Page 14 of Porcelain Grave

The hours blur. Tape after tape. I sit there, frozen on Rhys's lap, watching the slow erosion of a human soul.

On one tape, Thomas speaks to the camera with a triumphant glint in his eye. "She smiled at me today."

The footage cuts to Marguerite. She isn't smiling. She looks hollow, her eyes sunken and glazed with exhaustion, her face a mask of pure defeat. She isn't smiling; she's just too tired to scream.

On another, he claims, "She's beginning to love me."

The screen shows her staring blankly at a grey concrete wall, her spirit completely extinguished.

A cold realization washes over me, making my skin crawl. Thomas interpreted every tiny movement—a blink, a sigh, a momentary lapse in resistance—as proof of love. It wasn't just violence; it was the calculated, delusional mind of a stalker who had rewritten reality to suit his fantasy.

I feel a sudden, sharp prick of terror. I glance up at Rhys. He's watching me, his dark eyes unreadable. The parallel is a jagged blade cutting through my mind. When does obsession become love? When does the need to possess someone turn into a desire to protect them? Is Rhys the cure, or is he just a more refined version of the monster who started this?

The tape ends with a burst of static. Rhys shifts, his grip on my waist tightening. "Are you ready for the next one, my little cracked doll? You may not like this. Not at all."

I swallow the bile in my throat and nod slowly. "This is as ready as I'll ever be."

The next tape starts, and the atmosphere changes. The air in the room feels thick, suffocating. Marguerite is different now. She's stopped begging. She's refusing to eat, her body wasting away, her lips sealed shut in a silent, stubborn protest.

And then, I see him lose it.

Thomas screams, a guttural, animal sound, and hurls a plate of food across the room. It shatters against the wall, spraying porridge and shards of ceramic. He lunges at her, pinning her brutally against the mattress.

"I'm not waiting any longer!" he bellows, his face contorted with rage. "I'm not waiting for you to accept me!"

I watch in frozen horror as he rips her dress up, tearing the fabric with a violent jerk. He yanks her underwear off, tossing them aside like trash. Marguerite fights him, her body twisting, her screams filling the small room, but she's chained to the floor. She can't move. She can't escape.

I press my hand over my mouth, a silent scream tearing through my chest as I watch my father rape my mother.

It is brutal. It is visceral. I watch the violence of it—the way he slams into her, the way her cries for help turn into desperate pleas for mercy. He doesn't stop. He doesn't care that she's in absolute agony. He doesn't stop until he is completely satisfied, leaving her broken and sobbing on the mattress.

He doesn't stop there. He strips her completely, throwing her dress and bra away, leaving her naked and shivering in the damp cold of the basement.

"You'll stay like this," he sneers, looking down at her. "If I have to torture you into loving me, if I have to break every bone in your body to make you submit, I will. I won't stop until I hear 'I love you' from those lips."

The camera lingers. There is blood on Marguerite's thighs, staining the mattress a dark, sickening crimson. She is shaking violently, her eyes wide and vacant, her body racked with pain.

Thomas turns to the camera, walks toward it with a look of utter satisfaction, and clicks the tape off.

The silence that follows is deafening. I can't breathe. I can't move. I feel like I've been hollowed out, leaving nothing but a cold, aching void where my heart used to be.

Rhys gently turns my face toward him. His expression is solemn, his eyes searching mine. "We don't have to watch any more of this, Ophelia. Not if you don't want to. I can burn them all right now."

I look down at the black rose still clutched in my hand—the one he gave me at the carnival at 3 a.m. It’s a symbol of his dark, twisted devotion, but right now, it's the only thing keeping me grounded.

I look back up at him, a hot tear rolling down my cheek. "I want to see it all," I whisper, my voice trembling. "I need to see it all."

Rhys doesn't say a word. He reaches out, wipes the tear away with his thumb, and kisses my forehead with a lingering, possessive warmth. He pulls me tightly against his chest, wrapping his arms around me as if he could shield me from the images already burned into my retinas, and slides the next tape into the machine.

‎The room feels like it’s shrinking, the walls closing in as the grainy footage continues to flicker. I can’t move. I can’t even fucking blink. I am trapped in this nightmare, forced to witness the systematic destruction of the woman who gave me life.

It becomes a repetitive, sickening loop. Tape after tape of the same horror. Thomas forcing himself on her, over and over, while Marguerite fights with every shred of strength she has left. She screams, she begs, she claws at him—and every single time, she fails. He is a wall of meat and madness that she cannot break through.

Then, the footage shifts. Marguerite starts getting sick. I watch her heave, vomiting into a bucket, her face pale and gaunt, looking like she’s about to fucking faint from the sheer exhaustion of existing.

The camera zooms in as Thomas forces a pregnancy test into her hand. When the two lines appear, he doesn't look like a father; he looks like a predator who just caught a bigger prize. He speaks to the camera, his voice dripping with a delusional, manic joy.

"She's carrying my child," he beams, looking absolutely mental. "Now she'll see. Now she'll finally love me. Who could hate the father of her own baby?"