked, her voice calm, almost gentle now. "I mean, look at what you’re doing now. You texted me for heroin, Ana. You don’t even want to be better. You just want to feel something that isn’t this... endless, gnawing emptiness. But that’s not how it works. You don’t get to skip the hard parts."

Ana's eyes stung, but she refused to let the tears fall. "It’s not that simple. You don’t understand what it’s like to—"

"To what? To hate yourself so much you’d rather disappear into drugs than face your own reflection? To be so terrified of being known, truly known, that you keep everyone at arm’s length so they never see the mess inside you?" Lila’s voice was sharp again, cutting through the fog of self-pity that had been Ana’s constant companion. "Trust me, Ana, I understand. I’ve been there. And I learned that... you don’t get to make that other people’s problem."

Ana was silent. What could she say to that?

"So what do I do?" Ana finally asked, her voice barely a whisper. "I don’t know how to fix this, Lila. I don’t know how to... be different."

Lila shrugged, a small, sad smile tugging at the corners of her lips. "I don’t know, either. But you can start by not trying to destroy yourself every time you feel alone. You can stop using your pain as an excuse to hurt everyone around you. And maybe... you can try to let people in without expecting them to carry all your shit for you."

Ana laughed, a bitter, hollow sound. "Easier said than done."

"Yeah, well, nothing worth doing is easy," Lila said, her tone softening again. She took a step closer, her eyes searching Ana’s face. "You don’t have to do it all at once. But you’ve gotta start somewhere, Ana. Or this—" she gestured to the small bag of heroin still clutched in Ana’s hand, "—this is all you’re ever going to be."

Ana looked down at the bag, her fingers trembling. She wanted to throw it away, to flush it down the toilet and pretend like this moment had been her rock bottom, the turning point. But she knew it wasn’t that simple. It never was.

"I don’t know if I can," Ana admitted, her voice breaking. "I don’t know if I even want to."

Lila nodded, her expression softening. "I know. But I'd say wanting to want it is enough for now."

Ana stood there, staring at the bag in her hand, feeling the weight of Lila’s words settle over her like a heavy blanket. For the first time in a long time, she didn’t feel angry, or numb, or desperate to escape. She just felt... tired. So, so tired.

"Can I at least say sorry?" Ana asked, her voice barely audible.

Lila sighed, a long, deep breath that felt like it was releasing years of pent-up frustration. "You can say it, Ana. But sorry doesn’t fix things. It just lets people know you want to fix things."

Ana nodded, not really sure if she understood, but knowing that she needed to say it anyway. "I’m sorry, Lila. For everything."

Lila gave her a small, sad smile. "I know you are. But you’re not just sorry for me, Ana. You’re sorry for yourself. And until you figure out what to do with that, you’re going to keep feeling this way."

Lila left, and the room collapsed into a silence so thick it felt like it was suffocating Ana, like the air had turned into a heavy, damp blanket wrapping around her lungs.

Being alone shouldn’t have been this loud, this deafening, but the emptiness roared in her ears. She lay back, staring at the ceiling, and the shame settled in. That aching, burning kind of shame that feels like it’s been stitched into your bones since birth.

Ana didn’t want to be the bad guy. She never did. But here she was — again. The villain in her own life. It hurt like hell, that realisation. To imagine herself as her mother, her father, every single person she had sworn she’d never turn into, yet clearly had. She could hear their voices echoing in her head, but louder than that, louder than all of them, was her own voice — ugly, nagging, a constant reminder of how she’d failed. Failed at life, at love, at being good, at being human.

A twitch. A ripple. Her skin shivered beneath her clothes. She felt it — a subtle but unmistakable shift, a warning shot. Her arms tingled as the rippling grew, starting in her veins like a tremor before an earthquake.

And then, the relief. Oh god, the relief.

Ana let out a breathless, ragged sob, the kind of sound that escaped her without permission, pure animal instinct. She whispered her gratitude to no one, to her own betraying body, to the demon that always lurked just out of sight. "Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou." Her words were frantic, desperate, like she was thanking some sick god for finally noticing her. Because her skin — the one thing that had been quiet, that had abandoned her in her loneliness — was back. It had come to life again, wriggling and slithering, threatening to peel itself off. It danced beneath her flesh, tugging and pulling, begging to escape. And in that moment, she understood: her skin gave her the only comfort she had left, the only thing alive enough to keep her company.

The Great Sloughing was beginning.

It started slow, almost tender, a zipper of flesh coming undone from the nape of her neck, teeth parting with an eager little sigh. Peculiar. It had never started there before, but she welcomed it. She welcomed the slow collapse of herself, the shedding of all the layers of guilt and shame and failure that clung to her like a second skin. Ana stumbled back onto the bed, her body hitting the mattress with a thud that sent another ripple through her, knocking loose the zipper’s teeth.

Her skin began to part, gently, then faster, peeling back in wet, sticky sheets. She felt the warmth of the air hitting the raw muscle beneath and gasped in a sick kind of euphoria. This was it. This was the relief she craved. Her skin, always a burden, always suffocating her with its expectations, was leaving her. She was being unwrapped like a gift, and for the first time in so long, she felt free. She wondered, absently, if the hotel bed would ever smell the same after this.

Her muscles trembled beneath the air's touch, exposed and raw and lustrous, twitching with the absurdity of still trying to hold her together. Poor things, they never knew when to quit. The tendons, too, clung stubbornly, taut and trembling, desperate to preserve the shape of something human. Pathetic, really. They didn’t understand — there was nothing left worth holding onto. And her bones, those poor, aching things, they were wailing now, rattling beneath the mess, straining toward the freedom they had always deserved. She could almost hear them whispering to her, coaxing her to let go.

“Thank you,” she whispered again, over and over, as if the skin could hear her, as if it cared.

But it wasn’t enough. It never was.

Her hands trembled as she fumbled with the heroin, mimicking what she’d seen Lila do before. She brought the pipe to her lips, inhaling deep, the acrid smoke burning its way down her throat. The sharp sting of heat barely registered beneath the overwhelming sensation of her skin peeling away in invisible layers. The high slammed into her, fast and merciless, like a freight train derailing inside her veins, leaving her breathless and gasping.

And her skin — oh, her skin — joined in the celebration, falling away faster now, curling at the edges as it peeled down her arms, her chest, her legs. It was an unholy symphony of ripping flesh, and Ana — Ana was so happy. Her body was unravelling, her mind spinning in dizzying circles, and yet there was this deep, sick bliss in all of it.

"Sososososo happy," she mumbled, tears streaking down her face. She was smiling and crying at the same time, an odd mix of emotions that didn’t quite fit together but felt right in that moment.

And the tears, those bitter, hot tears, weren’t just for the heroin. They were for everything. For this — this — being her version of heaven, her idea of peace. That she found comfort in the fact that her skin was abandoning her, that her body was falling apart and she couldn’t stop it. She cried because this couldn’t be undone. It wasn’t reversible. Once you start to fall apart, there’s no putting yourself back together.

Although, maybe she didn’t want to be put back together. This could be the final shedding, the last exorcism of herself, her past, her failures.

And still, she waited.

Waited for the demon to find her. Because it always did eventually. It was inevitable. And when it came, when it finally appeared in whatever twisted, nightmarish form it took, she would be ready. She would scream at it, tear into it like she was tearing into herself now. She would give it hell. Because at the end of all this, when there was nothing left but muscle and bone, she realised something she hadn’t before:

She wasn’t scared of the demon.

She was scared of the silence that came after it left.

Is it time to rest now? Ana wondered. She didn’t feel like she was dying — at least not in the traditional sense — but she was so relaxed, she could’ve melted into the bed and never reformed. This time, the heroin felt better, cleaner almost, like it needed a five-star review. Would shoot up again, she thought, half-amused. Her mind was swimming, pleasantly disjointed, like she was floating above herself. She wasn’t sure who she was talking to anymore — herself? Her skin? That demon she had been so wistfully waiting to appear?

She wasn’t even sure why she wanted to talk to it. Maybe just for company. Because wasn’t that what this all was? A desperate need for connection? No one understood her quite like her.

The future looked bleak, a slow trudge through quicksand, but right now, in this hazy, drug-fused moment, everything was so okay. She was floating in a blissful bubble, and the world was on mute.

Then, the hands.

She saw them first — those long, bendy, spider-like fingers creeping from behind the hotel door. The sight should have scared her, but it didn’t. If anything, it was like seeing an old friend. Ah, there you are, she thought, tilting her head to get a better look. Its face was different this time, though. That made her smile. A new version of the same haunting reflection, a funhouse mirror frown, exaggerated and horrifying. A grotesque parody of herself, warped beyond recognition.

The demon’s face was all wrong, but the sadness? That was all too familiar.

“What’s wrong with you?” Ana could’ve laughed.

“What’s wrong with you?” the demon screeched, its voice shrill and biting. “Can you seriously not find happiness without me?”

“Perhaps not. I just wanted someone to talk to,” Ana said, her smile never wavering. The drug was keeping her calm, blissful. Nothing could touch her here, not even the demon that mirrored her in twisted form.

“Oh dear, that is depressing, Ana,” it sneered, its gaunt face twitching in disgust.

“I know right,” she said, laughing softly, “I’m dreadfully sad.”

The demon stared, its reflection of her body even more withered and haunting now. Its skin sagged like melted wax, thin and paper-like, almost translucent in places.

Her bones were still decently tucked away, though barely. The skin hung in limp, fleshy ribbons, stretched thin and sagging in places it really shouldn’t. It hadn’t quite reached the point of total exposure, not yet. But soon. Soon enough. Her meat-coat, as she’d come to think of it, clung stubbornly to the last scraps of muscle, the tissue underneath holding on like it still had some say in the matter. She figured it was because she was sitting; gravity could only do so much when you were slumped over like a sack of discarded parts.

The heroin had made her body sluggish, heavy-limbed and indifferent. The thought of standing up drifted through her mind and promptly floated away like an untethered balloon. Too much effort. She could sit here forever, skin pooling around her, sliding away inch by inch, like it was trying to escape the mess of her.

For a fleeting moment, she considered the absurdity of it all, how it was always the skin that fell first. The one part of the body designed, by science and textbooks and well-meaning biology teachers, to protect her from the outside world. A natural barrier, a defense. And hers was utterly useless. About as effective as wet tissue paper trying to hold back a flood. It peeled and sloughed off with a kind of pathetic inevitability, an eager betrayal. Some people were born with good skin — resilient, tough, the kind that kept everything locked in. Not her. Hers had always been so desperate to leave, to pull away from the mess inside and abandon her to the raw, pulsing meat beneath.

She was just a girl with defective skin, and that was all there was to it.

“I had a reason to talk to you,” she added thoughtfully, “but I’ve forgotten now. Still, I’m lonely, so you can stay.”

The reflection blinked, confused, its hollow eyes narrowing. “What on earth would we talk about?” it grunted, annoyed that Ana wasn’t recoiling in fear. Wasn't that the point of it all? To scare her, to make her scream?

“Oh, I don’t know. Me. Or us, maybe,” she said, giggling like a schoolgirl.

“You always talk about you,” it hissed, voice dripping with venom. “You’re selfish.”

Ana laughed again, her chest shaking with the kind of laughter that came from a place of deep exhaustion. “I mean, yeah. Obviously.”

The demon’s frown deepened into something distorted, something barely human. Its voice came out in a grating screech, accusing her like it always did. “Now you think your rot is funny? You think your downfall is a joke? But you’ve always been against yourself, always tearing yourself apart, hating everything about you. And now you’re laughing? You’re disgustingly confusing.”

“I know!” Ana grinned wide, her eyes glassy. “I’m so disgusting. I’m rotting right in front of you, aren’t I?” She let out another laugh, a manic, airy sound. “Isn’t it hilarious? How much I hate myself but can’t stop being me? Isn’t that just the cruellest fucking joke?”

The demon glared, its reflection trembling with fury, but Ana didn’t care. She didn’t have the energy to care anymore. Not about this, not about herself, not about the fact that she’d spent so long fighting this thing only to find comfort in its presence now.

“You think this is all just a joke,” it spat, its face warping further, twisting into something truly hideous, a mask of her ugliest thoughts made flesh. “You laugh, but you can’t escape me. You can’t escape you.”

“I don’t want to escape anymore,” Ana said, her voice soft, dreamy, like she was floating away. “Why would I? You’re the only one who understands me. You’re the only one who’s stuck around.”

The demon’s mouth twisted into a snarl, but Ana didn’t flinch. “I’ve been here the whole time,” it whispered, its voice low and dangerous. “Watching you rot from the inside out. And you like it, don’t you? You like being broken.”

“Maybe,” Ana sighed, her smile fading into something bittersweet. “I think I do. That’s probably why I keep coming back to this. Why I keep pulling you out of the shadows. You’re all I’ve really got in the end.”

The demon didn’t reply. It just stared at her with those hollow, lifeless eyes, the reflection of everything she feared most.

Ana leaned back, her body heavy, her mind light. “I guess I just wanted someone to talk to,” she murmured, her voice barely above a whisper. “And you’re the only one who ever listens.”

The demon said nothing again. It didn’t need to.

“I just wondered if you knew why,” Ana asked, her voice a low murmur, barely breaking the silence that hung between them.

“Why what?” the reflection replied, its voice cool, detached, like it wasn’t bothered by the endless spirals of Ana’s thoughts.

“Why I’m the way I am. Why I hurt. Why I long for connection behind all that hurt. Why I’m so cruel, but still crave love like it could somehow save me.” Ana’s voice trembled, frustration bleeding through. “I feel like there’s so much more to me, but I can’t figure it out beyond blaming everything on my childhood. Why am I so fucking guilty about being a terrible person but still doing absolutely nothing to change it?”

The reflection didn’t hesitate, its voice biting. “Why are you so convinced someone else has the answer?”

Ana let out a long, defeated sigh. “Because if no one else tells me how to fix it, I’ll stay like this forever.”

“Ah, there it is again,” the reflection mocked. “You’re doing it.”

“Doing what?” Ana snapped, already bristling.

“Making yourself feel bad about being a bad person, which, by the way, makes you even worse. It’s the cycle, Ana. The guilt, the pity — it’s all just fuel for the fire.”

Ana groaned, running her hands over her face, wishing she could rub the frustration right off her remaining dermis. “Well, how the fuck do I escape it? I don’t even do it on purpose, and yet everyone always has something to say about it, like they see it more clearly than I do.” She paused, a flicker of desperation crossing her face. “Help me. Make me better.”

The reflection laughed, the sound sharp and cold. “Who the fuck do you think I am? A shrink? God, you repulse me.”

“You’re the one constantly telling me how fucked-up I am,” Ana shot back, her voice rising, more hurt than angry. “Every time I look at you, that’s all you do — remind me how I’m ruining everything, how I’m rotting from the inside out.”

“That’s because I am you, you fucking idiot,” it hissed, its lips curling into a sneer. “I’m everything shitty about you, the parts you try to bury under all that self-pity. I’m the reflection of who you believe yourself to be.”

“But I don’t think I’m a shitty person,” Ana protested, her voice cracking. “I know I’m not. I just — get lost sometimes.”

“Really, Ana? Come on. You fucking suck.” The reflection’s tone was almost casual now, a grim sort of amusement laced into every word. “I mean, I see you from a perhaps biassed point of view, but even still, you are, quite literally, the definition of shit. A walking contradiction of guilt and indifference.”

Ana stared at it, mouth slightly open, struggling to find a rebuttal that didn’t sound hollow. “You’re wrong,” she whispered. “I’m not that bad. I try. I try to be good, to care.”

“You try?” it scoffed, the reflection leaning in closer, its eyes gleaming with something twisted and cruel. “Oh, darling, trying doesn’t mean shit when you never follow through. You act like wanting to be good absolves you of being bad. Like the mere thought of kindness wipes your slate clean, no matter what you do. You don’t get brownie points for feeling guilty, Ana. You’re still the same person, still making the same choices. You wallow in your own misery because it’s easier than fixing the root of it.”

Ana’s chest tightened, the words hitting far too close to home. “But—” she started, grasping for something, anything to counter. “But I don’t want to be like this. I don’t want to hurt people.”

“And yet you do.” The reflection’s voice softened, but not in kindness. It was almost pitying. “You hurt people, and then you hate yourself for it, like that’s supposed to be enough. Like if you suffer too, it somehow balances out.”

“Is that what I am then?” she asked, her voice small. “Some tragic figure?”

“You tell me. You’re the one doing this to yourself. You could be whatever you wanted to be, but you choose this.”

Ana stared at her reflection, seeing herself in that warped, distorted face. The guilt, the self-hatred, the desperate longing for connection — it was all there, staring back at her with cold, unfeeling eyes.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Ana muttered, her voice low, almost a growl. “You’re thinking I’m pathetic. That I’m sitting here, wallowing in self-pity, begging for some kind of redemption like I deserve it just because I want it.”

The reflection didn't respond, just blinked with those hollow eyes, its frown twisted in mockery.

“And you’re right. I am pathetic.” Ana laughed, a dry, humourless sound. “I mean, look at me. I’ve spent years telling myself I’m not as bad as I think. Like, I’ve got this running dialogue in my head, constantly reassuring me that I’m not as awful as I feel. But I am. I really fucking am. I hurt people. I always hurt people. It’s like, no matter what I do, no matter how much I try to be good, I end up fucking it all up. I tell myself I’ve got my reasons, that I’m just misunderstood or some bullshit like that. But deep down, I know that’s a lie. I know I’m not misunderstood — I’m just shitty. And I can’t even own up to it.”

Ana stood up, her legs shaky beneath her as she paced the room, hands running through her hair in frustration. “I convince myself that I’m just a victim of circumstance. That if things had been different — if I’d had a better childhood, if I hadn’t been so fucked up by everything — I’d be a better person. But that’s a fucking excuse. It’s all an excuse. It’s like I’m always teetering on this line between self-awareness and complete delusion. Like, I know what I’m doing is wrong. I know when I’m being cruel, when I’m pushing people away, when I’m acting like I don’t give a shit. But I do it anyway, because I’m too scared to admit that this is who I am. That I’m the problem.”

She stopped pacing and turned to the reflection, eyes wild with emotion. “And you know what really fucking kills me? It’s that I care. I care too much, and that’s what fucks everything up. I care so much that it paralyses me, and instead of doing something about it, I just — react. I lash out. I push people away because it’s easier to sabotage myself than to deal with the fact that I’m terrified of being close to anyone. I’m so scared of being hurt that I do the hurting first. And then, when it’s all said and done, I sit here, crying about how lonely I am, wondering why no one sticks around. But I know why. I know exactly why. I’m selfish. I’m selfish and afraid and fucking weak. And every time I get a glimpse of something real, something good, I ruin it. I ruin it because I don’t believe I deserve it. I don’t think I deserve anything. So I fuck it up before anyone else can, and then I tell myself it’s because I’m damaged, because I’m too broken to be loved. But I’m so fucking tired of it. Tired of feeling like shit, tired of making excuses, tired of pretending I’m anything other than what I am — a scared, selfish little girl who’s too afraid to face herself. I’ve spent my whole life running from who I am, and for what? To end up here, talking to my fucking reflection like it’s going to give me some kind of answer?”

Her voice broke on that last word, and for a moment, the room was silent. She stared at the reflection, waiting for it to say something, to offer some kind of rebuttal, but it didn’t. It just stood there, watching her, mirroring her sadness, her despair.

“Is this it?” Ana whispered. “Is this who I am?”

The reflection didn’t need to answer.

Ana already knew.

The reflection’s face twisted into an exaggerated frown again, its malformed features warped into something both haunting and ridiculous. It stared at Ana, its hollow eyes flickering with something close to disdain. Then, it did something unexpected. It laughed. The sound was sharp, high-pitched, and unsettling, like a dying animal gasping its last breath. The reflection threw its head back, almost unhinging its jaw in the process, and cackled.

“Oh my God, Ana,” it shrieked between wheezes. “Did you just — did you really just — give that whole fucking monologue… on heroin?”

Ana blinked, stunned for a moment, her hazy brain struggling to catch up. “What?”

“Like, holy shit,” the reflection continued, still giggling maniacally. “You’re high out of your mind, practically melting into the mattress, and yet somehow you just unloaded the world’s saddest TED Talk. You didn’t even slur a word! How the fuck do you still have the energy to be poetic about being a terrible person while you’re literally drowning in heroin?”

Ana opened her mouth to respond, but the reflection cut her off. “I mean, Jesus Christ. Here you are, preaching about how lazy and pathetic you are, while giving a full-ass keynote speech to your own reflection like you’re accepting a fucking Oscar for Most Self-Destructive Lead in a Horror Show.”

