Page 4 of Knot Shattered
No.
I slammed the mallet down again, the crack of metal on stone swallowed by the music. A chip of marble flew past my cheek. I didn’t flinch. This was the only place I still felt like I belonged to myself. Everywhere else, I was just a shell, still wearing my name.
The sculpture in front of me wasn’t just halfway done—she was emerging.
Not delicately. Not with grace. She was clawing her way out of the marble like she had been buried alive inside it, fighting with every fiber of her imagined body to be free. Her form was rough in places, but her intent was clear. She was a woman—naked, fragile, furious. Kneeling, yes, but not in submission. This wasn’t a posture of surrender. It was resistance. Her back arched, shoulders tense, wrists bound by thick, unpolished marble chains that coiled down from her arms into the unfinished base like they were trying to drag her back down.
Her face was tilted toward the ceiling, her mouth open in a scream I could almost hear if I looked too long. Her eyes were hidden behind her hands, as if she couldn’t bear to see what was coming next, or maybe she already had. Maybe she’d seen everything and couldn’t face it again.
I clenched my jaw and brought the chisel down hard. The sharp crack echoed off the steel beams, a sound I’d learned to love. A thin flake of stone snapped away from her shoulder and skittered across the floor like it had somewhere else to be. I leaned in, brushing the dust from her ribs with the side of my hand, and let my voice slip out before I could stop it.
“You’re almost there,” I whispered to her. “Just a little further, sweetheart.”
I didn’t need sketches for this one. I didn’t plan her, didn’t measure or mark. I knew her. I knew the curve of her back, the tension in her jaw, the way her scream should live in the hollow of her throat. I saw her at night, in flashes between sleep and the memories that haunted me. She was there in every panic-sharp breath, every cold sweat, every time I sat bolt upright with my hand clenched over my chest like I was still chained to that basement floor.
She wasn’t just a sculpture. She was me.
Or maybe she was what was left of me. The part of me that had crawled out of that darkness and didn’t know how to stop fighting, even when there was no one left to hit.
The music slammed through the garage again, louder this time, loud enough to make the overhead fluorescents rattle slightly in their fixtures. I didn’t flinch. The noise was my shield, a wall of sound I could hide behind. I could keep moving as long as the music was louder than the thoughts. Keep carving. Keep existing.
I worked until my arms ached, my fingers cramped around the chisel, and my breath came short with the effort. My tank top clung to my skin, soaked with sweat, and the marble dust painted my arms, chest, and face like ash. I didn’t stop. I wouldn’t.
Some people healed with time.
I carved through mine.
I never meant for this piece to exist. She wasn’t a commission or a concept. I didn’t dream her up—I birthed her. She came out of me like a wound splitting open, and onceshe started taking shape, I couldn’t stop. She had to exist. She needed out just as badly as I did.
Now, I come out here every day. Chipping away at her prison while trying to forget mine.
Some days, I hated her. I hated her for being so vulnerable, so trapped. I hated that I saw my own weakness in her every line.
Other days, I wanted to crawl inside her and scream with her. I wanted to let her carry my fury, let her bones break instead of mine.
But today... Today I just wanted to finish her.
I wanted to give her something I never got.
Closure.
Freedom.
A sense of fucking control.
Chapter Two
Odette
August 20th
6:24 P.M
The bang behind me was sharp and sudden, metal on metal, loud enough to cut straight through the music and rattle in my bones. I flinched hard, body turning before my mind caught up, heart slamming against my ribs like it was trying to break out.
The music kept blaring, guitars shrieking, bass vibrating through the floor. But even through all of that, I heard him.
“Jesus, Odette! Turn that down before the neighbors call the cops again!”
