Rebuilding Reality

Chapter Thirteen

Bryn: Hey everyone. This chapter will have some contents that may be triggering to certain people, and we have put a Trigger Warning where it stops and ends.

THIS CHAPTER IS NOT VITAL TO THE STORY.

We don't wanna distress anyone. If you can't read this chapter, just come back in Chapter 14. If you just want to read the content of our A/N, please do.

Onto the story we go.

🚨 TRIGGER WARNING: ABUSE 🚨

Maya's POV

I'm standing in a room, the air thick with a sense of impending doom. I don't know how I got here. I was in Max's apartment when I fell asleep, and I woke up in this room. The walls seem to close in, a tangible expression of my escalating fear. Shadows flicker and twist, morphing into the looming figures of my guardians. Their faces are obscured, but their intent is crystal clear.

"You've broken the rules," one of them snarls, voice dripping with venom.

Their words are like a whip, each syllable striking with malicious precision. My heart races, a frantic drumbeat echoing in my chest.

I try to plead, to explain, but my words get lost in a throat tight with terror. The room feels colder, the air heavier, as if charged with a malicious energy.

The first hit takes me by surprise, a sharp slap across the face that sends me flying to the floor. Pain explodes across my cheek, a bright, hot sensation that momentarily blinds me. I reach up, touching the tender skin, shocked but also hit with a sense of déjà vu. I recognize this feeling. It's happened one too many times before. I stand up shakily and face them.

"W-Why are y-you d-do-doing this?" I manage to stutter, my voice a fragile thread in the oppressive atmosphere. But they don't answer, their silence as punishing as the blows.

Another strike, this time to my arm, and I stagger backward, unbalanced. The room spins, a disorienting carousel of pain and fear. I'm struggling to comprehend, to make sense of this unprovoked brutality.

I fall to the floor once again, the impact jarring my bones. They're above me now, kicking and hitting with a ferocity that's both terrifying and incomprehensible.

The pain is relentless, a ceaseless torrent that threatens to sweep me away. I'm drowning in it, suffocating under the weight of their fury. In my mind, I'm screaming, a silent, desperate plea for mercy, for understanding.

I curl into myself, an instinct to protect what's left of me. My body is a canvas of agony, each bruise, each cut a testament to their wrath. I can feel blood, warm and sticky, trickling down my skin, a reminder of my helplessness.

They're speaking now, their words a cruel litany that burrows into my brain. "You're nothing," they hiss, their voices a chorus of contempt. "You don't deserve to be outside. You don't deserve anything."

The words cut deeper than any physical wound. They're stripping me of my identity, reducing me to a mere object of their disdain. In their eyes, I'm not a person, not someone with thoughts and feelings. I'm just a thing to be punished, a vessel for their vitriol.

As the beating continues, a part of me detaches, a defense mechanism against the overwhelming assault. I'm floating above it all, watching the scene as if I'm a bird sitting on a wire. This can't be real, I think. This can't be happening to me.

But it is real, painfully, horrifically real. I'm here, in this room, at the mercy of their cruelty. And there's no escape, no respite from this relentless tide of abuse.