Page 14 of Milk & Malice: Vadik

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This wasn’t shock.

This was the part after. The cruel, cold after.

When the monster sits beside your bed, drinking coffee, and tells you you’re beautiful.

Because he made you that way.

I felt the tears come again but they didn’t fall right.

The skin on my face was too tight.

Something tugged near my temples—tight stitches, fresh skin.

The grafts.

Anchors.

Fucking horns.

I wanted to scream but I had no energy left. Just a throat full of acid and a body that no longer felt mine.

It belonged to him.

Stitched, sculpted, and sealed by his hands.

Vadik Novikov. Doctor. Butcher.

Owner.

My thoughts began to split, scatter.

They drifted away from the panic, curled into something small, numb, and still.

I imagined grass.

A field.

Sunlight.

My mother brushing my hair.

I clung to that memory—held it tighter than the ache in my stumps, tighter than the sob lodged behind my gag.

He said the real fun was about to begin.

And I knew, deep down,

this wasn’t the worst.

Not yet.

But it was close.

So fucking close.

I was so lost in my desolate thoughts that when he stroked strands of my hair away, I flinched.

What did I do if I needed to scratch my nose?

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