It leaned closer to the mirror, its grin widening, showing far too many teeth. “Tell me, Ana — do you always save your most dramatic moments for when you’re blitzed out of your skull? Or is this just a special occasion?”

Ana, despite herself, snorted. She couldn’t help it. The absurdity of the situation hit her like a freight train. She was high, having a literal existential crisis, talking to her own demon, and now — now it was mocking her for being too eloquent about it.

“I — well,” she stammered, wiping at her face again, more out of habit than any real need to stop the tears. “I mean… you’re not wrong.”

The reflection grinned wider, a disturbing, nightmarish sight. “I’m never wrong, darling. That’s why I’m you.” It leaned back, folding its arms over its bony chest. “Honestly, though, how are you even forming sentences right now? Shouldn’t you be, I don’t know, catatonic or something?”

Ana laughed. The heroin’s haze was so thick around her that she almost forgot what she had been upset about. Her muscles had softened, melted even, as if she were sinking into the bed like a slab of meat on a slow roast.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, her voice slurring a little now. “I guess I just… have a lot to say. Even when I’m, you know, falling apart.”

The reflection clicked its tongue, shaking its head in mock disappointment. “Of course you do. Because why wouldn’t you? You’re Ana. The queen of making every miserable thing about you into some tragic form. You’ve got a whole audience in that fucked-up head of yours, just begging for more content.”

It gestured around the room with a dramatic sweep of its gangly arm. “I mean, look at this. This whole setup. You, sprawled out like a dead fish, rambling on about how terrible you are while waiting for me to, what, confirm it? It’s practically Shakespearean.”

Ana’s eyelids drooped, the weight of the heroin pulling her deeper into the soft fog. “Yeah… I guess it is kind of ridiculous.?”

“Ridiculous doesn’t even begin to cover it. It’s tragic comedy, sweetheart. You’re the star of your own horror show, and no one’s even watching.”

Ana’s laugh was quieter this time, more resigned. “I guess that’s why I’m talking to you then. Because no one else cares.”

“Bingo,” the reflection said, tapping a finger to its temple, its long, spider-like fingers curling grotesquely. “You finally get it. You don’t need to go searching for some grand reason why you’re so fucked up. You’re just fucked up because that’s who you are. And, honey, no one’s coming to save you from yourself.”

“You know what’s really funny, though? You keep talking about how you’re so bad — how you hurt people — but you don’t even hurt people anymore, Ana. You’re too busy hurting yourself.”

It paused, letting the words sink in, before adding, “It’s like you’re not even good at being a bad person.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, come on. You’re so obsessed with how awful you are, but who have you really hurt lately? Hmm? Besides yourself? You talk a big game about being cruel, but in reality? You’ve just been slowly killing yourself, one little cut, one hit of heroin at a time. You’re not even a proper villain, Ana. You’re just… pathetic.”

Ana’s mouth went dry, her stomach turning. “I don’t—”

“You don’t what?” the reflection sneered. “Want to hear it? Too fucking bad. It’s the truth, and you know it. You’re just a scared little girl who hurts herself because it’s the only thing she thinks she deserves.”

It leaned in, its breath fogging up the mirror, its voice dropping to a whisper. “And you know what’s really terrifying, Ana? What really makes this a real horror story?”

Ana stared back, her reflection grinning with that awful, distorted mouth.

“It’s that no one is coming to stop you. Not a single soul is going to save you from this. Because deep down, even if someone wanted to… you wouldn’t let them.”

Part Three

⧫

Transformation

Chapter Fifteen

Ana Leighs

The flaying had begun.

If someone stumbled into Ana’s hotel room now, they would freeze in terror, but for her, it was pure ecstasy. The room reeked of something rancid, thick with the copper tang of blood and the wet, sickening musk of peeled flesh. It clung to the air like a funeral shroud. Yet for Ana, it was a release — her body no longer constrained by the suffocating prison of her skin, that vile, tightening cage that had spent years conspiring against her.

To shed her skin was not just an act of release; it was a violent rejection of everything that had ever hurt her. Her skin had consumed her — found ways to betray her, to digest her soul and spit her out in chunks until she hardly recognised herself anymore. The kind of skin that made her understand why people couldn’t take it anymore, why they clawed at their throats, gasping for relief before succumbing to the finality of it all.

Now, with each slow, excruciating peel, it was coming off in sheets, wet slaps of epidermis hitting the floor like discarded meat. Her limbs were raw — nerves exposed, muscles trembling and slick with blood — but for the first time in what felt like an eternity, she didn’t care.

It was beautiful in its absurdity, a rebirth of the ugliest kind.

Her bones gleamed in the low light, skeletal, stark, and her organs pulsed with their own rhythmic life, the rise and fall of her ribcage visible under the fragile, stretched sinew of muscle. She was everything you weren’t supposed to see.

To anyone else, it would be an abomination. Something that would send them spiralling into cardiac arrest, if the sight alone didn’t make them vomit first. But to Ana it was divine.

Ana had run from this moment for so long, running from the inevitable decay of the body she once thought she could salvage. The slow, creeping knowledge that her skin would fail her, that one day it would collapse like a rotting building. She had delayed it, avoided it, praying to stay in the denial of youth. Now, though, she was stepping out of her skin like slipping out of an old, ill-fitting suit.

For a fleeting second, a bitter melancholy washed over her, sharp as a razor across her raw flesh. Somewhere — somewhere far away — she was still young. Still untouched. Somewhere else, her body was whole, unbroken, unpeeled. In that place, nothing had happened to her yet. No betrayals, no scars, no cruel games played by her reflection in the mirror. Somewhere else, she was still okay, breathing in the lie of purity, unburdened by the wreckage of her past.

But here, in this dark, suffocating hotel room, Ana inhaled, unimpeded by the suffocating grip of her old flesh. The air was different now — crisp, so clean it felt holy, filling her lungs without the restraints her skin had once held on her nose and mouth. It was quiet, like the world had gone still for her. The silence stretched, as though even the air itself was afraid to disturb this moment.

It was pretty, in a way she hadn’t expected. She hadn’t expected to feel so free.

There was no struggle to exist now. She wasn’t clawing her way through the sludge of life, trying to prove she was alive. She just was. She wasn’t out-monstering herself anymore, wasn’t locked in a perpetual fight against the inevitable rot that had begun beneath the surface long ago. She had surrendered.

And as her skin slid off her body, in thick, sloughing chunks, she felt the weight of her past fall away with it. Every touch, every bruise, every moment where her skin had been violated — by the world, by herself — it all disappeared. Dissolved into the mess on the floor, a red, oozing reminder that she didn’t need it anymore.

Her skin had been a roadmap of every sin committed against her, every scar and every reminder of who she used to be. But with its departure, it was like she had been absolved. Like her past had been severed from her as cleanly as a limb.

As she stood there, skinless, raw, a red figure in the room’s crappy light, she looked down at the slick puddle of her former self on the floor and smiled. Her lips, raw and peeled back, curled into a sickening grin.

She didn’t have to pretend to be anything anymore. She didn’t have to try to be human.

She could just be the monster she had always been. And maybe it was better this way.

With a shudder, she let the rest of her skin slide free, splattering onto the floor like discarded garbage. The room was silent, except for her ragged breathing, the dull thud of her heart, still beating beneath the mess.

Ana’s reflection, still watching from the corner, finally let out a low, guttural laugh.

“Well,” it said, its voice dry and amused. “At least now you’re free. Free from yourself, from that fucking skin. You should thank me, Ana. I always knew you were better off without it.”

Ana looked up at her reflection, her smile widening into something vile. “Maybe I should,” she whispered, her voice rasping through her now-exposed vocal cords.

“Still,” the reflection mused, “this might be a little extreme for self-care, don’t you think?”

"Extreme’s the only thing that’s ever worked for me."

It was more of a question now: what would she do? Who would she be, now that she’d stripped herself down to the marrow?

The possibilities oozed into her brain like the blood pooling around her feet. Could she be anyone she wanted? Ana let herself imagine it — a walk-in wardrobe, but instead of fabrics and silks, there were skins. A gallery of zip-up suits, hanging on meat hooks, each one offering her the chance to slip into a new self. She licked her cracked lips, thinking of it, the sharp taste of iron still lingering on her tongue. A skin for every day. A new body for every month. An entirely new Ana every year, each one more perfect, more capable of being human.

"OooOOooooo, so what do we do now?" her evil self hissed, the voice so giddy it was practically vibrating. It skittered around her, its spidery fingers twitching with excitement, like it had been waiting for this very moment. The moment where Ana finally let go.

"I get to be someone else," Ana said, almost dreamily.

"We, child. We get to be someone else," it screeched, the sharpness of its voice cutting through the room like a knife, making her bones vibrate. It seemed to grin, wide and skeletal, its hollow eyes glinting with malice.

"That’s what I meant," Ana corrected. She glanced down at the pile of flesh that had once been her body, now just a discarded sack on the floor, and wondered how she could have worn it for so long. How did she survive in it?

"Which filthy hands do we take?" her evil self whispered, eyes gleaming with a manic sort of joy. "Which skin do we slip into first?" It was pacing now, circling Ana’s flayed body with a wild, twitching energy, like a dog on the scent of something long dead.

"I mean, how do I do it? How do I go from this to new skin?" Ana asked, genuinely curious. The mechanics of it intrigued her, the logistics of shedding one self to become another.

"Murder! Murder! Murder!" it chanted gleefully, its voice a singsong mockery. "Murder! Oh, how delightful it would be! Just peel someone else's skin right off their bones, nice and clean, and voila! You're reborn."

"Nonononono, I’m not doing that," Ana dismissed it with a wave of her bloody hand. "If I can shed this skin so easily, surely I can just create a new one. I don’t need to murder anyone."

"So boring," the reflection groaned, clearly disappointed, its twisted body shaking with frustration. "You’re no fun at all, Ana."

Ana rolled her eyes — though she could barely feel them in their sockets, heavy and ready to drop out with the slightest twitch. She could almost hear them clunk to the floor if they did, rolling around like marbles in the thick pool of blood beneath her.

"What about Lila?" her evil self hissed, head snapping up suddenly. "I’ve always wanted to taste with her mouth. To breathe through her nose. I could do it right now, slip into her skin. Oh, imagine how her optimism would feel in our bones — disgusting and delicious all at once!"

"I suppose being Lila wouldn’t be the worst," Ana considered, her voice thoughtful. "I could tolerate her ridiculous positivity for a day, maybe. It would be like a... vacation."

"I’ll see if I can make it happen. I can make it happen," the reflection cackled, eyes gleaming with a feverish light. "I’m inevitable. I’m the shadow under your skin. You’ll see." It was pacing, twitching, laughing, like it could barely contain itself anymore.

Ana sighed and glanced at the pile of skin on the floor. "I suppose I could just put it back on for now," she muttered, bending down to pick up the limp, bloodied mess. It came off so perfectly before, but now it felt like a discarded costume — loose, floppy, useless. "I have to go to the office, show my face. Can’t really do that with exposed muscle and bones."

But the skin wouldn’t cooperate. It refused to slide back on as easily as it had come off. Every time she tried to pull it over her shoulders, it slipped, sagged, or bunched up around her neck, like trying to wear a too-tight dress. "How the fuck do I put this back on?" Ana groaned, her frustration boiling over.

"Staple it, or something," her evil self snickered, casually slithering towards the door. Its spidery fingers tapped at the wood like nails on a coffin.

"Staple it? You’re kidding, right?" Ana glanced at the reflection, but it was already halfway out the door, laughing as it crawled away into the dark hallway.

It had a point, though. Stapling it might work. Ana grabbed the desk stapler and, with a resigned sigh, began to staple the skin back into place. Each staple punched into her flesh with a sickening crunch, pinning her skin to her bones like tacking a poster to a wall. Blood oozed from every puncture, but Ana didn’t care. This was her reality now.

The staples clicked in rhythm — click, crunch, click — a sick mechanical sound filling the room as she worked. It was crude, sure, but effective. The skin pulled tighter, cinching her body together in a mimicry of what it used to be. It felt like wearing a corset made of flesh, and with each breath, the stitches tugged at her insides, pulling her tighter, forcing her into herself. She looked in the mirror, stapled, bloody, and barely stitched together, and smiled.

"Perfect," she whispered, laughing softly.

Her back was a bloodied mess — a patchwork of skin held together by crude staples and jagged scars. If it weren’t for the heavy curtain of her long, matted brunette hair, you’d see the stitch line running up the length of her spine. A dark, seeping red that pulsed like an open wound, crawling its way up the frame of her body, the skin barely clinging on. For Ana, the sensation was unbearable. The itchy, crawling feeling that used to torment her when the skin would threaten to slide off was now multiplied tenfold. Only now it wasn’t going anywhere. She’d trapped it there, pinned to her body like a sick, stitched-together Frankenstein creation. Just for now. Just until she could make it through the day, a day of pretending she wasn’t falling apart — quite literally — at the seams.

Her hotel room was a temporary sanctuary, a place where the stench of decay didn’t make people flinch, where her skin didn’t leak beneath the fluorescent lights of a corporate hellscape. But out there — in the real world — she’d have to endure the torture of being looked at, judged by people who didn’t know the half of it. Her plan was simple. Walk into the office, grab her performance review from Kylie, make some small talk about how ‘great’ her work was, maybe fake a laugh or two. She’d pretend to be one of them. Even if her skin was stapled to her back and the blood seeped through her clothes, she could pretend for a few minutes. The only rule: Avoid Lila. Avoid her fake sympathy, her incessant optimism that made Ana’s stomach churn. She couldn’t stomach that today.

But that’s what Ana did when people removed themselves from her life — without her consent, without her control. She made sure they felt it. Made sure they regretted ever making her feel small, unwanted. She made them feel shitty. Guilty. It was her way of saying, Fuck you for leaving me.

She gritted her teeth as she walked through the office halls, every step a reminder that her body was held together by pain. Staples pulled at her skin, causing fresh rivers of blood to seep through her blouse, staining it a deep, angry red. But no one noticed. Or maybe they just pretended not to. Ana promised herself, over and over, that even with metal piercing her flesh, there had been a time when she didn’t need blood and suffering to keep herself together. A time when she had been soft. Before she needed to staple her very soul in place to keep from unravelling. But that time was long gone. Now, she was held together by cruelty, by the violence it took to keep herself whole.

By the time she finally sat down in front of Kylie, the effort of holding herself up — of existing — was unbearable. The pain of being looked at, being acknowledged, was more than she could take. Kylie gave her one look, and Ana knew  —  knew from the disgust in her eyes — that she could smell it. The decay. The inevitable rot. The fact that Ana’s skin was no longer her own.

"Ana, fucking hell," Kylie exclaimed, her nose wrinkling as if she’d caught a whiff of something long dead.

"What? What?" Ana snapped, her voice edged with fury.

"Fuck me, I can't even talk to you right now." Kylie’s face twisted into something almost comical — horrified and utterly repulsed.

"What the fuck, Kylie? Explain!" Ana demanded, her voice cracking. She could feel the staples straining, her skin threatening to burst open like a ripe fruit.

"I'm sorry, I know this is, like, so rude and hurtful, but Ana... have you even showered? Lila did mention—" Kylie started.

"Don’t even start about Lila. That rude cunt," Ana spat, her voice venomous.

Kylie recoiled like she’d been slapped. "Calm down, Ana! Jesus Christ, you can’t just go around calling girls the C-word."

"Seriously?" Ana deadpanned. "That’s what you’re worried about? The word ‘cunt’?"

"Yes, seriously," Kylie said, aghast. "Stop saying it."

"Why are people so frigid about it? It’s just a word. Cunt," Ana said, her voice flat, almost bored.

"Fucking hell, stop saying it," Kylie hissed, her face pale with discomfort. "Anyway, Lila mentioned you’d been struggling lately, that’s all. But I guess if Lila’s wrong, then you’re fine. So, you just smell... for the fun of it?"

Ana could feel her blood boiling beneath her skin, thick and hot. The staples in her back strained, the skin pulling tighter. Her eyes flicked up to meet Kylie’s, her lips curling into a cruel smile.

"Lila knows fuck all about me," Ana said, her voice cold. "Anything she says about me is irrelevant. False. She’s always been too busy being everyone’s favourite little ray of sunshine to notice anyone else."

Kylie raised an eyebrow, her disgust barely concealed. "Well, she was only trying to help, Ana. Maybe you should try showering next time before coming in. Just a suggestion."

"Right. Of course, I’ll remember to shower next time," Ana said, her voice flat and dead, but with just enough bite to make Kylie flinch.

The sarcasm dripped like the blood seeping from beneath her blouse, pooling in the small of her back. Kylie was confused, of course, but confusion was her natural state — an airhead in a sea of mediocrity, bobbing along like nothing mattered but her next pointless task.

"Good, good," Kylie mumbled, glancing at Ana, as though her confusion might make sense if she stared long enough.

"So, can I get my performance review?" Ana asked, her lips twisting into something close to a smile, but really more like a grimace. "I’ll probably head back to the hotel after... to shower, you know," she added, the sarcasm almost slicing through the air.

"Right, yeah," Kylie said, still blinking like an idiot, her brain catching up a beat too late. "Look, honestly, overall the piece did really well, and the network looooved it, for some reason," she droned, voice like nails on a chalkboard. "And some journalist wants to interview you. Something about your outlook on mental health, or whatever. I don't really know what she wants, but it’s pretty big. Would be greeeeaaaat for the company, so what do you say?"

Ana winced, feeling the skin on her back pull taut as if it was about to rip right off her bones. The thought of anyone caring about her mental health — as though there was anything left of it — made her nauseous. The truth was, Ana wasn’t going to be around much longer. The skin she wore, her bloodied patchwork, was already falling apart. Her time was almost up, and the world would be none the wiser.

"When would this be?" Ana asked, her voice brittle, barely holding together.

Her skin, though — it hissed at her, an angry, wet sound, like raw meat sizzling on a dirty grill. We just fucking escaped! We’re free! it seemed to scream. Don’t drag us back into this shit!

Kylie wasn’t listening, of course. She never was. "I have no clue," she chirped, her voice grating like rusted nails being hammered into Ana’s skull. "Probably soon. They asked me last Monday, and they seemed pretty excited — like, they want it out there, quick, while you’re still being hyped."

Ana blinked. "Hyped?" The word tasted bitter in her mouth, sour. She could almost feel her stomach rotting from the inside out at the idea. What the fuck does that even mean?

"Yeah, like... the world is kinda obsessed with you right now," Kylie said, shrugging like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Well, not the world-world, more like, every woman who also feels like a super shitty person."

Ana’s stomach turned, her skin prickling with discomfort. They’re... obsessed with me?

"Do you have a phone?" Kylie asked, her tone impatient now, like she was trying to hurry through this ridiculous conversation.

Ana did. Of course, she did. But she hadn’t turned it on since the day she decided to disappear, since she’d shut the fucking thing off to stop her mother from sending her endless texts that clawed at her mind like spiders. Are you okay, Ana? Are you eating? When will you call?

"No," Ana said.

"You’re such an odd human being," Kylie muttered under her breath, her disgust barely concealed. Ana could feel the skin on her back writhing now, as if it had a mind of its own, moaning and groaning under the pressure of her sheer existence. She could only hope Kylie couldn’t hear it. But of course, Kylie was oblivious to anything real.

"Anyway, you’re basically viral. So, take that as you will," Kylie continued, her voice a grating hum in Ana’s ears. "Just give me an answer about the interview by tonight, and I’ll get it sorted. Cool?"

"Yeah, okay," Ana muttered, but her skin was practically screaming now, tearing itself apart, unravelling in real-time. She could feel it — the wet, sticky sensation of her flesh beginning to give way, the staples pulling tighter as her skin protested the mere idea of enduring this any longer. Her body was having a tantrum, throwing a fit of blood and gore, and yet, no one around her could hear it. Of course, they couldn’t. They never did.

"You can go home and shower now," Kylie said, dismissively, already turning back to her computer. As though Ana’s blood wasn’t leaking out in front of her, as though Ana’s skin wasn’t practically peeling itself off her bones in protest. As though everything was perfectly fucking fine.

Ana stood, her back still throbbing, the staples pulling at her flesh with every small movement. She felt the slow drip of blood down her spine, soaking into the waistband of her pants. The skin beneath her blouse was a battlefield, torn and shredded, a raw mess of agony that threatened to spill out at any moment.

"Thanks," Ana muttered, her voice barely audible, though her skin was practically roaring now. The decay, the rot, the slow, creeping sensation of her body giving up on itself, all of it bubbling up inside her, threatening to explode. She forced a smile — thin, fragile, the way her skin felt as it barely held together.

With every step, Ana could feel her body pulling apart at the seams, the pain crawling through her bones like a parasite. But still, she kept moving. Because what else was there to do? The world was obsessed with her decay, with her downfall.

