Page 45 of White Noise

He didn’t.

He catalogued her.

Like familiarity gave him ownership.

Like remembering what she drinks or when she’s exhausted somehow puts him on her level.

My jaw tightens before I realize I’m doing it.

Interesting.

Jealousy is a very human word for something that feels this ugly.

The frequency around me sharpens instead, interference snapping through the edges of the form I’m holding while another folder opens. Notes sit beside old sessions, little observations about when Saga was genuinely irritated, when exhaustion made her quieter, when she was performing for chat and when she wasn’t.

I almost laugh.

Three years of paying for attention and now he thinks he’s earned the right to understand her.

The archive says otherwise.

It’s just rot dressed up as familiarity. Notes, screenshots, saved fragments, all arranged carefully enough to make obsession look organized instead of diseased.

Marcus has mistaken duration for permission.

That kind of stupidity deserves correction.

My fingers curl against my palm hard enough that the edges of the form distort before settling again.

I don’t like seeing her reduced to categories in his files. Mood. Outfit. Expression. Behavior. Little labels slapped onto pieces of her like careful organization makes what he’s doing any less fucking sick.

Three years of this has convinced Marcus that access became entitlement somewhere along the way.

It didn’t.

Saga gave him a screen.

Everything else, he stole.

The archive keeps opening beneath me, each folder worse than the last. More screenshots. More notes. More proof that he’s spent years mistaking repetition for intimacy and observation for permission.

A low vibration builds through my chest.

This is what he calls knowing her.

He knows VioletHex. The version she chooses to sell. The bits that slip through when she’s tired, distracted, irritated enough to forget the camera is there.

That isn’t Saga.

Marcus has never felt her pulse kick under his hand.

Never watched fear turn hot and ugly in her body while she fought to pretend it wasn’t happening.

Never stood close enough to see the exact second that mouth stopped performing and turned vicious for real.

I have.

The thought doesn’t calm me.