("I was never silent. I was surviving.")
He remembered her lips.
Not her name.
Just her lips—silent, trembling, pressed shut in the shadows where he left her.
She'd never made a sound. Not a scream. Not a word.
That's what made it fun for him.
The butcher. Thom Keller.
Loud with men. Quiet with women.
And brutal in the dark.
---
He was closing his shop when he saw her.
At first, he thought it was just a girl.
But the closer she stepped, the more the hairs on his arms rose like a warning.
She wore white again. Her feet were bare. Her face—calm.
Too calm.
He squinted. "Lucia?"
She didn't blink.
He chuckled uneasily. "Still not speaking, huh?"
But then she opened her mouth.
And the world broke.
> "Hello, Thom."
Her voice was rough. Like a door opening after years of rust.
It was quiet—but it shattered him.
His face went pale.
He stepped back, eyes wide. "You— You can talk?"
She took another step forward.
> "You just never listened."
---
His body tensed like prey. "What… what do you want?"
She stopped. Right in front of him. Looked him in the eyes.
> "I want your fear."
She said it soft.
Like a lullaby made from knives.
He grabbed the meat cleaver behind the counter.
Lucia didn't flinch.
She held her hands out—empty, steady.
> "You remember my silence.
Now you'll remember my voice."
He lunged. A clumsy swing.
She dodged.
She moved like smoke, like memory—ungraspable, terrifying.
He swung again.
She caught his wrist with a strength he didn't expect. Slammed it down on the table. Took the cleaver from him in one slow motion.
Then she leaned in, breath hot against his ear.
> "The second you touched me, you carved your name into my soul."
> "Now I'll carve mine into yours."
---
Thom screamed.
No one came.
By morning, he was found bound and gagged in his own meat freezer.
Alive.
Shaking.
His mouth—sewn shut with twine.
His hands—cut just enough that he'd never butcher again.
Above his head, painted in blood on the metal wall:
> I AM NOT YOUR SILENCE.
And carved into his shoulder with precision, letter by letter:
> LUCIA.
---
She had spoken.
And now, the village would hear her in every heartbeat of fear.
---