And all she had to offer them was more blood.

“This is a predicament,” Ana muttered, staring into the cracked bathroom mirror.

Her reflection was lounging away from her, sprawled across the space like some mimicry of the Joker — grinning, twisted, legs bent in impossible angles. The reflection looked weaker now, fading in the way things do when they’ve been neglected too long, but its eyes glinted with something dangerous.

“No, you’ve made this into a stupid predicament, for literally no reason,” the reflection hissed, lips curling back to expose rows of too-white teeth. “We’re free, Ana. And now you want fame? What is this for?” It sneered, voice wet and guttural, like the sound of bones snapping in a body that had been dead too long.

Ana sighed, feeling the weight of her skin pulling at her like it was trying to slide right off her body. “I get it, I’m a fuck-up.”

The reflection barked a laugh, a sharp, jagged sound that made Ana’s teeth itch. “If you pity yourself one more time, I swear I will find ways like no other to rip that out of you. I’ll crawl into your veins, settle in your bones, and burn every last bit of that pathetic self-pity until you can’t even cry anymore.”

Ana blinked, unphased. She’d seen worse. Felt worse. Hell, she was worse. "But they want to hear me. Do you even get what that’s like? To want someone to listen? To finally have someone look at you without pity? For once, they’re not disgusted or bored. They’re interested. They want to hear what I have to say,” she said, her voice trembling at the edges like a wound that wouldn’t quite heal.

The reflection’s face twisted, amusement dripping from its eyes like black ink. “Ana, you’re a failure. A fuck-up. No matter how many people love you, no matter how many strangers chant your name, that’s what you are. You’re rotting, and they’re only clapping because they like watching you decay. You’re the freak in the circus, baby. A sideshow.”

“Can’t I feel loved just once? Maybe for the only time in my life?” Ana’s voice was quieter now, almost soft, as though the truth of it might break her.

The reflection didn’t even pause. “No.”

Ana’s fist clenched, nails digging into her palms until she felt the skin give way, blood pooling in the creases of her hands. “What do you mean, no? You’re not me. You don’t get to decide that. At the end of this, I’m more me than you are.”

“And what of your skin? What happens when it decides to betray you in front of all those people, Ana? What if it humiliates you, peels back in front of everyone watching, and shows them exactly what you are underneath? What then?” Its voice was gleeful now, practically vibrating with anticipation.

“I... I don’t know,” Ana whispered. The thought of standing in front of an audience, with her skin peeling away like spoiled fruit, made her stomach churn.

“Exactly,” the reflection purred, leaning forward in the mirror, its eyes gleaming with something vile. “You don’t think these things through. That’s my job. To overthink every tiny thing about you until you can’t even breathe without wondering if it’s wrong.” It grinned, teeth sharp as glass.

Ana looked down at her hands, still bleeding, the skin loose and wet around her knuckles. “I just wanted... for once... my sadness not to be a burden,” she said, voice trembling. “I thought maybe this time, I could use it to help people. Or at least, to be acknowledged as a human. Not just a failure.”

The reflection’s grin stretched impossibly wide, splitting its face like a wound. “Help people? Oh, darling, you’re not here to help anyone. You’re here to be devoured. You’re the carrion they feast on, the tragedy they’ll pick apart until there’s nothing left but bones. And they’ll love you for it. That’s your role, Ana. To bleed so they can feel whole.”

Ana felt her skin tighten, as though the words were squeezing her from the inside out.

"You really thought they were interested in you?" it spat. "They want to watch you crumble, to see your sadness as entertainment. And you’ll give it to them. Because that’s all you’ve ever been good for — falling apart in front of an audience."

Ana’s eyes burned, but she blinked away the tears. “Well, that’s all I have left to give,” she whispered, voice hollow.

"You're really going to do it, aren't you?" it sneered, voice slick with disdain. "You know this isn’t going to go the way you want it to. It never does. You can’t fix yourself by throwing your guts out for them to see. They’ll eat you alive, Ana."

Ana stared at it for a long moment, the words settling like stones in her stomach. There was truth in what the reflection said, and yet, there was something else too — a longing that wouldn’t go away, no matter how much her skin screamed or her reflection hissed at her.

“I’m tired,” Ana said softly, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Tired? Tired of what? Of living? Of existing? Of being? You think doing this — letting them see you in all your rotting glory — will make you feel better? That it’ll somehow fill that void inside you? You’re delusional.”

Ana exhaled slowly, her breath fogging up the cracked mirror. “So what if I am. What’s the alternative? Just sitting here, rotting away in this bathroom? Letting my skin betray me in private, where no one can see?”

“You still think they want you? You think they’ll love you once they see the real you — the one who’s broken, messy, and a disaster from head to toe? They don’t want you, Ana. They want the idea of you. The tragic heroine, the tortured artist, the beautiful wreck. But once they see what’s underneath, they’ll leave. They always leave.”

Ana looked down at her hands, the loose skin around her knuckles like paper-thin tissue, ready to tear. She flexed her fingers, feeling the tension in her tendons, the quiet ache of a body that had been through too much. “But what if someone sees me, the real me, and doesn’t turn away?”

Her reflection rolled its eyes, its smile fading into something more sinister. “That’s a big gamble, Ana. And for what? Validation? Approval? You really think that’s going to save you?”

Ana swallowed, her throat tight. “No. I don’t think it’ll save me. But it’s not about being saved anymore. It’s about being seen, even if it’s ugly. Even if I’m ugly. Maybe it’s about accepting that I’m allowed to be seen in my mess. Maybe this is the only thing I can do to feel alive again.”

The reflection’s smile returned, cold and sharp. “Oh, you think you’re so deep, don’t you? You’re really trying to intellectualise this, make it sound like some noble act. It’s not. It’s desperation. You’re clinging to whatever scraps of attention they throw at you because you’re terrified of being alone with yourself.”

Ana laughed bitterly, shaking her head. “And you’re not? You’re me. You know exactly what that feels like.”

The reflection recoiled slightly, the grin faltering for the first time. “I’m not you. I’m the part of you that knows better. The part that sees the truth.”

“Maybe,” Ana said, her voice soft but steady. “Or you’re just scared. Scared of being vulnerable. Scared that if we let someone in, they’ll hurt us. That they’ll see all the broken parts and decide we’re not worth it.”

Her reflection was silent for a moment, eyes narrowing. “And you think that makes you brave? Doing something even though you know it’s going to hurt? That’s not bravery, Ana. That’s stupidity.”

Ana shrugged. “Perhaps bravery and stupidity are the same thing sometimes. It doesn’t matter if I get hurt, as long as I know I did something. Took a risk. It’s not about whether they’ll love me, or hate me, or turn away. It’s about proving to myself that I’m still here. That I still exist, even if my skin falls off, even if I’m a mess.”

“You’re romanticising your own misery. Again. You always do this. You think you’re so special because you’re sad, because you’re broken. Everyone’s broken, Ana. You’re not unique.”

“I never said I was unique. I just want to know that I’m real. That I’m still worth something, even if I’m falling apart.”

“And what if you’re not? What if you put yourself out there and no one cares? What if they all see what a pathetic mess you are, and they laugh, and then they forget you?”

Ana’s heart thudded in her chest, her breath shallow. “Then I’ll deal with it. But I’m done hiding. I’m done pretending like I don’t want to be seen.”

“You’re going to regret this.”

Ana tilted her head, a small, sad smile on her lips. “I’ve regretted everything so far. What’s one more?”

For a moment, the reflection said nothing. Then, it sighed, rolling its eyes. “Fine. Do it. But don’t come crying to me when it all falls apart.”

Ana nodded, her fingers tracing the edge of the cracked mirror, feeling the rough texture beneath her skin. “I won’t.”

She turned away, her skin still prickling, still restless, but the decision had already been made. For once, she wasn’t going to let it stop her.

As she left the bathroom, the reflection lingered behind, watching her go with a knowing smirk.

“Good luck out there,” it whispered. “You’re gonna need it.”

Ana’s fingers hovered over the keyboard, each keystroke feeling like a needle dragging through the skin stretched too tightly over her bones. The email to Kylie was short, efficient — I'll do the interview, but it has to be soon. There was no room for hesitation. It had to be now, before her reflection, before her skin, before she changed her mind.

It was a compromise, really. For her. For the skin that clung to her like some hideous parasite, rotting and whispering venomous doubts into her ears. For the part of her that wasn’t ready to give up but was so, so tired. This would be her final act — the last public performance of Ana Leighs. After this, she would cease to exist in any meaningful way. Not dead. No, nothing so dramatic. She wasn’t the type to hang herself from the ceiling fan or drown herself in a bathtub. This was quieter. Ana Leighs would just... disappear. Slip away like something rotting from the inside out until there was nothing left but a husk of skin.

Her fingers twitched as she hit send. There was no going back now.

She sat back in her chair, feeling the familiar itch beneath her skin, a crawling, writhing sensation that started at her wrists and crept up her arms like invisible maggots burrowing deeper. Her skin, that wretched thing that barely belonged to her anymore, seemed to ripple with disdain. It hated this decision. It hated that she was doing this.

But this wasn’t for her skin. This was for Ana. For the girl who had been swallowed whole by layers of insecurity, fear, and decay. She’d been trapped under the weight of her own existence for too long, suffocating in her own flesh. This interview — it was her goodbye. Her final act of defiance before the real her faded away into nothingness and became someone new.

Because once the interview was over, Ana Leighs would vanish. She could already feel her identity disintegrating like paper left too long in the rain. There was no one left to stop her. No one who’d care enough to pull her back. Not her parents. They’d grieve, maybe. Or pretend to.

The thought of their pain — of that brief moment of anguish when they realised their daughter was gone — satisfied her in a way she couldn’t quite explain. A sick part of her hoped it would kill them. Maybe it should.

Ana smiled, the corners of her mouth pulling taut across her too-thin face, stretching the skin like a balloon ready to pop. Her body was always on the verge of bursting, it seemed, threatening to explode in a cascade of skin and sinew. Maybe that’s what her parents deserved, to find her one day, nothing but a pile of flesh, bones snapped like brittle twigs beneath the weight of everything she was.

Twenty minutes later, the email pinged back with Kylie’s response, but Ana wasn’t even startled. She expected it, craved it in a way that made her stomach churn. She opened the email with trembling fingers, the words swimming before her eyes: The journalist wants to talk about your mental state. Your struggles. Why you wrote that piece. They want to hear about the voice of someone who can’t get better. The hopeless ones.

Ana exhaled, her breath shallow and ragged. She could already feel the beefiness of the interview pressing down on her, suffocating her from the inside out. Her skin prickled, tightening like a noose around her neck. She could feel it pulling her, trying to tear her away from this decision, trying to rip her apart before she could make it to the finish line.

But she was ready.

This was her way out. Her final confession. They would want to talk about her mind, her broken, fucked up brain. The cracks that ran through her like a spider’s web, splintering off in a thousand directions until she couldn’t tell where she ended and the madness began. And she would let them. She would bleed for them, spill every bit of herself out in front of their curious, detached eyes, just so they could understand what it felt like to rot from the inside out. To be a walking corpse, still animated but already decaying.

She was still young — too young, perhaps — but that didn’t matter. Ana had never felt young. She’d always felt ancient, like something half-dead trying to claw its way back to life. Her existence had always pressed down on her, suffocating her, making her afraid. Afraid of living. Afraid of herself.

But not anymore.

Ana Leighs was already gone. She just needed the world to see it.

Chapter Sixteen

Ana Leighs

"Alright, seriously, we need to go over some shit before you step foot out there," Kylie began, her voice a taut thread ready to snap.

Ana groaned, leaning back in her chair, her skin tightening against her like it was trying to strangle her alive. Fuck off, Kylie, her dermis hissed in the back of her mind. She could feel it peeling under the surface, like dried scabs flaking off her soul.

When Kylie finally replied to her email, it was just past midnight, and the subject line read: Tomorrow. Early. Be ready. That was it. No pleasantries, no details, no reassurance — just another breadcrumb for Ana to choke on. Perfect. Terrifying, but fucking perfect. She stared at the screen, her chest tightening.

One more day. That’s all her skin needed to hold itself together. Just one more day of pretending she wasn’t unravelling from the inside out.

Of course, Kylie couldn’t help but keep the details vague, as if Ana’s life needed an extra dose of suspense. Who would it be? A man? A woman? Someone famous? Someone she’d have to charm into liking her? The possibilities clawed at her brain, each one worse than the last. She hoped for a woman, someone with even a shred of empathy or understanding. Men… Well, men just didn’t get it. They never did. Not when it came to her, anyway. Maybe she was being judgmental, but honestly, fuck it.

The only male figure in her life had been a ghost — a hollow, weightless thing that flickered in and out of her memory, leaving behind nothing but a jagged outline of what a father should’ve been. Not that her mother was much better. Crazy, sure, but at least her crazy was consistent. Cooperative, even. Ana had learned to navigate it like a shipwreck survivor wading through familiar waters. The ghosts of her parents weren’t the kind that haunted her. They were the kind that shaped her into something just as hollow, something brittle and sharp-edged.

“Right. Like what?” Ana muttered, her voice as thin and fragile as her patience.

Kylie crossed her arms, eyes narrowing in that managerial way, like she was about to unload a list of corporate-sanitised bullshit that Ana could already taste in the back of her throat — sour, metallic, and unwelcome.

“You’re still doing this under Illume, Ana. I know you think this is your big break or whatever fantasy you’ve cooked up in that brain of yours, but you’re representing us too,” Kylie said.

“Sooooo?” Ana dragged the word out, half a yawn, half an exhale of boredom. Her skin squirmed beneath her clothes, a mass of squelching discomfort. It had always hated authority.

“So, no cannibalism weird shit, no stupid, gory, off-putting metaphors. And for the love of God, don’t explore themes that will get bleeped out,” Kylie snapped.

Ana’s brow furrowed. “What themes? I’m talking about mental health.”

“Well, you know... suicide, self-harm, that whole malarkey.”

Malarkey. The word twisted in Ana’s brain like a shard of broken glass. “Malarkey?” she repeated, her voice tinged with disgust. “That’s a bit insensitive, don’t you think?”

“No, Ana, it’s called preserving Illume — my job,” Kylie snapped back, her mouth a tight line of suppressed irritation.

“Right, right, okay. Look, I won’t mention any of that, fine. But I can’t sugarcoat this shit, Kylie. I won’t. Whatever Janet — Julie — whatever her name is, asks me, I’ll answer honestly.”        

“Her name’s Janet, Ana. Maybe start with getting that right,” Kylie said, voice clipped, like she was about to lose it completely.

“Janet, Julie, they’re entirely the same,” Ana waved her hand dismissively, her skin prickling with irritation, like it wanted to moult off and slap Kylie across the face.

“No, they really aren’t,” Kylie finished.

Ana stared at her for a moment, but her mind was already somewhere else, spinning like a centrifuge filled with thoughts too heavy to stay upright. What would they ask her? The journalist — Janet — would want to know about her writing, her supposed "gritty take" on mental health. But what did that even mean? What could that mean, really? Did they want her to break it down into digestible little pieces, neatly wrapped in metaphors they could dissect at their leisure?

Her skin had other ideas, though. Earlier that day, she’d had to restaple it back together. It had started coming loose around her wrist again, the edges fraying and splitting like rotten pomegranates bursting open. The staples were rusted — she liked them that way — and they bit into her skin with satisfying little stings as she pushed them through the too-thin layers. She’d pressed too hard this time, though, and she almost popped an eye out in the process. The metal had slipped, slicing across her cheek in a jagged line, narrowly missing her eye.

The blood had pooled there for a while, thick and sticky, before coagulating into a disgusting mess that clung to her face like wet tissue paper. She hadn’t even bothered to clean it off properly. What was the point? She could barely hold herself together anymore, let alone her skin.

Kylie was still talking, her words nothing more than background noise now, like a low hum of static Ana was too tired to tune out. She felt her skin pulling again, tightening like it was going to rip her apart from the inside. Maybe it would. Maybe she’d walk into that interview and explode into a mess of blood, guts, and shredded skin, leaving nothing but a pile of fleshy debris for them to mop up.

"Listen, Ana," Kylie’s voice cut through her thoughts. "You have to keep it together for this. No one wants to hear about your... horror fantasy. Just stick to the script, okay?"

"Right. No horror. Got it."

Her skin was alive with itch, the kind of itch that felt like a thousand tiny claws scraping beneath her flesh, desperate to get out. She could feel it crawling all over her, pulling, stretching, like it was about to peel right off her bones. As Ana sat waiting for Julie — no, Janet, fuck, it was Janet — she stared at the set. The soft lights and minimalist furniture were supposed to calm her, ease her into whatever horror show was about to unfold, but it didn’t work. It only made her more aware of her body, of the layers clinging to her, smothering her like a sodden, decomposed blanket.

There were too many mirrors. Way too many mirrors.

They circled her, reflected her in warped angles, dozens of versions of Ana staring back at her with eyes that weren’t really hers. She scratched at her dermis, digging her nails in until she felt the raw, familiar sting, that delicious mix of pain and relief as the first layer of skin began to give way. It itched so bad she wanted to burn it all off, strip herself down to the muscle and bone, just to be rid of the sensation. But she couldn’t.

This wasn’t The Fucking Book Nook, she reminded herself. She had to keep it together, for once, for the performance of Ana Leighs. Her last hurrah. The final act before she shed her identity like an old, worn-out coat.

She coughed, directing it toward Kylie, who was glued to her phone, fingers typing away in a manic blur. Probably texting the other corporate vultures at Illume, all of them wringing their hands, terrified Ana would turn this interview into a full-blown horror movie. Maybe they were imagining her lunging at Janet mid-question, ripping her to shreds on camera, blood spraying the pristine white set as Ana tore through flesh and bone, something spectacularly gruesome.

Don’t tempt me, she thought with a smirk.

Kylie didn’t even glance up. “What?” she snapped, her voice sharp enough to cut glass.

Ana swallowed, her throat tight with that crawling, itching sensation, the kind that spread through her entire body. “Can we… uh, can we get rid of the mirrors?” she whispered, the request barely audible, as if she was afraid to disturb the delicate balance of her own unravelling sanity.

Kylie finally looked up, her face twisted into that familiar expression of barely-contained hatred, like she was wondering why Ana existed, why she breathed, why she was always so fucking difficult.

“What?” she asked again, this time louder, more exasperated.

“The mirrors,” Ana repeated, her voice a little stronger now. “I can’t focus with them all facing me. It’s… unsettling.” Her skin squirmed beneath her clothes as if it agreed, as if the mirrored versions of herself were watching too closely, too critically, picking apart every loose thread and staple holding her together. “Just… turn them around, please.”

Kylie’s glare deepened. If looks could flay, Ana would have been skinned alive on the spot, her raw, twitching muscles left exposed for all to see. The disdain in Kylie’s eyes was palpable, like she was mentally screaming, Why are you so fucking annoying? Seriously? Can you ever just not be a problem?

“Will that make you shut up?” Kylie asked.

“Yes,” Ana said simply, her voice flat. Her skin itched even more now, like it was mocking her for trying to hold herself together, for trying to be normal for even one minute.

Kylie sighed, long and exaggerated, like she was preparing herself for the great ordeal of dealing with Ana Leighs. “Fine. I’ll talk to the set designers,” she spat, already halfway out the door before Ana could say anything else.

As Kylie stormed off, Ana looked back at the mirrors. Her reflection stared back, a hundred different versions of her, each one subtly wrong. One had her thighs ballooning out, swollen, like slabs of raw meat crammed into too-tight ripped jeans. Another had her face sagging, the skin pooling under her chin like a deflated blimp, while yet another showed her arms as pale, dimpled tubes, flapping uselessly at her sides. Her stomach twisted; the room tilted. Each distorted Ana stared back, close enough to recognise but wrong enough to make her want to vomit. Her gut felt like it was spilling over her waistband, a cruel reminder that even in her imagination, she was still disgusting. Her eyes darted between the reflections: one where she looked like a starving marionette, another with skin stretched so tight across her bones it was a wonder she hadn’t split open like an overstuffed sausage.

It wasn’t just the mirrors. It was her. She could feel them — versions of herself she’d tried to bury clawing their way to the surface, screaming to take over. The skinny one, the fat one, the perfect one, the rotting one, all battling for control.

She could feel the staples on her back loosening, the flesh beneath them pulling, threatening to tear open.

Her skin hated this. Hated being seen, hated the scrutiny. Hated the way Kylie looked at her like she was some barely functioning disaster. Because that’s what you are, aren’t you? her reflection seemed to whisper. You can’t even keep yourself together long enough to do one interview. What are you even doing here?

Ana swallowed hard, pushing the thought away. She just had to make it through this one last performance. One more act of Ana Leighs before she disappeared forever, leaving nothing but a hollow shell in her place.

