The Weight of Choice
The Max feed flickered and died. The room groaned. Somewhere above me, a gull screamed the ugly scream of a thing that will eat anything. I curled my fingers and felt for the invisible seam along the chair arm. There. I dug my thumbnail into the glue line until it gave. It burned. Good. Pain is a rope, you pull hand over hand until you’re somewhere else.
The sliver blade came away sticky with old adhesive. I pinched it between numb fingers and worked it upright. The zip tie at my right wrist was thick, good nylon. The little teeth that keep it locked chewed at the blade.
“Grace,” he said, and I could hear the smile he didn’t have to show me. “You’re wasting time.”
“You kidnapped the wrong woman if you thought I’d enjoy your show.”
“You’re right,” he said. “I didn’t kidnap you for fun.”
The winch whined again—higher this time. The chair shuddered. A bolt somewhere complained.
“Tick,” he said.
I let the blade bite. The tie cut slow. Plastic stretches before it surrenders. That’s what training drills never teach you: it always takes longer than you think.
“Talk to me, then,” I said, buying myself seconds. “Tell me how you knew the bracelet. Tell me where you took the photo of my sister. Was it real? Did you stage it? Did you stitch her face onto another body to watch mine break?”
He took a beat. The kind of beat a man takes when he’s deciding how much to feed you to keep you on the leash.
“We don’t lie,” he said. “That’s what makes good art. The photo was taken yesterday. She was very calm.”
Calm.
The word cut deeper than the plastic.
The zip tie at my right wrist snapped.
I didn’t let my breath change. I kept my hand in place, fingers curved like a cuff still bit them. He’d be watching whatever he’d hidden in the shadows. I moved the blade to my left wrist and started the saw again, slower now. The speaker’s grill ticked with the heat of its own heart.
“I want to hear her voice,” I said.
“Soon,” he said.
“Now.”
He let the quiet stretch like rubber. It almost snapped. Then:
A new voice, small, cracked but whole.
“Gracie.”
Everything in me went to glass.
We had a way of saying our names when we were kids, a sing-song fall that wasn’t anything and wasn’t for anyone else. It was in that single word, a ghost embedded in it.
“Where are you?” I said, and if begging was a flavor I could taste it on my tongue. “Tell me something only we know.”
Another breath. A shaky soft laugh like nicotine paper. “The summer you cut your foot on the dock. You wouldn’t cry because I bet you a popsicle. You bled all the way to the corner store and told Mom you ‘spilled red ketchup.’”
The tie on my left wrist gave with a dry pop. I swallowed the sound it wanted to pull out of me.
“Don’t,” the voice—the other voice—said quickly. “Don’t get messy. We’re so close.”
“What do you want from me?” I asked again, soft this time, like I was tired of the game. Like I was folding. Let him come closer. Let him relax.
“To choose,” he said again. “It’s pure. The oldest worship. Blood on one altar. Tears on another.”
The projector with the apartment feed blinked back on. Max wasn’t there anymore. My living room was empty, but the mannequin had a new necklace: my spare house key, dangling from piano wire. The camera panned to my door. It was ajar now. A sliver of hallway light. A sliver of shadow on the floor that hadn’t been there before.
The chair’s right leg jumped as the cradle under us inched. Water slapped closer. Wind walked a higher line across the roof.
Ankles next. The blade nicked me. Warmth ran down into my sock. I didn’t curse. I rode the pain like a wave and let it go out.
“Evelyn Trent,” the voice said conversationally, like coffee talk. “Does she still smoke in her office?”
The sliver paused in my hand. He heard it.
“Mmm,” he said. “We’ll take that as a yes.”
“What do you want with her?”
“Every queen needs a check,” he said. “And you need to learn who holds your leash.”
The second ankle tie parted. I didn’t move. The trick isn’t freedom. The trick is the moment after, when every muscle in your body tries to sprint and you have to make them kneel.
The cheap phone buzzed again. I didn’t look.
“Call them,” he said. “Two pins. Save one. Be a hero. Lose the other. Be human.”
I laughed, low. Ugly. “You keep saying ‘art’ like it excuses you.”
“No,” he said, almost gentle. “It damns me in a way you’ll understand.”
A panel in the wall to my left scraped open on hidden hinges. Air shifted. A rectangle of deeper black became a doorway.
I could have run.
I didn’t.
I kept my hands where they were, let my body stay heavy in the chair, and said, “Fine. I choose.”
“Go on,” he purred.
“I choose me.”
I exploded upward, full body, sending the chair skidding. It ripped out of the floor bolts an inch at a time enough to tilt. Enough to give. I drove my shoulder through the cheap speaker, felt the plastic crack and the innards spark. The room hiccuped. The projector stuttered. The winch squealed and cut out.
The darkness shivered.
Something moved in the new-open doorway. A smell came with it—smoke and old perfume. I knew that brand because it lived in a single office with a view of the city and rules printed on the walls.
“Grace?”
Not over a speaker. Not filtered. Right there.
Evelyn stepped into the line of the failing light, a silhouette cut out of authority, hair silver, shoulders set.
And then she turned her head enough for the sliver of light to catch the side of her neck where an adhesive mic sat like a leech.
Her eyes found mine.
“I told you this would eat you alive,” she said softly.
Behind her, in the dark, a shape leaned on a left leg that didn’t take weight well.
The phone on the floor chimed once more, louder. A single text pushed through to the lock screen:
CHOOSE.
— MAX 🔴
— SISTER 🟡
— EVELYN 🟣
The timer under it lit up: 00:30.
Evelyn’s hand twitched toward her pocket like she could snuff the whole thing by will. The limp in the doorway shifted. And somewhere above us, the gulls started screaming like the sky had finally seen what we were.
I moved. The room moved back.
And the cradle under my feet began to tilt.