The commute back to the house felt like a slow, agonizing crawl through a thick fog. By the time I reached the front door of the house, my body was entirely spent. The dull, persistent throb in my twisted ankle had mutated into a sharp, biting ache, and the heavy weight of Mason’s warnings pressed down on my shoulders like a sheet of lead. I dragged myself through the front porch, clutching the cold metal banister with a trembling hand, feeling an overwhelming, hollow exhaustion in my bones. I just wanted everything to collapse. I wanted the world to stop spinning, the clock to stop ticking, and the relentless, suffocating demands of my existence to simply vanish into the quiet night.
But what was waiting for me behind the chipped wooden door of my home was not peace. It was never peace.