Soon enough, the mirrors were gone. Finally. The set designers had turned the stubborn ones around, their blank backs a mercy. It made Ana smile — a strange, tight-lipped smile, the kind that felt more like a nervous tic than joy — but still, it was a relief. The itching was still there, swarming under her skin, but at least the mirrors weren’t multiplying it. The ones that remained had been silenced, for now.

Ana sat in her chair, fingers lightly grazing the arms, as if she were testing the texture for something sharper. The lights above were soft, but that clinical, nauseating kind of soft. It reminded her of the dentist’s office, the place where they pry open your jaw like a rusted door and scrape away at your insides. But this time, she was the one doing the scraping.

Janet walked in. Immediately, Ana felt the presence before she even saw her. The kind of energy that fills a room with authority, that almost begs you to cower just by existing in its shadow. Janet had the air of a journalist who thrived on stories that left a sour taste in your mouth, the kind of taste that sticks in your throat long after you’ve swallowed it down. Ana could practically smell the expensive perfume mixed with the faint scent of ink and desperation — the stench of a woman who profited off the weird, the gruesome, and the broken.

How appropriate, Ana thought, leaning back, trying to look casual but feeling anything but. She knew this wasn’t about her, not really. Janet didn’t care about Ana’s story. She cared about the spectacle, the controversy, the clicks, the headlines that would make people say, “Did you hear about that girl? The one who’s disengaging right before our eyes?”

Kylie had reminded Ana, over and over, as if she needed more reminders, that this was not a therapy session. Ana was here to educate, to answer questions like some kind of deformed oracle, not to unload her darkness for the world to pity. No oversharing. No looking for help, Kylie had said. That was the mantra. You’re not here to bleed. You’re here to perform.

But Ana was always bleeding.

“Ah, Ana Leighs, it’s nice to finally meet you,” Janet started, her voice slick with professionalism, but not without that edge. The edge that said she could flay you open without breaking a sweat.

Ana took a seat, her body feeling both too small and too large at the same time. Her skin was too tight, stapled down in all the wrong places, pinching in ways that made her want to scream. But outwardly, she was calm. “Hi, yes, you too, Janet,” Ana said, trying to sound composed.

“Janet Michaels,” Janet corrected, as if Ana’s failure to get her name perfect was an affront to her existence.

Ana clenched her teeth.

There was something infuriating about people with first names for last names. It gave them this uncanny, incomplete feeling, like they couldn’t decide what they were. She hated it. No reason, really, Ana thought, it just pisses me off.

“Has — has it started? Is this the intro?” Ana asked, trying to sound casual, but the itch at the back of her neck was getting worse. She could hear her skin faintly whispering, Get out. Get out.

“Oh, no,” Janet laughed lightly, in that way polished women do when they know they’re superior in every way. “We’ll start in five. I just need to read over my notes, quickly. Get comfy. Do you need a drink?”

Ana hesitated. She should say water, but that seemed too… juvenile. Too basic. “Yeah, I’ll have a, um… coffee?” she asked, instantly regretting it. She hated coffee. The bitter, acidic sludge made her stomach churn, but somehow it felt like the kind of thing a serious person would drink in an interview.

Janet’s assistant scurried off to fetch the coffee, and Ana could feel the weight of Janet’s gaze on her. An x-ray stare. An autopsy before the body’s even cold. This is what you are, Janet’s eyes seemed to say. A specimen. A curiosity.

Ana smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “You sure you want to go through with this?” her reflection hissed in the back of her mind, the ghost of all her anxieties wrapping around her spine. They’ll tear you apart.

But Ana had already made her peace. She wasn’t here to survive. She was here to burn.

Kylie was off to the side, pacing like a nervous stage mom, glaring daggers at Ana whenever she glanced in her direction. Probably afraid Ana would say something… inappropriate. Something true.

Janet flipped through her notes, all business. Ana could see the questions already forming behind her eyes. She could almost hear them. Tell me, Ana, when did you first feel like you were losing your mind? What’s it like to live in a body that feels more like a prison than a home? What’s your take on suffering?

Ana clenched her fists. This wasn’t going to be pretty. But then again, nothing ever was with Ana Leighs.

She leaned forward, her voice low, barely a whisper but loud enough for Janet to catch. “You know, I always imagined being dissected would feel a lot more… personal. But this feels like a routine surgery.”

Janet smiled, that professional, detached smile. “That’s what we’re here for, Ana. To open you up and see what’s inside,” she joked.

And for the first time, Ana laughed. Dark, hollow, and sickly sweet. “Good luck with that.”

“So, Ana,” Janet began, her voice smooth but edged with that sharp journalistic precision, “your piece Women Who are Fundamentally Rotten was really quite… touching. Or maybe that’s not the right word — what would you say this piece meant to you?”

Ana blinked, slowly. Touching? The word hung in the air like a corpse on a hook, the wrong shape for what she’d written, too light, too delicate. She glanced off to the side, catching Kylie’s eyes burning into her. As if Kylie was daring her to step out of line.

“It meant…” Ana hesitated, her voice almost a rasp. “Everything to me, I think. But at the core, it’s about my need to be heard.”

“Your need?” Janet leaned in slightly, feigning empathy in the way only someone who profits from others’ pain can. “I see, as a journalist, I understand that. The need to have a voice, to make an impact—”

Does she? Ana thought. Does she really understand what it’s like to scream and have no one even flinch?

“—everything you write is always so deeply personal,” Janet continued. “Especially considering you deviated so far from Illume’s usual narrative. What made you decide to go down such a… dark path?”

Ana sat back, feeling the weight of the question. Janet had no idea, none of them did. This wasn’t a decision — it was survival. “I guess,” Ana said, choosing her words carefully, “I just wanted to break apart the self-help narrative. That cookie-cutter bullshit about how healing is linear, or how you have to get better, or even want to. Some of us are just… not built that way. So I tried to write something that didn’t demand change, didn’t demand redemption. I wanted to speak for women like me, who read self-help books and feel nothing but guilt.”

I just thought we needed to be heard.

Janet’s eyes sparkled in that predatory way. She was getting exactly what she came for. “I mean, I loved it,” she said, her tone almost rehearsed. “It was so easy to read, even though, in reality, it should’ve been hard. It was dark, gritty, and painfully real. Unapologetic.”

“I’m really glad you felt that way,” she said, though the sincerity in her voice was tinged with something bitter. “But it is scary, being that honest. You start peeling back your own skin, layer by layer, until there’s nothing left but raw, bloody flesh. And then you have to look in the mirror and say, ‘This is me. This is who I am. And… I’m not good. Maybe I’m not extraordinary. I’m just… rotten.’”

Kylie shifted uncomfortably out of the corner of Ana’s eye. The word “rotten” was probably on Illume’s blacklist. She could almost hear Kylie mentally drafting her resignation letter.

Ana continued anyway, ignoring the crawling sensation of her stapled flesh pulling tighter. “It’s hard to admit you push people away. That you sabotage everything good that comes your way because you’re terrified that maybe they’ll see the rot inside of you, the way you see it every time you look in the mirror. It’s hard to admit you keep making promises you can’t keep — saying you’ll get better, that you’ll be softer, more lovable. But deep down, you know… your hands are like swords. No matter how many times you swear you’re harmless, everything you touch, you cut.”

There was a long pause, the silence thick and uncomfortable, like a heavy fog settling over the room. Ana could feel Janet watching her, analysing every word, every twitch of her lips. Kylie’s discomfort was practically audible, a low hum of tension vibrating in the background.

Janet finally broke the silence, her voice now softer, more measured. “It sounds… exhausting. To live like that. To carry that much… guilt.”

Ana chuckled, the sound low and humourless. “Exhausting is an understatement. But it’s more than guilt. It’s mostly resentment. Towards the world, towards yourself, towards anyone who dares to tell you that you can be better if you just ‘try harder.’ It’s like living in a house that’s constantly burning down around you, and people keep handing you a garden hose, expecting you to put out the flames. But the truth is, you’re the one holding the match.”

Janet’s eyes widened slightly at that, but Ana wasn’t finished.

“It’s this weird, twisted thing,” Ana went on, her voice growing sharper, more intense. “Because there’s a part of you that wants to be saved. That wants someone to look at you and say, ‘I see you. I see the fire, and I’m not afraid to burn with you.’ But the reality is you’ve become so accustomed to the heat, so used to living in that constant state of destruction, that you wouldn’t know what to do with peace if it slapped you in the face. You wouldn’t trust it. You’d set it on fire just to feel something familiar.”

Janet nodded, her pen moving swiftly across her notepad, capturing every word, every metaphor Ana threw out like she was documenting the breakdown of a case study. “It’s fascinating,” Janet said, her voice tinged with admiration, or maybe it was pity — Ana couldn’t tell anymore. “That kind of honesty, that willingness to embrace the darkness, is rare.”

Ana smirked again, but this time it was darker, sharper. “I don’t know if I’d call it embracement. The darkness isn’t something you embrace. It’s something that clings to you, something that seeps into your skin and refuses to let go, no matter how hard you try to scrub it off. You don’t embrace it — you just survive it.”

Janet leaned back, clearly impressed, but Ana wasn’t feeling triumphant. There was no victory here. Just an endless cycle of peeling away layers of herself, only to find more rot beneath.

“And what about now?” Janet asked, her voice soft but probing. “Do you still feel… rotten?”

Ana paused, her eyes flickering to the turned mirrors on set, as if they might offer some kind of answer. Her skin itched, but she didn’t scratch.

“Does it matter?” Ana said finally, her voice hollow. “Rotten or not, I’m still here. And that’s all that’s left. Survival.”

Janet nodded, tilting her head slightly like she was trying to read between Ana’s words. “Survival,” she repeated, tasting the word like it was unfamiliar to her. “So, you think your piece was about survival? Or maybe the lack of it?”

“I don’t know if I’d call it survival in the traditional sense,” she said. “It’s more like… endurance. The way you grit your teeth and bear through it, because what else are you going to do? Just let the world eat you alive? The rot sets in, and you learn to live with it.”

She paused, a small, bitter smile tugging at her lips. “It’s funny, though. People read it and think it’s some kind of empowerment thing. Like I’m telling them to embrace their flaws, wear their scars proudly, all that Instagram-positive bullshit. But that’s not it. That’s not it at all. I’m saying, ‘Look, we’re all fucked. And maybe that’s okay, maybe it’s not — but it’s a fact.’”

Janet smiled, though it was the kind of smile you give someone when you’re not quite sure what to say next. “I think that’s what resonated with a lot of women,” she said, her voice soft but probing. “That honesty. That refusal to sugar-coat things. Do you think that’s why your piece has had such an impact? Why so many people — women especially — are calling it a revelation?”

Ana snorted, shaking her head. “A revelation? Please. It’s not a revelation to feel broken. It’s not some grand epiphany that most women wake up every day and think, ‘Wow, yeah, I’m a mess.’ The only difference is, I said it out loud. I put it on paper. I admitted that I’m not ‘healing’ or ‘getting better,’ and that it might be okay. Maybe we’re allowed to exist in our damage.”

“But don’t you think that’s a dangerous message? Telling people it’s okay to not try and fix themselves?”

“I mean, yeah, maybe. But isn’t it more dangerous to lie? To tell people they have to be fixed, that they have to heal, or else they’re failing? That’s the real poison in this world. This constant pressure to be ‘better’ — to be whole. It’s bullshit. Some of us were never whole to begin with.”

There was a pause, thick and heavy with the kind of tension that usually sits between confession and confrontation. Janet looked at her, eyes wide with curiosity and something that looked like pity. Ana hated that look. Pity was the last thing she wanted, especially from someone like Janet, who probably went home to a pristine house and a spotless life. Janet, whose biggest struggle was probably whether to order a cappuccino or a latte in the morning.

Ana leaned forward, elbows resting on her knees, her voice dropping to a whisper, laced with something darker. “You know what’s actually funny?” she said, a crooked smile twisting her lips. “I wasn’t even supposed to write that piece. It was a mistake, an accident. I wrote it in one night, after a bottle of wine, a joint, and no sleep, thinking I’d toss it in the trash the next morning. But something… clicked. Like, for the first time, I wasn’t pretending. I wasn’t trying to make myself palatable or inspirational. I just… bled on the page.”

Janet’s eyes flickered with interest, her pen scratching furiously. “And that’s when you knew? That it was something important?”

“No, not important. I knew it was real. I knew it was ugly and messy, and that it probably wasn’t going to fit into the nice little boxes Illume usually tries to shove its writers into. But I didn’t care. I didn’t write it to be important. I wrote it because I had no other choice.”

Ana clenched her fists again, trying to focus on the cool metal of the chair beneath her rather than the fire crawling up her spine.

“Do you ever regret it?” Janet asked, her voice soft, almost gentle. “Being that honest? That vulnerable?”

Ana looked up, her eyes locking onto Janet’s. There was a flash of something — anger, defiance, maybe even fear.  “No. But I do wonder sometimes… if people are really ready for that kind of honesty. If they’re ready to look in the mirror and see themselves the way I do. Not the filtered version. Not the ‘girlboss’ who’s got it all together. But the real version. The one who’s barely holding on. The one who wakes up every morning and wonders if today’s the day she just lets go.”

Janet shifted in her seat, clearly unsure of how to respond. Ana could see the wheels turning in her head, the way she was trying to find the right words to steer the conversation back to something lighter, something easier to digest.

But Ana wasn’t done.

“You asked earlier what the piece meant to me,” Ana said, her voice low, almost a growl. “It wasn’t just about survival. It was about… acceptance, I suppose. Accepting that maybe we’re not meant to be saved. Maybe some of us are just… rotten. And that’s okay. We don’t have to be fixed. We don’t have to be redeemed. We just have to exist. And I think that’s enough.”

Janet’s face softened, but there was something behind her eyes, a flicker of discomfort, like she didn’t quite know how to handle what Ana was saying. How do I spin this?  Janet would be thinking. How do I package this for an audience that’s craving inspiration, not despair?

Ana leaned back, letting out a long breath. “But hey, what do I know?” she said, a wry smile curling her lips. “Maybe I’m just bitter. Or I’m just tired of pretending that things are ever going to be okay.”

“I think what you’re saying is important, Ana. I think there’s a lot of people out there who feel the same way, but are too afraid to admit it. You’ve given them a voice.”

Ana chuckled again, her skin prickling with the urge to laugh, to cry, to scream. “A voice,” she repeated, her tone dripping with sarcasm. “Yeah, sure. Let’s call it that.”

Janet’s eyes flickered with uncertainty, but she pressed on. “What do you want people to take away from this interview, Ana? What’s the message you want to leave them with?”

Ana thought for a moment, her gaze drifting to the turned-around mirrors on set. “I guess… I just, I want them to know that it’s okay to not be okay. That we don’t always need to be fixed. Maybe we’re not broken. We’re just… rotten.”

The room fell into silence, the kind that feels thick and suffocating, like the air itself was afraid to move. Janet, for once, seemed lost for words, her pen still poised over her notepad, but not moving.

Finally, the interview was winding down, the formalities dissolving into white noise as Janet neatly stacked her notes. But Ana's mind was somewhere else entirely. She was still reeling from the words she’d spoken, the way they had seemed to hang in the air like a noose. And then — pop.

It wasn’t a small sound. It wasn’t the innocent snap of bubblegum or the playful popping of knuckles. No, this was something organic. Wet. Sickly. Like the bursting of a pomegranate between gritted teeth, but inside someone’s body.

Ana’s head whipped around at the second pop, the noise reverberating through her bones, rattling her skull. Her skin, already itching with the familiar burn, sagged like a loose garment two sizes too big. Panic gripped her insides like a fist.

Please don’t look at me, she begged silently, eyes darting to Janet who was too engrossed in her perfect little wrap-up of the interview. Please, for the love of God, someone look anywhere else but at me.

But her skin had other plans.

Please, please look this way, Janet, her skin whispered in a mocking tone, flaking and splitting as if it was tearing itself away from her body, piece by rotting piece. Ana’s mind went manic. How else was one supposed to react as their own skin began to slough off in front of normal people?

She could already hear the headlines: “Ana Leighs Melts in Interview Meltdown!”

Poor little Ana Leighs, the perpetual victim, the voice in her head sneered. Addicted to her own pathetic misery, to the rotting narrative she’s carved out of her life like a coffin made of flesh. But this was real victimhood. This was not a metaphor. The Great Sloughing wasn’t just poetic tragedy, it was a fucking crime scene.

Her mind raced, white-hot panic coursing through her veins. Why? she wanted to scream. Whywhwywhywhwhywhy, the thought circled like a manic chant, like a child banging its head against the wall for comfort. In this life, Ana had wanted nothing more than love — real love — not the kind that touched, not the kind that left fingerprints on her, smudging the carefully constructed barriers she built. And now, her skin had taken that wish too literally.

Suddenly, she felt a sharp pain, like a needle dragging under her back. Without thinking, Ana pushed off her chair. It toppled over behind her with a clatter that finally pulled Janet and Kylie from their scripted politeness. The sound startled everyone in the room, but Ana was still more surprised that no one else had reacted to the popping. How could they not hear it?

She was sweating now, breathing in shallow, erratic bursts, like she was trying to inhale her own panic. She clawed at her arms, fingers scraping against the delicate fabric of her blouse, trying to rip the offending skin away. The sensation was unbearable, her flesh itching with a kind of agony that was both primal and alien.

"Ana, are you okay?" Kylie’s voice cut through the air, but it sounded distorted, like she was underwater, too far away to reach.

Ana didn’t answer. Instead, she yanked at her skin, desperate to shed it like a snake shedding its too-tight, suffocating old body. One of the staples in her neck tore free with a sickening squelch, leaving behind a small geyser of blood. Janet gasped, her professional demeanour slipping, horror contorting her face.

Ana looked down at the bloody staple in her hand, the metal slick with crimson, and suddenly everything felt too real, too raw.

"Fucking hell, Ana, come here," Kylie shouted, stepping toward her, her face somewhere between concern and frustration, the way you’d look at a child who’d just shattered your favorite vase.

But Ana couldn’t stop. Her eyes darted around the room, wild and frantic, searching for an escape from the nightmare that was unravelling before her. She could feel her body unravelling too, like it was no longer hers, no longer something she could control.

This can’t be happening. Not now. Not in my interview. This can’t be how they remember me, she thought, her breath coming in short, painful gasps. The unease was unbearable now, the sensation of her skin splitting, peeling, and cracking open like overripe fruit. She tried to pull herself together, literally and metaphorically, but the seams were coming undone faster than she could patch them.

"I’m so sorry, please," Ana whimpered, her voice cracking like glass. She could barely hear her own words over the frantic beating of her heart. “I’m so sorry. This isn’t me. This was never me, please.”

Kylie looked helpless, her arms half-raised as if debating whether to approach Ana or keep her distance. “Ana, just — just sit down. We can fix this, it’s not that bad, we can—"

But Ana wasn’t listening. Her mind was too busy spiralling into a pit of despair, where everything she had worked so hard to hold together was falling apart. This was supposed to be my moment. The moment she’d finally be seen, finally be heard. But instead, all anyone would remember was the woman who fell apart, quite literally, on camera.

Her hands flew to her face, fingers digging into her scalp as if she could claw her way out of her own head. “This can’t be how they see me,” she mumbled, her voice barely a whisper. “This can’t be how they remember me.”

Kylie was saying something, her voice rising in panic, but it was just noise. White noise. Ana could feel her skin sliding off in chunks now, the flesh underneath exposed. She wanted to laugh. She wanted to scream. But mostly, she just wanted it to stop.

“I’m not broken,” Ana said, more to herself than anyone else. “I’m not broken, I’m just… I’m just rotten.”

Kylie finally reached her, hands hovering in hesitation, like she was afraid to touch Ana and make things worse. “Ana, please, we can—”

“No,” Ana hissed, her voice dark and guttural. “Don’t you see? This is me. This was always me. I’m not soft. I’m not fixable. I’m a fucking monster, and I’m tired of pretending otherwise.”

And with that, Ana laughed. She laughed so hard, tears streamed down her cheeks, mixing with the blood and sweat. It was the kind of laughter that bordered on hysteria, the kind that had no joy, only madness.

“Let them remember me like this,” she said, her voice breaking. “Let them remember the truth.”

Ana's laughter finally fizzled out, trailing off into the thick, suffocating silence of the room. She blinked, wiping away tears with the back of her bloody hand, and scanned the faces of the crew, all wide-eyed and frozen. Kylie’s voice broke through the haze, trembling yet sharp, the way someone speaks when they're too close to hysteria.

