Page 17 of Threads Of Madly Whispers

The scratch of pen on paper tugs my gaze toward the men and women to my left, each lost in their own world, either fixated on the girls or the cold clipboards where they scrawl their assessments. Their focus is a tether to those above, the ones who decide their pay, while their faces remain as still as stone—so empty, you could hear a pin drop in the stillness.

Beside them stand two figures from this institution, silent and observant, like ghosts who belong here. Oscar lingers behind me, his presence a shadow, barely felt.

“If you’d prefer to leave sooner, sir,” he murmurs, stepping closer, “I’ll ensure everything is arranged, and a report will be on your desk by nightfall.”

“That won’t be necessary” he nods, his reflection transparent on the glass as he steps back. Oscar is a man of many sealed secrets, each one buried behind the walls he’s built over a lifetime. A former general-turned-special forces operative, then a political hatchet, his hands are stained with blood, and his soul carved by brutality. The years he’s spent in the depths of power’s corruption have left him a callous savage, cold and unreadable. Yet in his work, there is no pause, no question—just a relentless, industrial precision.He completes every task I set before him with a savage dedication, no matter how dark the demand.

I glance at the Parmigiani Fleurier on my wrist. Ten minutes late. The weight of her absence presses into the room, and I watch as worry creeps across Anoushka’s face, her usual calm unraveling like fraying silk. Her composure falters, the stillness of her posture replaced by an almost imperceptible tension.

The doors creak open, and there she stands, gracefully late yet striking in her defiance of time. Her white-spun hair is gathered in a loose ponytail, with long, flowing strands that move in rhythm with her gaze, her mismatched eyes. Eyes that tell stories of the Waardenburg syndrome she carries, each glance a mark of something deeper. One call to Oscar, and a file was born, every detail of her existence laid bare, from the cross-shaped birthmark on her neck to the size of her shoes. Nothing was spared, not even the most intimate secrets.

In a white leotard, she is a vision of desire, a meal begging to be savored, and it stirs something dark in me, wondering what she might look like beneath the fabric that clings to her curves. Her long, glimmering legs draw my eye, but it is her face that holds me captive. Full, plush pink lips that I crave to bruise, a smattering of freckles across her porcelain skin, and eyes—those eyes—hypnotizing and relentless. One is a sterling gray, the other a hazel hue flecked with brown, but it is not the color that captivates. It is the glimmer of hail and storm within them, a tempest ready to break at any moment.

Odessa is an ambience of broken glasses and wounded sores and while she covers her scars to all, l can see through the facade and untold words. Something so bloodied and carnage tears at me to put her misery to flames.

Anoushka grabs her by the wrist, discreetly, yet harsh, and it sends a surge of anger through my veins. The older woman leans in, whispering something to her before she moves to the corner of the room, drops her bag, and joins the others. A girl with pinkish hair, one I’ve come to know as her friend, smiles as she takes her position beside her, while the rest hold their noses high, as if above the fray.

“We have Bird Dogs behind the glass watching you today, ladies, so do not disappoint me. Show them how great you are,” the woman laughs shyly, glancing at the glass, but I know that not a single word reaches Elara. Her teeth bite into her lip, eyes unwavering, staring off into the distance, indifferent to the world around her.

It’s a class of fifteen, the most opulent dancers, handpicked by Oscar himself. One by one, the girls begin their routine, twirling and leaping across the room while the Bird Dogs scribble on their clipboards, analyzing, judging. With each passing second, my hunger deepens. I care nothing for the others around me, only for the one who stands apart, a quiet force, just a few feet away.

She’s dissociating, I deduce. Not in a destructive way, but in a manner I recognize all too well. A silent retreat into herself, where the chaos of the world can no longer reach her.

“Odessa” Anoushka calls out, and she remains lost in a sea of her mind.

“Odessa Fontaine!”

She blinks, a slow flutter of her lashes, as her gaze drifts across the room before she moves to the front. Her eyes meet the mirror, then flick back to Anoushka, who begins the music. But Odessa seems entirely adrift, untethered to the world unfolding around her. A serenade, rich withbodice tones and the melancholy pulse of piano, spills through the air, and she begins, her fall from grace woven into each note.

She is out of tune, a discordant symphony of wrongs. Her arabesque and fouetté are grotesque, as though the very language of ballet were being twisted beneath her touch. It is a brutality of movement, raw and unrefined. The Bird Dogs, detached, watch on, one slipping his pen into his pocket, his disinterest more cutting than the silence between each of her missteps. She dances as though ballet were a stranger to her, a fleeting shadow that would recoil at her very touch.

It is painful to watch, like a slow dissection of something beautiful. Each misstep is a ragged wound, each falter a reminder of what she could be. And it gnaws at me, the blunt awareness of her talent, the knowledge that she could outshine every soul in this room. This, this is not her.

Anoushka slams the music to a halt, her face flushed crimson with frustration. “You’re done,” she commands, her voice cold as steel. “Class, you are dismissed.”

Odessa retreats to her original spot, her face morphing as she grapples with the weight of her failure, the silence between them louder than any sound could be. And in that quiet, something stirs in me, something darker than before. I realize what I want, what I’ve wanted all along. I want her. I want her for reasons that are raw and unspeakable. I want to shatter her, just to gather the fragments and rebuild her, piece by piece, in my own image.

I’m no better than theBird Dogs.I’m far worse, far darker. They seek only an eyeful in a cage, while I crave an enchantress in my hands, desperate for their fear. I don’t want her locked away or draped in gold. I want her as aruffled swan—free, yet poisoned, so entwined with me that she won’t ever desire escape, even with a chain binding her neck.

I want Odessa.

“Oscar, fetch Miss Fontaine.”

“Yes, sir.”

Chapter 10

Thorn – unknown 11091

When I was young, I was consumed by a terror that slithered beneath my skin, something dark and restless, a beast that slumbered in the depths of my soul. It thrived in the shadows, its hunger insatiable, and when everything it once cherished was taken from it, I found myself drawn to silence, to the cold winds that cut through barren trees, to the oppressiveness of the black woods where nothing but death seemed to walk.

That night, when everything was stripped away, something inside me cracked open, fractured like glass, and from those shards grew thoughts too vile to speak. Devilish whispers clawed at my mind, their talons dragging through the thin veil of my sanity. They crawled under my skin, twisted and warped, scratching, gnawing, urging me toward darker desires.

The hunger took root.

It is a thirst that can never be quenched and only briefly soothed by blood, the only thing that can quiet the storm within me. But even in its offering, there is no peace. Only afleeting silence that tastes of iron and regret, broken only by the maddening screams of those I’ve taken, screams that echo in my veins, a symphony of suffering that never fades.

I look into the mirror and what I see is not my reflection. It’s something older, something more feral—a grotesque thing, wearing my skin like a mask. It grins back at me with eyes blackened by malice, and I realize with a sickening certainty, the devil is not out there. The devil is in me, wrapped in flesh and blood, lurking just beneath the surface, waiting to be unleashed.

---