They thought they had me caged. But as I swept the debris of their lives into neat little piles, a new sensation began to replace the pain. It was a cold, clinical clarity.
I wasn’t going to just leave. I was going to dismantle the cage while they were still inside it.
I looked at my father’s study window, and for the first time in my life, I wasn’t afraid. I was calculating.
By the following evening, the swelling in my face had turned a sickly shade of plum and mustard. I sat in the darkness of my room, pressing a frozen silver spoon against the hinge of my jaw. The house was quiet, save for the muffled sounds of a televised football game echoing from the den.
I reached deep into the back of my closet, pulling out a dusty, forgotten relic: an old cedar chest that had belonged to my grandmother. Inside, hidden beneath layers of moth-eaten blankets, sat my old high school laptop. It was slow, the screen flickered with a persistent green line, but it was my only tether to a world they didn’t control.