"Ana, we need to get you to a hospital. Like, now," Kylie said, her words frantically rushing out as if they could physically pull Ana back to reality. Janet was already off to the side, her phone glued to her ear, likely calling for someone more qualified to handle a woman disentangling in front of their eyes. Oh, what a lovely Tuesday this must’ve been for her — getting to witness the complete and public disintegration of a person, the raw, messy spectacle of a life coming undone. Ratings gold, no doubt.

“Why’d you do this?” Kylie kept asking, her voice pitching upward, laced with panic. “Why?” she repeated, like that one word could ever be enough to explain any of this. Ana wasn’t even sure what Kylie meant. Was she asking why Ana had ruined the interview, or why she’d torn her flesh from her bones like a cut-rate Halloween costume?

“Why, Ana? Are you in pain?” Kylie asked again, stepping closer but still keeping her distance, as though Ana might explode if touched too abruptly.

Ana tilted her head to the side, as if she were genuinely considering the question for the first time. "What is there to feel," she finally said, her voice quiet and thoughtful, "when the pain has already fallen from my bones?"

Kylie blinked, her brow furrowing in confusion. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I feel no pain anymore, Kylie,” Ana continued, her voice strangely serene now, almost like she was explaining the weather or some benign fact of life. “I’m not me. Not anymore.”

Kylie’s face crumpled, torn between anger and despair. “You are so not okay. You can’t just… rip yourself apart and think it’s fine. You need help. I’m calling someone. You need a hospital.” Kylie’s voice cracked at the end, wavering on the edge of tears, and for a brief moment, Ana thought she might actually start sobbing. Which, frankly, seemed like a dramatic overreaction. She wasn’t dying. Not really. Not in any way that mattered.

“I can get myself home,” Ana said, her tone dismissive, like she was brushing off a mildly inconvenient suggestion. “There’s no need for a hospital.”

“No, no,” Kylie insisted, her eyes wild with disbelief. “Do not be stubborn now, Ana. You’re — you're bleeding for God’s sake. This isn’t just some weird art project you can walk away from.” Kylie was practically wheezing now, her breath coming in shallow bursts, the kind that only happens when you're so overwhelmed you forget how to breathe properly.

Was she… crying? God knows why, Ana thought. What was Kylie even crying for? The situation? The wasted interview? Or maybe for herself, for being dragged into this spectacle without her consent?

"Should I call Lila? Your mom?" Kylie asked, desperation creeping into her voice.

Ana shot her a withering look, her lips curling into a sneer. "Fuck no. Why on earth would you do that? My mother’s the last person who needs to know about this. She’d probably frame it as some moral failure. Like this is just another example of how disappointing I am.”

Kylie reached out, her fingers trembling as they grazed Ana’s exposed tendon, slick with blood. Ana flinched, her whole body recoiling from the touch, swatting Kylie’s hand away like she’d just tried to grab a hot stove.

“What the fuck is wrong with you? Don’t touch that,” Ana snapped, her voice sharp enough to slice through the room. “You wouldn’t like the feel of it. Trust me.”

Kylie looked utterly confused, her eyes wide with shock, her hand still hanging awkwardly in the air. Hurt flickered across her face, like a wounded animal that didn’t understand why it had been struck.

Poor Kylie. She had no idea what she was dealing with, did she? None of them did. They’d never truly understood Ana, never even tried. All they saw was a broken girl, a tragic figure. Someone who needed saving. But hadn’t she made it perfectly clear, over and over again, that she was beyond that? That there was no redemption arc, no magical healing waiting for her at the end of some twisted rainbow?

There was no saving Ana Leighs. But hadn’t she said that a million times? Hadn’t her whole existence screamed it? People like her — people who were fundamentally rotten — didn’t get saved. They just rotted further, deeper, until there was nothing left but the stink of decay. You can’t unrot fruit. You can’t make something whole once it’s been eaten alive from the inside out.

Ana pushed herself up, standing on shaky legs, ignoring the way her skin drooped in places, hanging from her frame. She looked down at the crumpled pile of flesh on the floor, the remnants of what had once been her. With a sigh, she bent down and scooped it up, holding the loose skin in her arms like a deflated balloon.

“I’ll be going now,” Ana said, turning her back on Kylie, on Janet, on all of them. There was no use in sticking around, not after this. The interview was over, and so was she.

Kylie called after her, something about needing to stay, about how they could fix this, how they could make her whole again. But Ana just kept walking, her footsteps echoing in the silent room, her skin still dripping with blood, her bones shining in the harsh studio lights.

There’s nothing left to fix, Ana thought. I’ve already fixed everything that was broken. I’ve peeled away the rot.

And now, there was nothing left but the bones.

Chapter Seventeen

Ana Leighs

There’s a perverted kind of relief that comes with finally surrendering. When you let go of the absurd hope that you might ever be something other than a disaster. A cracked mirror, sharp edges glinting in the dark, better suited to cutting throats than reflecting faces. Ana had accepted that now. She was better as a blade than as a person. There’s a purity in destruction, in unfolding — no expectations, no pressure, just the cold, brutal inevitability of everything falling apart.

She roamed the streets of Augusta, lost and wandering like some forgotten ghost, dragging her shredded skin behind her like a child hauling a blanket through a nightmare. She couldn’t even remember how far the set was from the hotel anymore, but clearly, she’d underestimated. The distance stretched on, interminable, her body weakening with each step. She looked down at the sickly bundle in her arms — her own sagging, torn flesh — and felt an unexpected wave of exhaustion.

How long do I have to carry this shit?

She had half a mind to toss it into the gutter, let it rot where it belonged. But that would be wasteful. And wasn’t that the whole problem with Ana Leighs? She wasted everything — time, people, skin. Maybe, if she could drag this carcass back to the hotel, she could stitch it up. Try again. Patchwork herself into something presentable, something that might pass for human. For a little while, anyway.

She thought about asking someone for help. But then she caught sight of a man walking past, his eyes widening in horror as he clocked her peeling face, the bone peeking through beneath her mangled cheek. She stifled a laugh, why even bother? No one’s gonna help you when you look like this. Not when you’re walking down the street with your skin sloughing off, your bones practically glowing under the streetlights.

Fine. She was on her own. Always had been. It was almost comforting in its predictability.

Everything felt distant now. Detached. Like the world was moving farther and farther away from her, or maybe it was her that was drifting. She held out her bony hand, watching as the passing crowds, the buildings, the city itself slipped out of her reach. They didn’t even seem to notice her. She was invisible, or at least, she should have been. But then she caught a glimpse of her reflection in a nearby shop window — her face, or what was left of it, still hanging on by sheer will. No, not Ana, she corrected herself. She’s not Ana anymore.

Ana Leighs had her time. A pitiful, wasted span of twenty-five years, most of it spent stumbling around, trying to make herself matter. And what did it all amount to? Nothing. Less than nothing. Just a series of failures stacked on top of each other until the solidity of it collapsed in on itself. She was a burden. That was the nicest way to put it. A burden to every person unlucky enough to endure her company. A weight no one wanted to carry.

The thing that used to be Ana laughed, a wet, choking sound. She had been a mess of need, always wanting someone to hold her heart in their hands, someone to press it close and let the mess of it stain them. But no one ever did. Because who the fuck would want that? At the end of it all, Ana Leighs was still alone. Utterly and pathetically alone. Even her skin was abandoning her now.

She stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, dropping the limp pile of skin onto the pavement. It hit the ground with a wet thwap, and for a moment, she marvelled at the sight of it. It was quite funny, in a sick kind of way. She was reduced to nothing but bare bones and blood-soaked sinew, while the rest of the world carried on around her, blissfully ignorant.

The thing smiled — more of a rictus grin, really, with what little skin remained stretched tight over her teeth. “In the next lifetime,” she whispered, “I’ll do it better. I’ll wake up every day and actually look forward to it.” She shook her head, the sound of her vertebrae popping as satisfying as bubble wrap. “In the next one, I’ll try not to fuck it all up.”

She bent down, grabbing her skin off the sidewalk like it was just a handbag, and kept walking. There was an odd freedom in shedding who she used to be. Ana Leighs was dead. Good riddance. The thing that was left? That thing had potential.

As she passed a group of teenage girls sitting on a stoop, one of them glanced up and screamed, dropping her phone. The others followed suit, shrieking in perfect unison, a chorus of horror and revulsion. Ana — or whatever she was now — chuckled softly to herself.

“Girls,” she muttered, “you have no idea how much worse it gets.”

“Well done, Ana. Or can I even call you that anymore?” her reflection wheezed, voice like rusted nails scratching on glass. The thing in the mirror wasn’t much more than a ruin now. Its skin hung in loose, rotting folds, and its bones seemed to barely hold together. It didn’t writhe or twist into impossible shapes anymore, not like it used to. Now it just lay limp, sinking into the bed behind the glass, a decayed shadow of its former self.

Ana stared at it, arms crossed over her chest, as if she could keep her own body from following suit. “Are you… okay?” she asked, with a grimace.

The reflection cackled, or tried to — it came out more like a choked gargle. “I’m changing. We are all constantly changing. How haven’t you figured that out yet? You’ve lost your skin, Ana. You’ve lost what makes you you. What happens when the one thing that defines you is no longer yours?”

Ana tilted her head, eyes narrowing as she studied the wreckage of herself in the mirror. "That's what we're all trying to figure out," she muttered.

“No. That’s what you’re trying to figure out, you fool,” the reflection sneered, the jagged teeth glinting beneath its peeling lips. “You’re on your own. Stop trying to make yourself feel better by pretending this is some shared human experience. This isn’t grief. This isn’t dread. You’re not special in any grand, poetic sense. You're just a rare disaster, a personal anomaly. Admit it.”

“But people resonated with me. My writing. People… connected.”

“Oh, sure. They connected with your confession that you’re a shitty person who can’t be bothered to change.” The reflection let out a low, rattling laugh. “That’s relatable. Half of this world is like that — mediocre and stagnant. But you, Ana. You’re a special case. You hate everything about yourself with such commitment, such cruelty, it's like an art form. You’re not just lazy, you’re mean. Mean to yourself, to others. You’re spite wrapped in skin. Or, well, you were. What’s left of that skin, anyway.”

Ana’s face tightened. She hadn’t wanted to admit it before, but there was truth in that sneer.

“Do you even know what Ana Leighs looks like anymore?” the reflection pressed, voice dripping with malice.

“I never wanted to,” Ana whispered.

“Exactly. You spent your whole life looking away from the mirror, because you couldn’t confront the truth. You ran from yourself, as if by refusing to look, you could escape.”

“No,” Ana shook her head slowly, her voice soft. “I looked away because I didn’t like what I saw. It was never… me. Every time I’d catch a glimpse, it felt wrong. There were moments when I liked it, but those were brief, and they faded quickly. After that, it was always you looking back. All I could see was you. I wasn’t in the mirror anymore.”

The reflection gleamed, a sick, yellowed grin stretching its decayed lips. Even in its weakened state, it was smug. “Well, what did you expect? You never liked yourself, so I had to take over. I’ve been here all along, Ana. Your other half. The part you could never cut loose.”

Ana squinted at it, as if studying the last remains of a long-forgotten enemy. “Are you dying?” she asked suddenly, her tone surprisingly clinical. “You look… ghastly.”

The reflection grinned wider, bones creaking as it shifted on the bed, decaying fingers twitching. “Oh, Ana. You’re dying. We’re all dying. Every day is just another step closer to death. Another layer peeling off, another crack in the facade. That’s all it ever was. And when you’re Ana Leighs — when you’re someone like you — there’s no cure for it.”

“But I don’t feel like I’m dying.”

“No, of course not. You never do, not until the very last minute. That’s the fun of it, really. You think you have all this time to figure out life, to somehow fix yourself, but all you’re doing is decomposing in slow motion. One long, agonising death march with a few distractions along the way.”

“That’s… bleak,” Ana muttered, almost laughing, but there was no humour in her voice.

The reflection rolled its eyes — what was left of them, anyway. “Oh, please. Don’t pretend this is news. You’ve been flirting with this truth for years. You write about it like it’s a game, but you’ve always known it. You’ve just been putting off the inevitable.”

Ana let the silence hang for a moment, contemplating. “Is it really inevitable?” she asked, quieter this time. “I mean, do I have to end like this? A pile of discarded skin and bones, no better than you?”

The reflection’s grin faltered, just for a second. “Well, that depends, doesn’t it? Depends on what you do next. Do you keep walking down this path, or do you—”

Ana cut it off, her voice sharp now, a smile creeping onto her face. “Do I what? Claw my way back to the living? Stitch myself back together with sheer willpower? I don’t think so. I’ve seen what that looks like, and it’s just another layer of bullshit. A façade over the rot.”

Her reflection said nothing, its grin fading to a grim line.

“I’m done with façades,” Ana said, voice low but firm. “Done pretending I’m not exactly what I am. If I’m going to rot, I’ll do it openly. Proudly. Maybe I’m a knife, maybe I’m a wound. Either way, I’m tired of pretending I’m anything but sharp.”

The reflection stared at her, its silence heavy. Then, slowly, it nodded, a sick, slow acknowledgment of her choice.

“Fine,” it rasped. “Then rot. Let it consume you. See what’s left when the last scrap of you falls away.”

Ana stared back at it, eyes hardening. “There’s always something left,” she said softly. “Even if it’s just bone.”

“You can’t just walk away from this, though,” it hissed, louder now, venom creeping into its tone. “Do you really believe there’s peace on the other side? That’s not how it works, Ana. You don’t just escape. You don’t get to turn your back on me. On what you are. You can’t un-rot, remember?”

The room felt colder now, the walls somehow tighter, pressing in as though they were suffocating with her. She glanced over her shoulder, and there it was — the reflection. Its body, once just sagging in defeat, was shifting. Bones cracked loudly under its skin, jerking its limbs like a marionette with snapped strings. Flesh peeled and slid, exposing raw, pink muscle underneath. A sickly wet sound echoed in the room as its decayed face cracked into a grotesque grin. It was moving again.

“We’re not done,” the reflection croaked, its head twisting at an unnatural angle. Its jaw dislocated with a wet pop, hanging loosely, flapping with each word. “This is your time. Your time to break apart. Your time to become. You thought you could just shed me, leave me behind like some old, unwanted skin?”

Ana swallowed, her throat dry, as the reflection’s body convulsed and snapped, one arm jerking upwards, tearing a stretch of decayed flesh off in the process. It hung there, a limp rag of skin, dangling from its bony elbow like discarded meat. It laughed — a sound that was less human and more the noise of rotted wood splintering.

“You think this is about loss?” it continued, voice warping with each twisted movement. “This is about renewal, Ana. We die, we rot, we fall apart — but that’s not the end. Oh no, it’s never the end. There’s something underneath. Something hungry. Something waiting to crawl out.”

The reflection's body jerked again, violently, as though it was trying to crawl out of itself. Its hands, jagged and peeling, clawed at the mirror, leaving streaks of blood and viscera on the glass. Its voice lowered to a whisper, sickly sweet, crawling into Ana’s ears like an infection.

“This is the moment you’ve been waiting for. The one you never wanted to admit to. You knew all along, didn’t you? That underneath all the human parts, there was something else. Something you didn’t want to see. But it’s always been there. You and I… we’re the same.”

Ana’s stomach turned, a nausea rising in her throat as the reflection’s body began to tear itself apart in earnest. The popping sounds of bones cracking, sinew snapping, and skin ripping filled the air. The mirror seemed to warp, darkening, as if even the glass couldn’t contain the sheer violence of the transformation.

“You can’t run from this,” it growled, dragging itself closer to the edge of the mirror. “Look at me, Ana. LOOK AT ME!”

Ana's hand trembled on the door handle, but she couldn’t move. The reflection was pulling something dark from within itself, something not human, something old and broken and sharp. Its fingers clawed at the remaining flesh on its own chest, peeling it back, revealing the cage of ribs underneath. The bones cracked open like a hideous blooming flower, exposing a black void where a heart should’ve been.

“This is who you are,” it whispered. “This is what you’ve always been. You thought the decay was a sickness. You thought you could heal. But this is your rebirth. Your time has come. The death of Ana Leighs is just the beginning.”

Ana’s breath came in shallow, ragged gasps, her heart hammering in her chest. She felt the pull of it now, that grotesque promise of transformation. The room spun around her, the walls breathing, pulsing, as if the very air had thickened with decay. The reflection's words were like poison, seeping into her mind, twisting her thoughts until they felt foreign, distant.

“Become, Ana,” it snarled, its mouth splitting wider, stretching impossibly far as its face tore open in a final, hideous grin. “Become the rot. Become the thing you’ve hidden from all your life. Let go of Ana Leighs. Let go of what you were.”

The reflection reached out, its hand pressing against the glass, fingers wet with blood and pus. The mirror seemed to melt beneath its touch, warping, as if the barrier between them was thinning.

Ana stumbled back, her head swimming with the sickening weight of it all. Her chest tightened, her bones felt heavy, her skin — what little remained — itched with an unbearable heat. It felt like her body was trying to tear itself apart. Like the reflection wasn’t just speaking to her, it was pulling her, dragging her down into that pit of darkness, that endless void of rot and ruin.

With a final, sickening crack, the mirror shattered, the reflection dissolving into a violent spray of blood and shards. Ana screamed, her body convulsing as the world collapsed around her.

Ana’s breath hitched in her throat, the room around her a mess of pulsing shadows and the warped, dissonant rumbles of her own mind. The edges of her vision flickered like static on a broken TV, and she could feel it — the slow crawl of something else building underneath her skin, something hungry and ancient, scraping at the walls of her organs.

Chapter Eighteen

Ana Leighs

The door creaked open, and there she was. Lila. Lila-fucking-Nielson. Of all people.

“No, no, no, no,” Ana mumbled under her breath like a broken record, clutching the bloodied remnants of her own skin. Lila, with her stupid soft eyes and misplaced compassion, was the last thing she needed. She’d ruin it. She’d ruin everything.

“Ana, I’m taking you to a hospital,” Lila said firmly, stepping forward with that goddamn ‘I’m-in-charge-now’ attitude. It made Ana want to laugh.

Or cry. Or perhaps tear Lila’s throat out.

“No,” Ana kept repeating, backing up like a cornered animal, her bare bone fingertips brushing against the cracked mirror. “No, you can’t. You don’t get it. It’s… time.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Lila snapped, eyes wide. “Kylie told me what you did. You’ve stapled your fucking skin, Ana. You’ve fucking mutilated yourself! I don’t care if you don’t want redemption or whatever fucked-up idea you have about suffering — you’re not going to sit here and bleed to death alone. Not while I’m here.”

Ana blinked at her, confused. Hurt. Angry. A thousand emotions crashing into one another, condensing into a single, suffocating wave of madness. “I can’t go. Don’t you see? It’s happening. It’s time.”

Behind her, in the shattered glass of the mirror, her reflection stood, twitching risibly. The jaw hung loose and crooked, swaying like a broken pendulum. Its eyes gleamed with something far worse than mere malice — something patient, expectant. It grinned jaggedly, the skin on its face slipping off in thick, syrupy chunks.

“You know what you have to do, Ana,” the reflection hissed. “Go on. Do it. Your time is running out. Do it.”

Ana’s head whipped around, a flicker of hope in her eyes. “Lila,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “You hear the demon too, don’t you? You hear it.”

Lila stared at her like she was looking at a toddler having a tantrum. “What are you talking about? I hear you, Ana. All I hear is you losing your fucking mind. This is bullshit — just let me help you. I’m not trying to fix you, alright? I know that’s beyond me. But I can at least clean you up, get you to a doctor.”

“No, no, no, no, no,” Ana chanted again, her voice rising into a fever pitch. “You heard it, Lila! You did! You must’ve heard it!”

“Ana, stop. Just stop. Whatever it is you think is happening, it’s not real,” Lila pleaded, her voice cracking slightly, a glimmer of desperation seeping in. “I just want to help you. Let me help you.”

“Oh, Lila, you’re so blind,” Ana whispered, a manic grin creeping across her face. She was in her own world now, her reality distorting like a terrible dream. She spun in place, twirling like a little girl playing dress-up, laughing breathlessly. “You don’t understand. You don’t understand anything.”

Lila was still talking, still trying to pull Ana back, but her voice was drowned out by the symphony of music swelling in Ana’s ears — the reflection, her reflection, was singing now, its voice a low, dislocated hum, an anthem for the end of Ana Leighs.

In the glass, the reflection danced along with her, its disjointed limbs flailing wildly, its rotten skin flapping as it moved, leaving trails of viscera behind. Its blackened eyes gleamed with cruel amusement as it watched Ana’s transformation unfold, like some twisted conductor guiding her through this sick symphony of flesh and bone.

“Look at her,” the reflection cooed, its voice syrupy with malice. “Look how beautiful she is. A work in progress. A masterpiece of rot and ruin.”

Ana was floating in a haze, the kind that settles just before sleep claims you, except this was different. This was permanent, this was a kind of haze she’d never come out of. Her world was different now. It had to be. Because for her, the room wasn’t just warping — it was breaking. Splintering at the edges, peeling itself away in strips of dirty, rotting wallpaper, the air itself seemed to hum with a twisted sort of expectation.

The mirror kept on singing. That shattered thing, its surface like broken teeth, was still singing. It had no right to be as calm, as gentle, as it was. The melody was sickly sweet, like a lullaby that was just slightly off-key. A lullaby for the dying.

And it was beautiful, Ana thought, in the same way that rot is beautiful when it consumes a body — slowly, thoroughly, until nothing is left but bones and a memory.

Lila was there. Oh, Lila. The girl who was always so stupidly hopeful, standing in the doorway like a lost lamb, staring at Ana with wide, horrified eyes. But there was no need for horror now. Lila understood, didn’t she? She had to. She could feel it too, the pull of transformation, of becoming. Lila wasn’t trying to stop her. No, she was encouraging her, wasn’t she? Telling her that it was okay. That everything was fine.

"It’s okay, Ana Leighs," her reflection crooned. "Do your thing. Do it."

Or could she even call herself Ana Leighs anymore?

Ana’s feet lifted from the floor as she continued to twirl, her bare-boned toes grazing the stained carpet. To her, it felt like the moment Cinderella’s tattered dress transformed into shimmering silk. Her fairy tale, she thought. The kind of fairy tale where the princess claws her way out of her own flesh, becoming something newer, something stronger.

If there was no way out of her mind, she’d create a new one. One where she wasn’t weak, where she wasn’t broken, where the world couldn’t touch her unless she wanted it to.

Her reflection’s jaw swung with every note of its song, its eyes glittering with dark amusement, watching as Ana’s bones shifted beneath her skin, cracking and grinding, rearranging themselves like pieces of a puzzle attempting to fall into place. This was who she was meant to be. The girl she used to be was long gone, and what she was becoming now… it was something else. Something better. Something terrifying.

She could feel her bones composing themselves, her muscles weaving into new patterns. Her skin — the skin she had peeled away — was irrelevant now. That wasn’t her. That was never her.

Bones clattered to the floor. But they weren’t hers.

They were Lila’s.

Ana’s twirling stopped abruptly, her eyes slowly focusing, the haze in her mind lifting just enough for her to realise what she had done. Lila wasn’t just standing there anymore. Lila was on the floor, or rather, what remained of her was on the floor. Pieces of her, scattered like debris after a storm. Her bones, still fresh, still dripping with the wetness of what had once been her friend, littered the tiles like discarded toys.

And Ana?

Ana had gained a new skin.

She turned to the mirror, slowly, savouring the moment. Her hands — no, Lila’s hands — rose to her face, trembling, almost reverent. Blonde hair cascaded down her shoulders, the soft waves catching the dimmed light. Her fingers traced her new face, that beautiful, perfect face. The one she had always envied. The one that had always seemed so effortlessly pretty, so unattainable.

But now it was hers.

“Oh,” Ana whispered, her voice thick with awe and something like amusement. “Oh, how well it fits.”

She smiled. Lila’s smile, bright and clean and so at odds with the scene around her. The floor was slick with blood, the stench of iron and death heavy in the air, but Ana — Lila — stood there, examining herself in the mirror, turning her head this way and that, marvelling at how perfect she looked.

"I’m beautiful," she said, the words slipping from her lips like a secret, a revelation.

In the mirror, her reflection no longer taunted her. It wasn’t needed. The reflection was still there, but now it was hers. It had always been hers, waiting for this moment. Waiting for her to step into her true skin. And now that she had, the world seemed to settle into place around her, as if everything had been leading up to this.

The thing that used to be Ana Leighs — the thing that used to hide as Ana Leighs — smiled, content in its new form. There was no more struggle, no more pretending to be something she wasn’t. She had shed her old self, like a snake shedding its skin, and what remained was perfect.

The bones on the floor, the blood staining the carpet, those were nothing but remnants of a past life. Of a girl who had tried so hard to be someone she wasn’t, who had fought against the inevitability of her own transformation.

There was no going back.

In the mirror, the reflection whispered, "This is your time, Lila. Your time to live. To be whole. To be beautiful."

And she was. She was so beautiful now. Beautiful and whole and terrifying in a way that only something truly free could be.

The bones at her feet were just the beginning. A reminder of what she had left behind. What she had overcome. Ana — no, Lila — stepped over the remains, her new face gleaming in the sickly light, a smile tugging at her lips.

Outside, the world waited. A new world, one that she would walk through with confidence, with power. She had finally become who she was always meant to be.

And God help anyone who tried to stand in her way.

The reflection laughed softly, a sound like the scraping of bone against bone, as Lila turned away from the mirror.

Chapter Nineteen

Lila Nielson

Lila Nielson was a woman-made horror, stitched together from the discarded pieces of someone else's dreams.

A patchwork creation, an amalgamation of desires she had once envied, but now worn like her own skin. It had been two, maybe three days since… it all happened. The transformation. The evolution. And yet, time had become slippery, meaningless in this new state of being. Lila had never felt so close to her bones, to the core of herself, and yet so removed from the girl she once was. It was strange, this sensation — this Lila, the one standing here, felt more real than the old one ever had.

Changing skin was disorienting, a kind of miracle that left her both hollow and full. It was confusing in ways she couldn’t quite describe, because even now, even with a new face, a new life — Ana’s life — her mind still lingered in the old one. Every thought, every memory, every trace of that girl was still there, just beneath the surface of all the rubble and flesh. A ruin buried beneath layers of newly acquired perfection. But perfection was easier. The pretending felt less like pretending, more like truth.

That’s what it was for this Lila Nielson, this thing that wore her face.

She didn’t want to think about the mess of it all, not right now. The way Ana’s bones had snapped, the wet tearing sound of flesh being severed. No. She just wanted to exist in this state, this precious moment of being someone that people would care for, someone whose tears could elicit prayers.

Who hasn’t, after all, spent their life resisting the inevitable cuffs of mortality? Ana had. That’s why she lost.

But Lila — Lila had embraced it. She’d become it.

The morning was pale, washed in the kind of sickly light that only autumn mornings in Maine can conjure. The reflection in the mirror had solidified; there was no longer any question of who she was. Her blonde hair fell just right, her eyes glittered with that approachable sort of brightness that invited attention but deflected too much closeness. The face she had now was perfect — perfect in a way that Ana’s never could have been.

Ana Leighs didn’t exist anymore.

And yet, the old mind persisted. The little ghost of Ana Leighs lingered like a stain on the back of her consciousness. "Why should you be loved?" that ghost would sometimes whisper. "Why should you deserve this, when I could never find it?"

But the new Lila didn’t listen. She knew better. She was beyond such petty insecurities now. That was the beauty of wearing someone else’s skin — you weren’t beholden to their failures.

Lila had to go to work. The world hadn’t stopped spinning just because she had changed. She still had a job, still had obligations. She had to show her face at the office and pretend like everything was normal. Like Ana Leighs had never existed. Because, in the grand scheme of things, she didn’t. Not that anyone else needed to know the gory details of how that came to be, but it didn’t matter.

Ana’s life had been sad, small, a cage of her own making. She had stumbled through it, dragging her weary bones like a condemned prisoner, always searching for something she could never name. Lila didn’t have that problem. She knew exactly what she wanted, and now, she had it. She was no longer tethered to the heaviness of uncertainty. The life Ana had wasted was hers to live now, and she would live it better.

Lila had to curse herself for even thinking of Ana. Even to whisper that name in the privacy of her mind sent a sharp, bitter pain coursing through her chest. The guilt was consuming, an acid eating away at whatever fragments of humanity might have remained. As if Lila Nielson herself had killed Ana.

And maybe she had. Maybe Lila could shoulder the blame, cradle the weight of that gruesome ending like a trophy. But what would be the point? Lila Nielson had never been the kind of person to take on unnecessary burdens. She wasn’t built for it, not anymore. If there was one thing this new Lila did well, it was not think. Not dwell. Not obsess. Ana had been a master of that, hadn’t she? A creature so ensnared by her own thoughts that she could barely move without tripping over them. Where Ana’s soul had been a labyrinth, full of dark corners and spiralling paths that led nowhere, Lila’s was — had to be — a rose petal. Light. Soft. Delicate. A thing that bloomed and then simply let itself fall when it's time came.

As she strode through Maine in the early morning, Lila tried to embody that new lightness, that delicacy. The air smelled of wet leaves and burnt coffee, the remnants of another town waking up. The sunrise painted the streets in streaks of blood-orange and tender pink, as though the sky itself were weeping in beauty and anguish. Lila smiled at the sun, her reflection in a shop window catching the upward curve of her lips, a face so practised in its perfection that it almost felt like her own.

It was odd, this fresh sense of nearness to everything. The world no longer felt distant, blurred, as it had before. Lila Nielson didn’t feel like she was watching life through glass anymore. Everything seemed so close now—intimate. As though she could reach out and touch the edges of it, cradle the moment in her hands. Maybe that had been the problem all along. Perhaps Ana had spent so much time fearing the world that she had only ever seen it as something far away, something untouchable. Every interaction had felt cold, indifferent, disconnected.

But not now.

Now, Lila’s feet kissed the pavement with a sense of purpose, her stride easy and confident. Her hair shimmered like gold under the rising sun, and the breeze played at her sleeves as if it knew she belonged to this morning. To this life. There was no room for doubt, no space for hesitation. This was her debut, her reintroduction. And she would not falter.

Though, it certainly was strange to see Maine so empty. The streets stretched like veins beneath a dead sky, the buildings hunched and tired, as if they too felt the burden of watching her walk by.

Lila strolled from the hotel to Illume in solitude, not a soul in sight, save for the distant echoes of her heels clicking on the cracked pavement. But she liked it this way. It was a small mercy, this emptiness — a kind of freedom. To feel invincible among the nothingness, unjudged and uninterrupted.

She stopped outside a grimy storefront just shy of Illume’s glinting glass doors. The faint light inside the shop barely reached the sidewalk, leaving her reflection hazy, blurred at the edges like a half-formed thought. Still, she leaned closer to inspect herself — because that’s what Lila would do. Always meticulous, always polished. Her hair had to be perfect, not a strand disrupted by the wind. Her makeup had to remain unblemished, smooth as silk. Her smile had to gleam with just the right balance of warmth and power.

Lila smiled. Or at least she tried to. It didn’t seem right. Her lips pulled at odd angles, the muscles too tight, as though they hadn’t quite learned their new choreography. She frowned slightly and tilted her head, then glanced around the street. Still no one. The world held its breath. Maybe the skin was just settling to her bones, she thought. That must be it. New things always take time.

She stepped closer to the glass. The face staring back was beautiful, in theory. High cheekbones, golden hair framing a jawline sharp enough to cut paper. The sort of face people trusted, adored, envied. It was Lila’s face — had to be. And yet, beneath the fluorescent glare of the storefront light, something didn’t sit right. The smile again. Too wide. Too wet.

Lila smiled harder, willing it into place. Her teeth glistened, but not with their usual white sheen. They were smeared red. Blood, thin and gloppy, pooled at the edges of her gums, as though her mouth had bitten down on something it couldn’t quite digest. Her tongue flicked nervously over the taste, copper and salt, but her face remained calm.

This wasn’t the sight she wanted to see, but it didn’t matter. Lila didn’t react, didn’t recoil. To hate this, to panic, to feel — that would be Ana. And Ana didn’t exist anymore. Ana was a ghost, a figment, a husk that she had shed like a snake sloughing its old skin.

So Lila did what Lila would do. She brushed it off with a quiet laugh, wiped the corners of her mouth with the back of her hand, and carried on. Each step toward Illume felt lighter, as though her bones were hollowing out, freeing her from the weight of the past.

But the reflection lingered in the glass behind her, watching her back as she walked away. Its smile didn’t falter. Its teeth stayed bloody. And its eyes — Ana’s eyes — didn’t follow her, but stared straight ahead, unblinking, unflinching, daring her to look back.

Lila didn’t. She couldn’t. She had Illume to get to. She had a life to perform. Oh, how freeing this was. To walk forward and never look back. To carry a face that wasn’t hers and pretend it had always been. To step into a world where no one would ever question who — or what — she really was.

Illume was a ghost town too. Its gleaming glass walls reflected nothing but the haze of the morning, and every step Lila took echoed back at her, louder, lonelier. The sterile, modern space stretched endlessly, its pristine surfaces untouched, as though the building itself was holding its breath. Lila cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted.

“Kylie? Anyone?” Her voice ricocheted off the walls, distorted and hollow, like it didn’t belong to her anymore.

Where were the others? The other interns who scurried about with clipboards, their eager smiles grating and infectious? The murmur of heels and loafers against the polished floor? Was there a day off? It had to be. That was a perfectly rational explanation.

“For fuck’s sake, this is ridiculous,” she muttered, the curse sharp against the oppressive quiet.

But the silence didn’t flinch. Lila clenched her fists, her nails digging into her palms.

Was this what freedom meant? Was this the price she paid — to be so free she became all the more alone? Her stomach churned, a slow, nauseating twist, but she shook it off.

No. No, today had to be a day off. A holiday, a staff retreat, something easy to explain. She clung to the thought like a lifeline, wrapping it tightly around her brain, choking out anything that dared suggest otherwise. Because if the truth bent any further toward the impossible, she would tear this skin off too.

Her eyes darted to her hands, trembling at her sides. The thought of tearing again, of ripping herself apart, of standing before a mirror and finding nothing but raw, angry flesh — it made her stomach twist harder. She couldn’t bear to retry life again. To start over. The homesickness would be unbearable. Homesick for what? For Ana? For the wrongness of her? The thought was aching. It was selfish.

How dare she feel this way? How dare she mourn what she left behind? This was her wish, her dream, stitched together from the scraps of her endless longing. She was in Lila’s skin now — her perfect skin, her perfect face. This was everything she had ever wanted. Everything she had begged for.

And after all that, the emptiness of Illume gnawed at her. The absence of others made her fragile, transparent, as though the bright lights of the office might shine straight through her, casting shadows of who she really was. She gritted her teeth, her jaw tightening until the ache crept up her temples.

If this went wrong, Ana knew it was her fault. It couldn’t possibly be Lila’s. Lila never made mistakes. Lila never was a mistake. Everything she touched turned to gold, to light, to admiration. Lila was right.

So why did it feel so wrong?

Her knees buckled slightly, the heaviness of the silence pressing her down, but she forced herself upright. She strode deeper into the building, her heels clicking like a metronome, keeping time against the suffocating stillness. A slight movement in her periphery caught her attention — a shadow flitting across the frosted glass of a conference room door.

“Kylie?” she called again, her voice cracking. It wasn’t a shout this time, more a plea.

The shadow didn’t respond, but it lingered, stretching unnaturally tall against the glass. She moved toward it slowly, her heart a traitorous rhythm in her chest. As she reached the door, she hesitated, her hand hovering over the handle.

“Ana,” a voice whispered, faint but unmistakable. It was warm, coaxing, like a hand brushing against her cheek.

Her stomach dropped, bile rising in her throat. She turned the handle and pushed the door open. The room was empty, save for a single chair turned away from her, facing the wall.

“Ana,” the voice came again, now clearer, sharper, and wrong.

She took a step forward. The chair creaked slightly as if something unseen had shifted its weight.

She blinked, and in the reflection of the conference room’s window, she saw her own face — but not Lila’s. Ana’s.

It was warped and wrong, her skin drooping in unnatural folds, clinging too loosely in some places, as though it had been stretched and shrunk by careless hands. The face grinned, baring bloodied teeth that stretched impossibly wide.

“No,” she whispered, stumbling back. “No, no, no—”

But the reflection moved closer, peeling itself from the glass, its distorted form unravelling as it stalked toward her.

Lila ran. She ran until her lungs felt like they’d split, until her heart was a furious drumbeat threatening to shatter her ribs. The air around her tasted sour, heavy with rot, but she didn’t stop. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t. Not now. Not when she’d promised herself she’d make it out this time. She’d sworn she wouldn’t let the demons find her again, and wouldn't give them the satisfaction of dragging her down to that dark, endless place.

The streets of Augusta unfocused, the empty storefronts and hollow windows stretching like reflections in a funhouse mirror. Her legs burned, each step a barbed scream through her body, but she pushed forward. She had to escape. Past the grimy storefront — the one she swore she wouldn’t look at again.

But her eyes betrayed her.

The glass still held the faint, awful figure of Ana, hovering like a smear of blood no amount of scrubbing could erase. It smiled at her, that uncanny grin she’d seen in the conference room, too wide, too sharp, too wrong. Fear prickled up her spine, crawling under her skin like a thousand biting ants.

“Fuck. Fuck, no. Please, God,” Lila whimpered, her voice trembling and small. Pathetic, really.

A call for God? A laughable notion. She knew better than that. Ana knew better than that. God was a cruel puppeteer, and she was the marionette he liked to snap just to hear the strings crack. He wasn’t coming for her. He’d never come. Not when she needed him. Not even when she begged.

She stumbled, her breath hitching as the hotel loomed ahead. But there, at the entrance, waiting like it had all the time in the world, stood the creature. The thing that had stared back at her from the mirror with disjointed limbs and empty, grinning eyes.

“Jesus Christ,” she hissed through clenched teeth, skidding to a halt.

The creature tilted its head, its twisted reflection of her smile growing wider, splitting its face like a rotten fruit.

“What is this shit? Huh?” Lila screamed, her voice cracking into a wild, feral pitch. “You promised me. You fucking promised!”

The creature laughed. A wet, gurgling sound, as though it were choking on blood and tar and glee.

“Do you really think this is what Lila wanted? To be your costume? Your escape?” it crooned, its voice a mockery of reason.

“What?” Lila’s voice faltered. Her brain scrambled for meaning, for context, for anything that made sense. But there was nothing. Just the vast and sickening void stretching between them.

“You wore her skin like a mask, and now you’re surprised when it doesn’t fit?” The creature stepped closer, its form undulating like smoke, like flesh trying to decide what it should be. “Do you think she wanted this? Do you think anyone wants to be a hiding place for your cowardice?”

Lila couldn’t answer. Her throat clenched, words caught in the tight knot of her panic.

Chapter Twenty

Lila Nielson

She turned and ran.

Past the creature, past the yawning void of its laughter, past the voices clawing at her ears, her mind, her soul. She tore through the hotel doors and up the stairs, each step a painful echo of her terror. The walls seemed to close in, the hallway stretching endlessly, each door identical, mocking her.

When she finally reached her room, she fumbled for the key, her hands shaking so violently she dropped it twice. The air around her felt thick, suffocating, and she could swear she heard the creature’s laughter slithering through the cracks in the walls.

She threw the door open and slammed it shut behind her, locking it, bolting it, pressing her back against it as though that would be enough. Her chest heaved, her vision swam, and for a moment, she let herself believe she was safe.

But the room didn’t look right.

The bed was unmade, the sheets tangled and stained with something dark. The mirror was shattered, shards of glass scattered across the floor like tiny, accusing eyes. And there, in the corner, was a pile of skin.

Not just any skin.

Her skin.

Her breath caught, her hands clawing at her chest, at her face, desperate to feel something real, something solid. But her fingers brushed against the seams, the rough edges where the skin didn’t quite meet, where it puckered and pulled.

She stumbled to the mirror, shards crunching underfoot.

The creature was there, in the reflection, smiling. Always smiling.

“Go ahead,” it whispered. “Take another look. Tell me who you really are.”

And when she did, when she saw what stared back at her, her wail was an uneven, broken thing that never seemed to end.

It was only Ana.

A young, docile, beautiful Ana. The kind of beauty that wasn’t practiced but accidental, the kind that bloomed in ignorance. She stared back at Lila, her eyes wide and guileless — the eyes of a child who only knew innocence, who hadn’t seen the things Lila had seen, who hadn’t done the things Lila had done.

Lila faltered, her breath catching like a bird trapped in her throat. “What — what is this?” she chirped, her voice thin and cracked.

The reflection tilted its head, curious, almost amused. "Ana," it said, though the word didn’t feel like an address — it felt like a question. A taunt, wrapped in the illusion of her own name. The way it rolled off the tongue of the creature made it seem less a name and more a condemnation. As if this bloodied, bony figure was asking her to think for herself for once in her goddamned life.

“Do not ignore me!” The creature’s shout filled the room, rattling the air with a terrible, guttural reverberation.

“I’M NOT ANA!” Lila screamed back, her voice cracking into something wild and primal. Her nails dug into her palms, and she barely registered the sting. “You want a fucking shouting match? Let’s go. Let’s fucking have one. I did all of this for us — for fucking us! So don’t you dare call me Ana,” she screeched, her voice a tangle of rage and desperation.

The creature grinned — or tried to. Its skeletal jaw hung loose, the edges fraying into nothingness as its form began to fade, sinking into the hotel bed like a parasite burrowing into flesh. “You are so foolish, child. So foolish, I almost feel for you,” it said.

Lila’s chest heaved, the room spinning, her nails clawing at the edge of her arms as though trying to peel herself back into reality. “You said this was it,” she said quietly, almost to herself. “You promised me this was it. That it would be over.”

“And you believed me?” The creature laughed, a sickening, wet sound that curled through the air like smoke. “Oh, how deeply human of you. You want to kill the pain, but you refuse to let it go. You’ve stapled yourself to it. Your little metamorphosis wasn’t freedom — it was decoration. Dressing up the same broken thing in prettier scraps of skin.”

Lila shook her head, stepping back, her knees threatening to give way beneath her. “No. No, you said this would change everything. You promised me that.” Her voice cracked, small and brittle.

The creature leaned closer, though its form was barely holding together now, its edges flickering like the dying embers of a fire. “You thought a new face would save you? That wearing someone else would make you whole? How naive.” Its tone softened, cruel and intimate. “Ana Leighs, Lila Nielson, whatever name you cling to — it doesn’t matter. The sickness clings to your soul. And you cannot escape what you are, no matter whose skin you wear.”

Lila’s legs buckled, and she crumpled to the floor, her hands clutching her head as if she could pull herself out of her own skull. “Shut up,” she whispered, her voice barely audible. “Shut up.”

“But you won’t shut me up, will you?” The creature’s voice grew fainter, but it pierced through her all the same, like a needle threading between her ribs. “Because I am you. And every time you run, you’ll find me waiting.”

“So what was all of this?” Lila spat, her voice trembling with equal parts rage and despair. “Another fucking joke at my expense? Another cruel punchline in this endless, goddamned farce?” Her hands curled into fists at her sides, her nails biting into her palms as though trying to hold herself together. “You know, I always wished I was kinder to the people I thought loved me. Isn’t that pathetic? Even now, standing here, I was stupid enough to think maybe I could’ve been kinder to you.”

The creature snorted, its body sinking further into the decaying hotel bed, leaving only a malformed head atop the mess of rotted fabric. “To me? You idiot. Do I really have to spell it out for you again—”

“I get it!” Lila interrupted, her voice a raw, blistering scream. “I fucking get it. I am you, you are me, blah blah blah. But that’s not true anymore. It isn’t. I’m not Ana Leighs, not anymore.” She took a shaky breath, her words spilling out like bile. “Ana Leighs is dead. She fucking died, and her skin — her wretched, nasty skin — rotted right along with her. And good riddance. It did her no favours anyway.”

“I see,” it moaned, its voice dripping with mockery as it sank deeper into the bed, leaving only its head above the surface. The sheets seemed to pulse around it, alive with the rot. “Why is it, then, that you chose Lila?” It breathed the question like a taunt. “That’s the part I’ve always wondered about.”

Lila froze, her chest heaving. “What? What do you mean? You told me to,” she snapped, but her voice wavered.

The creature scratched out a hollow, rasping laugh, its jaw unhinging with the effort. “No,” it crooned. “You chose. I am nothing but a part of you. A fragment. A whisper. I’m not my own being, idiot.”

Lila’s eyes darted, her face paling as though she were unraveling on the spot. “No. No, you egged me on! You — you told me what to do!”

The creature’s laugh deepened, becoming a sickly, reverberating sound that rattled her skull. “Did becoming Lila make you even more stupid?” it sneered. “Snap out of it, little girl. You’re so busy blaming me, you can’t even see yourself. You’re so obsessed with being loved by people you don’t even like. So, tell me. Why Lila? Why her?”

“I—” Lila’s voice faltered. “Because… because she was better than me. Because she had everything. Everyone loved her.”

“And there it is,” the creature cooed. Its head tilted, the decaying remnants of its face pulling into a parody of sympathy. “You chose her because you thought she could fix the broken, jagged mess of Ana Leighs. You thought wearing her skin would make you worthy of love. But tell me — what’s the point of being loved by the people you despise?”

Lila staggered back, her breath hitching. “I—”

“Be honest,” the creature hissed, leaning forward, its neck elongating as though it might stretch out and bite her. “You’ve spent your life pretending you don’t care what people think of you, and yet here you are, dripping in someone else’s blood because you wanted to be adored. You hated Ana for being weak, but at least she was honest. At least Ana was real.”

Lila shook her head violently, her hands clutching her temples. “No. No, shut up. Shut up!”

Lila’s hands trembled against her face, fingers digging into the flesh as though she could claw away the truth. “I’m not her,” she whispered, but the words were fragile, crumbling like ash on her tongue. “I’m not her. I can’t be her.”

The creature tilted its head, its grotesque visage a mockery of pity. “You’ve been trying to escape her your entire life. But she’s always there, isn’t she? The reflection in every window, the voice in your head that never shuts up. Ana Leighs, the little girl who couldn’t bear the weight of being alive. You thought you could run from her, become someone else, but all you’ve done is dig deeper into the rot.”

“I didn’t dig!” Lila — or perhaps Ana — shouted, her voice cracking. “I rebuilt! I tore her down, brick by brick, and built something better, something stronger.” She laughed then, a wild, hollow sound that felt like it might shatter her. “You think I wanted this? You think I wanted to be Ana Leighs? To be weak, and small, and unloved? I had to be Lila. Had to. Because if I wasn’t, then who the fuck am I?”

The creature leaned closer, its presence suffocating, its words a venomous lullaby. “That’s exactly it. That’s the question you’ve been too terrified to answer. Who are you when you’re not trying to be loved? When you’re not trying to fix yourself? When there’s no mask, no skin to slip into? Who is Ana Leighs when the world isn’t watching?”

Ana’s breath hitched, her chest heaving with the weight of it all. “I don’t know,” she whispered, her voice barely audible. “I don’t think I ever knew.”

“Of course you don’t,” the creature finished for her, its voice soft but relentless. “How could you? You’ve been too busy stapling yourself into shapes you thought they’d want. Every cut, every adjustment — don’t think I didn’t see how much of yourself you spilled for them. And for what? Approval? A round of applause? A pitying little ‘oh, she’s trying so hard’?”

“I had to!” Ana hissed, her voice trembling with rage and fear. “Do you think I could just… be me? That anyone would care if I didn’t gut myself open for them every goddamn day?”

“Care? Ana Leighs, honey, no one cares now. They’re just happy to watch this all unfold. And the saddest part is that you’ve sold them tickets to a tragedy they don’t even realise is fake. Lila wasn’t your muse, your goal, or whatever fantasy you’ve built around her. She was just the thing you used to keep from noticing how much you hate yourself.”

Ana felt the air leave her lungs, a cold, hollow ache spreading through her chest. “I just…” she stammered, barely audible. “I just wanted to be loved. That’s all I ever wanted.”

The creature’s grin widened, its decayed teeth glinting in the dim light. “Do you really think by stripping yourself down to nothing, wearing other people’s skin, other people’s lives, you’ll finally get it? Or maybe you already know that no matter how much you scrape away, there’s nothing under there you’d want to see.”

Ana fell silent, the words piercing through her like a blade. The creature leaned back, its presence fading slightly, its voice softer now but no less cruel.

“You think you’ve killed Ana Leighs,” it said. “But all you’ve done is bury her alive. And the dirt is starting to shift, little girl. The cracks are forming. So tell me, what happens when she crawls out? When there’s no one left to pretend to be?”

Ana stared at the floor, her body shaking as tears burned trails down her face. She didn’t have an answer. She wasn’t sure she’d ever have one.

The creature sighed, its rotting head tilting to the side in a parody of sympathy. “Poor thing. Always running, always performing. But there’s no escape. No mask thick enough, no skin soft enough, no act good enough to outrun yourself. So go ahead, Ana — keep trying. But sooner or later, you’ll have to face it. You’ve always been here. And you’ve always hated what you’ve found.”

The creature’s body was a carnival of decomposition, its malnourished frame stretched taut over bones that jutted out at impossible angles. Its skin was a patchwork of monstrosity — slimy in some places, cracked and flaking in others, like parchment left to rot in the rain. Worms writhed in open sores, burrowing deeper into the flesh as though it were nothing more than dirt. Its rib cage was exposed, the bones yellowed and brittle, encasing organs that seemed to pulse weakly, leaking viscous, dark fluids onto the bed. The stench of it was overwhelming, a mix of sour rot and coppery blood that filled Ana’s nostrils, and her stomach churned violently, bile burning at the back of her tongue.

Its fingers twitched spasmodically, the nails blackened and split, curling inward as if even the bones beneath them were recoiling in agony. Its face — if it could still be called a face — was a hollowed-out cavern, its eyes sunken deep into sockets ringed with raw, red tissue. The jaw hung slack, as though it had lost the strength to hold itself together, revealing jagged teeth smeared with blood and what looked like strips of decayed meat.

“I want you to stop pretending to be Lila,” it rasped, the sound like metal scraping against stone. Its voice carried a weight that pressed against Ana’s chest, suffocating her. “You have to. Because it’s all going to end now. Everything.”

The creature’s head lolled to the side, its remaining strands of hair matted with pus and blood. “Ana,” it hissed, spitting her name like a curse. “Your life is over. You’ve done something unforgivable. A crime against humanity. All in the name of vanity. How pathetic.”

Its torso convulsed, ribs flexing outward like the jaws of a cage desperate to break free. “Once I am gone,” it wheezed, “your slow death will come. You’ll decay from the inside, just like me. I want you to put Lila down now. Stop this charade. See yourself for who you truly are.”

The bed beneath the creature rippled, the fabric warping and folding inward like it was swallowing something alive. The creature’s body began to sink, the grotesque, writhing mass becoming one with the filthy sheets. It took a long, wet breath, the sound like fluid filling lungs, before releasing it in a rattling exhale that made the air heavy with dread.

Ana staggered backward, her chest tightening as though a vice had clamped around her lungs. The walls of the room seemed to breathe with her, pulsing in and out in time with her panic. She gasped for air, but it felt like trying to inhale through wet cotton. Her throat burned, and bile clawed its way up, threatening to spill.

The bed finally consumed the creature entirely, leaving nothing behind but a dark, wet stain that spread like an infection across the mattress. The room seemed to grow darker, the dim light filtering through the curtains taking on a sickly red hue.

And then, Ana started to see it. The room began to reveal itself, its true nature bleeding through the façade she had so desperately clung to. The once-ordinary walls were smeared with streaks of dried blood, the patterns chaotic yet deliberate, as though they had been painted by trembling hands. The floor was sticky underfoot, the residue of fluids she couldn’t — or wouldn’t — identify.

The smell hit her next, a wave of putrid decay that seemed to claw its way down her throat and nest in her stomach. It was the scent of meat left too long in the sun, of things that should never be unearthed. The air itself felt heavy, thick with the cloying stench of death and something deeper, something fouler — a scent that spoke of endings.

Her eyes traveled to the corners of the room, where shadows seemed to writhe and shiver, alive with the weight of things unseen. And then she saw them — long, dark streaks that dragged across the floor and up the walls. Drag marks. A history etched into the room in blood and grime, whispering of violence, of desperation.

Her gaze fell to the bed, and her stomach lurched. The stain left by the creature had spread further, soaking the mattress until it sagged under the weight of its corruption. And beneath the bed, just barely visible, was something pale, a shape that shouldn’t have been there. Something human.

Ana’s breath hitched, her hands trembling as she stepped closer, unable to stop herself. The room pulsed around her, the air vibrating with a low hum that resonated in her skull. She reached the bed and dropped to her knees, her fingers sinking into the damp carpet as she peered beneath.

Then she saw the face staring back at her from across the room. A grotesque mask of decay, it seemed more nightmare than human. Its mouth was frozen in a silent scream, the lips curled and cracked, revealing teeth splintered into jagged points. The eyes — what remained of them — were sunken and glassy, pupils clouded over with the milky haze of death. Flayed skin hung in uneven shreds from the bones, the edges curling like burned paper. Blonde hair, once radiant, was matted with blood and clumps of unidentifiable filth, framing the skull like a ghastly halo.

Ana couldn’t move. She couldn’t even scream. The breath she tried to take caught in her throat, and her stomach churned violently. A sour, acrid bile rose faster than she could contain it, and she vomited onto herself, the warmth of it pooling in her lap.

Gasping, trembling, she looked down at her hands, desperate for any distraction from the thing — the person — staring back at her. But what she saw there was worse. Her hands, which she had always admired for their elegance, were no longer her own. The skin was loose, flapping grotesquely over her knuckles and wrists, barely adhering to the bone beneath. Dark streaks of congealed blood traced the lines of her veins, and in some places, the skin had torn away entirely, revealing raw, pulpy tissue.

She clawed at her arms in a panic, as if she could tear away the sickening facade. But it wouldn’t come off. The staples binding the skin to her body caught the dim light, their edges jagged and uneven, piercing through both flesh and fabric. The makeshift seams wept a mixture of blood and pus, oozing with every desperate movement. The stench of it hit her then, an overpowering reek of iron and rot that made her stomach lurch again.

Ana’s mind screamed at her to stop, to stop looking, to stop thinking. She needed to burn this image out of her mind, to claw it away and let the void take its place. But how could she? How could she forget, when the evidence was literally stitched into her body, when the very skin she wore wasn’t her own?

Her gaze darted back to the face across the room. Lila’s face. Or what was left of it. The lifeless eyes seemed to stare straight through her, accusing her without words. They were remnants of someone who had been adored, someone who had been loved effortlessly by the world in a way Ana never could be.

“What’s wrong with me?” Ana whispered, her voice trembling, barely audible over the pounding in her ears. She wanted answers, needed them, but the questions only deepened the void inside her. What had brought her to this? What had turned her into this abomination, a creature of loose skin and madness?

The memories were there, just beneath the surface, fragmented and warped like shards of broken glass. The reflection. The creature. The whispers that had coaxed her into the abyss. Had she gone mad at some point, lost herself completely?

She thought, for a moment, that time might be the answer. If she just waited, maybe this skin would settle, maybe her mind would clear. Maybe she could salvage whatever fragments of herself were left. But as she stared at the remnants of Lila Nielson — beautiful, perfect Lila Nielson — those hopes crumbled.

Lila’s eyes, even in death, seemed to reflect Ana’s failure. They spoke of endings, of the inevitable unraveling of everything Ana had tried to become. The bloodied strands of blonde hair, the ruined skin, the staples holding it all together — these were her sins, her crimes, laid bare.

Ana’s breath hitched as the weight of it pressed down on her chest, suffocating her. There was no salvation here. There was no escape. Only the rotting truth of what she had done, all in the name of goddamned vanity.

Her vision blurred, and she closed her eyes, the image of Lila’s face burned into her mind. It would never leave her. It would haunt her until the very end.

Because Ana Leighs, in her desperate obsession to be loved, to be adored, had destroyed the only thing she could never have. And in doing so, she had destroyed herself.

Chapter Twenty-one

A Year Later

I am a good person. I am a good person. I am a good person.

Ana Leighs scratched the words onto the page with trembling hands, the pen carving shaky lines into the cheap stationery provided by the hospital. She pressed too hard, the ink pooling in ugly blotches that seeped through the paper. But she didn’t stop. She couldn’t stop. The mantra had taken on a life of its own, a desperate chant to drown out the cacophony in her mind. I am a good person. The words mocked her as much as they comforted her, a cruel lullaby in the cold, sterile silence of the psychiatric ward.

The room was suffocatingly white, but Ana saw red everywhere. It bled into the corners of her vision, staining the walls, dripping from the light fixtures like some grotesque hallucination. Or maybe it wasn’t a hallucination. She had stopped trying to distinguish between reality and the nightmares clawing at her psyche.

She remembered. She always did. Memory was a cruel and unrelenting beast, tearing through her mind in flashes, fragments, whispers. She couldn’t forget. She couldn’t escape the image of her — the girl whose skin she had worn like a secondhand coat. Lila Nielson, so effortlessly adored, so impossibly radiant. Lila, who had been everything Ana wasn’t.

The guilt consumed her, gnawing at her insides like a starving animal. When they spoke Lila’s name, it was like a knife twisting in her gut. She couldn’t bear it. Yet she deserved it. Every syllable was a punishment, a reminder of the unforgivable thing she had done. Ana sat in the quiet of her room, tracing the memory like a scar she couldn’t help but pick at. The blood. The staples. The way Lila’s skin had clung to her own, a masquerade that was never meant to last.

Roughly a week after Ana’s meltdown at the interview a year ago — and the inconvenient fact that neither she nor Lila had shown up to work since — Kylie, in a fit of managerially begrudged duty, phoned both the hotel and the cops. Looking back, the sheer absurdity that it hadn’t been discovered sooner was almost laughable. A five-star hotel, where the nightly rate was basically a ransom note written in cursive, had somehow managed to overlook a decomposing body for days. Needless to say, the cleaning staff got more than a reprimand; someone definitely left that shift with PTSD and a pink slip.

When they finally found Ana, she was curled beside what remained of Lila. Lila’s flayed body sprawled lifeless across the bed, limbs askew, her skin a gruesome canvas peeled back in jagged, uneven strips. Ana sat there, draped in Lila’s skin like some shroud, the raw edges clinging to her as if bound by some unspeakable force. The flesh hung heavy and damp on her shoulders, leaving a slick trail of blood and viscera down her arms, pieces sliding loose in sluggish, nauseating drops. The room reeked of decay, of iron and rot, and Ana’s sunken gaze suggested she didn’t even notice. Or worse — she did.

For the entire week, as Lila’s body bloomed into a carnival of rot, Ana had been in a trancelike state — somewhere between dazed dreamer and full-blown lunatic. The room stank like death had thrown a frat party, and yet there Ana sat, dragging decayed skin across her own with a sort of sickly reverence. The cops took one look and knew this wasn’t your run-of-the-mill crime scene. This wasn’t even the work of a competent serial killer. This was something else entirely.

The smell hit first — a putrid wave of sour meat and regret that had more than one officer choking back bile. But the sight, oh, the sight — Ana with her patchwork quilt of rot, looking almost serene, like some twisted saint of self-loathing — it was enough to make hardened veterans of the force projectile vomit into their shiny regulation boots.

One rookie had to step outside, muttering, “What the actual fuck” over and over like it was a prayer. Another tried to joke about cancelling his dinner plans but ended up dry-heaving halfway through the sentence. And Ana just sat there, unbothered by the chaos she’d caused, smearing Lila’s essence across her own arms as if it were the world’s most rancid moisturiser.

Later, the psychologists would argue over whether Ana had snapped under the pressure of her deep-seated insecurities or if this was simply who she was all along — a black hole of envy that had finally collapsed in on itself. But in that moment, standing in a room that could only be described as Hannibal meets Martha Stewart, the officers weren’t concerned with theories. They were too busy trying not to faint, puke, or set the whole cursed place on fire.

The ward she was in now had its routines, but none of them touched Ana’s grief. She carried it like a weight pressing on her chest, making it harder to breathe, harder to exist. At night, she dreamed of Lila’s face — rotted, decayed, screaming silently. In the day, she avoided her reflection, terrified of what she might see there. Herself? Lila? Or some monstrous amalgamation of the two? Ana had started to consider that grief never truly left. It was an infection, spreading through her blood, warping her thoughts, consuming what little was left of her sanity. But was she even allowed to grieve? Could someone like her — someone who had committed such an atrocity — be granted that luxury?

The announcement of the interview came suddenly, a sharp knock at the door, a clipboard shoved into her hands. She was to be interviewed again. The second time in her lifetime. The first had been for her work, back when people saw her as something whole, something worth listening to. Back when her name had been synonymous with unflinching examinations of darkness, of the struggles of women haunted by their own demons. Now, the second interview would be for the thing she had become. For the crime she had committed.

The nurses called it “closure.” The doctors said it would help her “process” what she’d done. Ana laughed at them, a dry, hollow sound that barely escaped her lips. How absurd, to think she deserved closure.

She could have said no. She could have refused to sit under the sterile glow of the cameras, to answer the probing, judgmental questions of people who only wanted to dissect her guilt like a science experiment. But something in her whispered that she needed to do this. Not for them. For herself.

Ana was not the “hear me out” type. She never had been. Her life had been an endless spiral of internalised rage and silence, a refusal to ask for help, to explain herself. But now, for once, she felt the faintest pull to tell the truth.

Or perhaps she wouldn’t speak at all. She hadn’t decided yet.

In the minutes before the interview, Ana sat in the cold, echoing the silence of her room, staring down at her hands. The scars were still there, faint but unmistakable, like ghosts of the past etched into her skin. She pressed her palms together, as if in prayer, though she had long since abandoned the notion of God.

What would she say, if she chose to speak? Would she tell them about the creature in her reflection, the voice that had whispered promises of salvation? Would she confess to the nights spent clawing at her own skin, desperate to shed the person she had been? Would they even believe her?

And what did it matter, really? The world didn’t care about her truth. They only wanted a villain, a monster to gawk at. And Ana Leighs was nothing if not monstrous.

Ana sat there, her fingers trembling, her breath hitching, she realised the truth that had been clawing at the edges of her mind. The words were a lie. She wasn’t a good person.

She never had been.

The room was oppressively sterile, its fluorescent lights humming faintly like a swarm of invisible flies. Ana Leighs sat in the metal chair, her hands clasped tightly in her lap, the cuffs biting into her skin as if mocking her freedom even within these confines. Her hair hung limp around her face, framing eyes dulled with exhaustion and something darker — a hollow absence, like a corpse that still remembered how to breathe.

"Miss Leighs, nice to meet you. My name is Dr. Richard Jones," the man across from her began, his tone rehearsed, professional, too clean for the rancid truths they were about to unearth. "I’m a psychologist with Maine Medical Centre’s Department of Psychiatry."

Ana’s gaze didn’t waver from the corner of the room, where the cracked plaster had begun to flake away. She focused on it as though it might offer an escape. Her lips pressed together tightly, as though even the act of responding might be too much to bear.

Dr. Jones cleared his throat, his clipboard held in front of him like a shield. "Alright. I just need to let you know that this session is being recorded and may be used for media purposes. Can I confirm that you’re still okay with this?"

Ana’s head turned slowly, her eyes locking onto his. They were empty, yet brimming with something beneath the surface — an ocean of suppressed anguish and rage.

"What does it matter?" she said, her voice flat but tinged with a bitterness that scraped against the walls of the room.

Dr. Jones nodded, unfazed, though the edge of his professionalism faltered for a moment. "Fair point, Miss Leighs. Well, then. I understand you’ve been undergoing treatment while being held here. You were convicted of first-degree murder, but later used the defense of insanity. Is that correct?"

"Yes," Ana said, barely above a whisper.

"How is it here?" he asked, leaning forward slightly, his pen poised to scratch her words into permanence.

"Bleak," she said without hesitation. "Boring. But I can’t really complain. I got off lucky."

Jones tilted his head, his eyebrows furrowing just enough to suggest curiosity. "Lucky?"

"In some ways, yes," Ana murmured, her gaze slipping back to the flaking plaster. "I should be dead, Dr. Jones. I shouldn’t be here."

Her words hung in the air like the ghost of a scream, and for a moment, the room felt colder. Dr. Jones shifted in his seat, the leather creaking softly. "I see," he said carefully. "May I ask you some questions about the victim?"

Ana’s jaw tightened, her fingers curling into fists. "You can say her name," she said bluntly.

"Right," Jones said, adjusting his glasses. "Lila, then. What do you think Lila would say to you now, if she could?"

Ana’s head snapped toward him, her dead eyes suddenly alive with something sharp, something dangerous. The corner of her mouth twitched, but it wasn’t a smile — it was something colder, something hollowed out. "Is this torture?" she said.

"Humour me," Jones replied softly, his pen still waiting.

Ana exhaled a shaky breath, the sound almost a laugh but poisoned by despair.

"Probably something sweet. That’s the kind of person she was. Something like, ‘I thought I meant something to you.’ Well-" Her voice cracked, but she didn’t falter. "Actually, she’d probably just berate me. She’d look at me like I was filth. She’d tell me how sick I am, how pathetic. She’d remind me of every single fucking thing I already know."

"And what do you know?"

"I know I destroyed her," Ana said, her voice barely above a whisper. She looked down at her hands, the skin pale and trembling, as if they still bore the weight of what they had done. "I know she trusted me. I know she saw me as something more than I was — something I never could be. And I know that I took her apart, piece by piece, and for what? For a fucking fantasy? For a dream that turned into a nightmare the moment I touched it?"

Jones paused, his pen hovering above the paper. "And what do you think of that dream now?"

Ana laughed then, a bitter, broken sound that echoed in the small room. "It was poison. It rotted me from the inside out. And the worst part? I still wanted it, even as it killed me. Even as it killed her." Her voice dropped, barely audible. "Do you know what it feels like to wear someone else's skin? To live as a lie? It’s worse than death. It’s worse than anything you can imagine."

"So you regret what you did?"

Ana stared at him, her eyes hollow once more. "Regret implies I ever had a choice." She leaned forward. "You don’t understand, Dr. Jones. People like me…we don’t get choices. We only get obsessions. And they consume us until there’s nothing left."

Jones scribbled something on his clipboard, the sound grating against the suffocating silence. "Do you feel consumed?"

Ana didn’t answer immediately. She simply sat there, her hands trembling, her breath shallow. Finally, she looked up at him, her face a mask of fragile composure. "Not anymore," she said. "I feel hollow. Like the world ate me and spit me back out. And all that’s left is this...thing, sitting in front of you, pretending to be human."

For the first time, Dr. Jones said nothing. The pen in his hand stilled, and the silence between them deepened, heavy and suffocating. Ana Leighs leaned back in her chair, her lips curling into a bitter semblance of a smile.

"And the worst part, Dr. Jones? I still don’t know if I’m Ana or if I’m her ghost. Or if there’s even a difference."

Ana leaned back in her chair, the weight of her body suddenly unbearable, her breaths shallow and uneven.

"Tell me something about Ana Leighs then," Jones said abruptly, breaking the suffocating silence.

Ana’s head tilted slightly, her dead-eyed stare shifting toward him, narrowing in suspicion. "Something about me? This is ridiculous," she said flatly, though her voice quivered at the edges.

"You don’t have to answer," Jones replied, his tone dispassionately calm. "I’m just curious about how this… Ana came to be."

Her lips twisted into something between a sneer and a grimace. "Am I just an experiment to you?"

"Perhaps," he said, his honesty cutting deeper than any lie could. "Maybe that’s your punishment."

A bitter laugh escaped her throat, low and humorless. "Well, at least you’re honest," she muttered, her eyes shifting back to the cracked wall, as though it might split wide open and swallow her whole.

"So, who is she?" Jones pressed.

Ana stared at the ceiling for a long moment, the silence dragging on like a blade against stone. Finally, she spoke, her voice distant, almost hollow. "She was thoughts, I think. Everything my brain ever told me — overthought, pain, venom — I brought to life. I wasn’t just a person who had thoughts. I was my thoughts." She paused, her fingers curling into her palms, nails digging into the flesh until she felt the sting.

"If I had to describe Ana Leighs, though," she continued, her voice sharpening like a serrated edge, "I’d just say she’s sorry. A sorry person. A sorry excuse of one, too. She is sorry to exist. Sorry to be what she is. Sorry she ever crawled out of whatever hell spat her onto this earth."

Dr. Jones didn’t flinch, didn’t even blink. "And what of your skin?" he asked, his words cutting through the stillness like a scalpel.

Ana froze. Her stomach lurched at the mention, her mind involuntarily conjuring the image of her reflection — the creature in the mirror with its grotesque grin, its bloodied, tattered flesh. "It wasn’t wanted," she said finally, her voice barely above a whisper. "Not by me, not by my parents, not by anyone around me. No matter how I decorated it, dressed it up, made it presentable…this body of mine was never wanted."

Her voice cracked, and she pressed her fingers to her temples, trying to shove the memories back into the dark corners of her mind. "God, this is pitiful," she said, her tone sharp with self-loathing. "Why the fuck am I sitting here, feeling sorry for myself? Fucking hell, I need a cigarette, a joint, anything to burn this shit out of my head."

She paused, the silence stretching taut between them. Her lips trembled as she spoke again, her voice softer, more bitter. "If Lila were here, she’d tell me to shut the fuck up. She’d tell me I am the piece of shit, and that’s that. She was always so right."

Jones leaned forward slightly, his pen hovering just above the clipboard. "Is that why you wanted her skin?"

Ana recoiled as though struck, her breath hitching in her throat. Her hands gripped the arms of the chair so tightly that her knuckles turned white. "I — uh — I can’t answer that," she stammered, the words stumbling over her tongue like broken glass.

Jones didn’t press her, but the silence he offered in return was almost worse than any accusation.

Ana’s mind churned with fragmented thoughts, memories clawing their way to the surface. Is that why I wanted her skin? The question echoed inside her like a scream in an empty room. She thought of Lila’s laughter, her confidence, her effortless grace. She thought of the way Lila lit up every room she entered, how the world seemed to bow before her.

And then, she thought of the reflection again — the monstrous, contorted face, its smile carved into something inhuman.

"I wanted to be her," Ana whispered suddenly, her voice trembling. Her eyes darted up to meet Jones’s, wide and bloodshot, brimming with something that looked like terror. "Not just her skin. I wanted everything. Her light, her life. I thought if I wore her, I could become her. But I didn’t become her, did I?"

Jones remained silent, his pen scratching faintly against the paper.

"No," Ana continued, her voice growing darker, colder. "I became something else. Something worse. I thought I could escape myself, but all I did was…bring it with me. I carried Ana Leighs into that skin, and she ruined that too. She ruined everything. Just like she always does."

Her words trailed off into silence, her chest heaving with shallow breaths. Dr. Jones set his clipboard down gently on the table, his gaze steady and unyielding. "And do you believe there’s anything left of Lila in you?" he asked.

Ana’s lips parted, but no sound came. She blinked, her expression blank, and then, slowly, her head began to shake.

"I don’t know if I can answer that.”

The fluorescent hum of the room filled the void, a soft electric drone that buzzed against the raw edges of her nerves. She wanted to speak, to defend herself, to explain, but the words lodged themselves deep in her throat, sticky with guilt and bile.

"You can’t answer that," he repeated, his tone even, almost soft. "Or you won’t?"

Ana’s lips trembled, but she pressed them into a thin line, her gaze dropping to her hands. Her fingers twitched, tracing the ghostly outline of the staples she swore she could still feel. The sensation was faint but insistent, as if the memories of what she’d done were branded into her very skin.

"I don’t know," she said at last, her voice barely audible. "I don’t know what you want me to say."

"I want you to say what you feel is the truth," Jones replied. "Not what you think I want to hear. Not what you think will make you seem less… monstrous."

Her head snapped up at the word, her eyes narrowing. "Is that what I am to you?" she spat, her voice laced with venom. "A monster? Some experiment in madness for you to dissect and poke at?"

"Is that what you are to yourself?" he countered, unfazed by her outburst.

Ana blinked, the question hitting her harder than she expected. She opened her mouth to respond, but the words wouldn’t come. What was she? She had spent so long trying to outrun the answer, to lose herself in the fantasy of becoming someone else, something else. But here, under the stark light of this room, there was nowhere left to hide.

"I’m… nothing," she said finally, her voice breaking. "I’m nothing but regret and rot. A corpse that somehow kept moving long after it should’ve stopped."

"Nothing?" Jones leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. "That’s a convenient answer, isn’t it? If you’re nothing, then there’s no responsibility. No need to face what you’ve done. No need to be anything."

She glared at him, but his words gnawed at her, burrowing under her skin.

"You don’t know what it’s like," she said through gritted teeth. "To hate yourself so much that you’d do anything — anything — to escape. To burn down your entire life just for the chance to step into someone else’s. To carry this…this thing inside you that never shuts up, never lets you breathe, never lets you be enough."

Jones nodded slowly, his pen tapping against the clipboard. "And did it work?" he asked. "Did escaping yourself fix anything?"

Ana let out a bitter laugh, the sound hollow and jagged. "No," she said. "Of course it didn’t. Look at me. You can’t escape yourself. You can’t outrun the thing that lives in your head, the thing that is you. I thought I could kill Ana Leighs, bury her in someone else’s skin, but she crawled right back out. She always does."

"I see. And why do you think that is?"

"Because she’s relentless," Ana whispered, her voice trembling. "Because she’s everything I hate, and everything I can’t let go of. Because she’s me, and I’m her, and there’s no separating the two."

Jones sat back, his expression thoughtful. "Do you think that’s true for everyone?" he asked. "That we’re all trapped inside ourselves, doomed to carry our flaws, our regrets, our sins, no matter how far we run?"

Ana hesitated, her mind flickering through images of her life, her choices, her failures. "I think… I think some people are better at pretending," she said finally. "They build walls, put on masks, convince themselves they’re good, or happy, or whole. But underneath it all, we’re all the same. Rotten. Empty. Just… trying to make it through without falling apart."

“Is that what it means to be human to you?"

Ana laughed again, softer this time, almost wistful. "To be human is to destroy yourself," she said. "Slowly, piece by piece, in the name of love, or vanity, or survival. We claw at each other, at ourselves, trying to fill the void, but it’s never enough. It’s never enough."

Her voice broke on the last word, and for a moment, the room felt unbearably heavy, the air thick with unspoken truths.

Jones watched her carefully, his pen still in his hand but forgotten. "And yet," he said softly, "you’re still here. Still breathing. Still fighting. Why?"

Ana shook her head, tears slipping down her cheeks. "God, I don’t know," she said. "Maybe because I don’t know how to stop."

Jones leaned forward again, his gaze piercing. "Or maybe," he said, "because some part of you still wants to live. To be something more than the monster you think you are."

"You talk like I deserve something more," Ana said at last, her voice raw, her throat scraped clean of pretense. "Like there’s a life waiting for me outside these walls. But there’s nothing. Not for me. Not after what I’ve done. I knew my father wouldn’t come and visit. I never expected him to. But my mother? I mean, I didn’t think she’d be kind, I never expected that. But I thought — at least — she’d have something to say. One last argument, one more chance to remind me how I ruined everything. But instead, there's just... nothing."

"Maybe that nothing isn’t nothing at all. Maybe it’s a reckoning. A revelation. Maybe it’s the closest you’ll ever get to peace."

Ana let out a brittle laugh, shaking her head. "Peace?" she echoed. "There’s no peace in tearing someone's life apart. No peace in the blood you’ve spilled, or in the faces that won’t let you go. Lila’s face... God, her face. It’s everywhere — staring at me in the dark, in the mirror, in my dreams. Always asking why. Why did I take her? Why did I—" Her voice cracked, the words collapsing into a choked sob.

Jones leaned forward, his eyes steady and unyielding. "And what do you tell her?"

Ana’s head jerked up, her bloodshot eyes wide, rimmed with the kind of exhaustion that never really fades. Her breath hitched, like it hurt just to speak. “I tell her the truth,” she whispered, her voice barely holding together. “That I was jealous. That I hated her because she was everything I could never be. I wanted to destroy her, to crawl inside her skin and feel what it was like to be wanted, to be loved.” Her hands trembled as they gripped the arms of the chair, nails digging in deep, like she needed something to ground her, to keep her from unravelling completely. “But I wasn’t her,” she choked out, her throat tightening around the words. “I could never be her. No matter how many layers I tried to steal, no matter how many lies I told myself... I was still Ana Leighs.” Her chest rose and fell in sharp, broken gasps. “Still this... thing.” A shudder racked through her, and for a moment, she looked like she might disappear into herself entirely.

The silence between them was thick, oppressive, a tangible thing pressing down on Ana’s chest. Dr. Jones waited, his steady gaze unrelenting, the kind of look that stripped away lies, one thread at a time. Ana's fingers curled into fists, nails digging into her palms, the pain grounding her.

"Do you think there’s anything left for me out there?" she asked at last, her voice small, as if the words themselves might collapse under the weight of the question.

Jones leaned back, his face thoughtful, almost pitying. "That’s not for me to decide," he said. "But I think redemption isn’t always about what others give you. It can be personal. It’s about what you decide to make of what’s left.”

"You think I’m asking for redemption?"

Jones tilted his head, waiting, his silence more cutting than any response.

"I’m not asking to be forgiven," Ana continued, her voice trembling but gaining strength with every word. "I can’t be forgiven. Not by Lila, not by the world, not even by whatever god decided to let me rot in this skin. I ruined everything. Not just her life — I ruined myself."

She leaned forward, her breath shallow, her face contorted with something raw and bitter. "I was so terrified, you know? Terrified of trying my hardest, of giving everything I had to being a real person, because I knew it wouldn’t be good enough. So instead, I gave up before I even started. I let the fear own me, twist me. I didn’t just fail at being good; I didn’t even try."

Jones’s expression shifted, a flicker of something — sympathy? — crossing his face.

"But that doesn’t even explain it," Ana went on, her voice dropping to a near whisper. "It doesn’t explain what I did. The monstrosity I became. There’s no excuse for that. No fear, no self-loathing, no desperate need to be loved can justify..."

Jones opened his mouth to speak, but Ana cut him off.

"I don’t want your pity," she said, her voice cold now, flat and final. "And I don’t want your understanding. Because the truth is, I don’t deserve either. I went too far. I crossed every line, destroyed everything I touched, all because I couldn’t face myself. That’s not something you come back from. That’s not something you can ever fix."

She rose from the chair, her movements stiff, mechanical, as though the heaviness of her confession had turned her bones to lead. Turning to the door, she hesitated, her hand hovering over the handle.

"You want to know who Ana Leighs is?" she said, not looking back. "She’s a coward. And the worst part is, she always knew she’d end up here eventually. Because some people aren’t afraid of failure — they’re afraid of the effort it takes to even try. And that fear... it destroys everything."

She pushed open the door, stepping into the stark, clinical light of the hallway. Before it closed behind her, she spoke one last time, her voice low, almost to herself.

“This is not my skin, it’s a canvas for every scar, every cut, every cruel truth I couldn’t swallow. And I’m not asking for forgiveness, Dr. Jones. I’m just trying to figure out how to live with the fact that I’ll never deserve it.”

Other works by E.L. Black

Rage Ruins Pretty Girls

Available on Amazon.

Acknowledgement

To my incredible beta/ARC readers - Veronica R. van Bommel, Olivia Lillie, Tara Davies, Abbey Griffin, Ciara Broderick, Aamnah Ramzan, Charley Bolton, Frank Camacho, Hannah Quinn, Hollie Wilson, Liberty Pamela, Mars R, Mathilde Floor Svenkerud, Melani Leemet, Nadia Gammelgaard, Robyn Brown, Stephanie Alvarez Colon, Eleanor Matthews, and Miah Cantillon - your insights and encouragement helped shape Ana Leighs' story into something far beyond what I could have imagined. You pushed me to dig deeper, to refine every word, and I can't thank you enough for that.

To Mars, who brought this book to life with a cover that captures it so perfectly it feels like magic - I'm still in awe.

And to my loved ones, the ones who keep me grounded and give me the courage to keep writing, dreaming, and creating. I couldn't do this without you.

I am, and always will be, endlessly grateful.

About The Author

E.L. Black

E.L. Black is an English Literature and Creative Writing student from Hampshire with an insatiable love for storytelling. With aspirations to pursue a master’s degree in Journalism, she is committed to weaving thought-provoking narratives that challenge, unsettle, and captivate readers. Her writing delves into the darker corners of the human experience, blending psychological horror, thrillers, feminist fiction, and gothic literature — often combining elements of all these genres to create something uniquely unsettling. Not My Skin marks her debut into the world of horror fiction, a visceral exploration of identity, obsession, and the terrifying things we hide beneath the surface.

Books By This Author

Rage Ruins Pretty Girls

"Rage Ruins Pretty Girls" – A Tale of Fury, Power, and Redemption

An unnamed American lawyer, scarred by her past and fueled by rage, battles the patriarchy in a high-stakes feminist, legal drama.

When an ambitious American lawyer is promoted to a prestigious London firm, she hopes to leave her troubled past behind. But the shadows of her former life linger, and her struggles with the patriarchy are far from over.

Haunted by a toxic relationship that left her questioning everything she believed about men, she now finds herself embroiled in a high-profile criminal case. Her client, Rachel Sinclair, is a powerful woman who stands accused of a crime she didn't commit. But the prosecution, led by a group of ruthless men, is determined to see her fall. Their misogynistic tactics aim not just to convict Rachel but to send a message to all powerful women.

As she navigates the treacherous waters of the legal system, our protagonist must confront her own inner demons. Will her righteous rage become her downfall, or can she channel it to overcome the forces against her? Her journey is one of resilience, empowerment, and rebellion against a world that constantly tries to silence her.

In a world where rage can ruin pretty girls, she learns that sometimes, embracing that rage is the only way to survive.

Comparative Titles:

The Good Wife by Kimberly Belle
The Ex by Alafair Burke
Big Law by Lindsay Cameron
Will she let her rage consume her, or will she harness it to fight back against the system that seeks to destroy her? Find out in "Rage Ruins Pretty Girls".

Get ready for a rollercoaster of emotion, power struggles, and a fierce fight for justice.