Chapter 1 - The Evidence on the Screen
The chain scraped against the tile whenever I shifted. After a while, even that small sound became useful because I learned exactly how far I could move before it pulled tight. I stopped wasting strength fighting it. I stopped begging, too. Begging only gave them another reaction to enjoy.
Staying alive became the only goal. When they left me nothing to drink except what was in the toilet, I swallowed what I had to, even when it was contaminated with urine. I hated every second of it, but I was pregnant, starving, and getting weaker. Disgust could wait. Survival couldn't.
They thought that meant they had broken me.
They were wrong.
I started watching instead. Who came into the room first. Who stayed near the doorway. Who laughed because everyone else laughed. Who avoided touching the chain. I couldn't write anything down, so I built the details into my memory and repeated them silently until I could picture them with my eyes closed.
Then their cruelty handed me something I hadn't expected: evidence.
One of them started recording me on a phone. At first I wanted to hide my face. Then I understood what the screen was capturing—the chain, the toilet, my condition, the way they talked to me while I was clearly being denied food. They were making their own record because they thought it was funny.
So I stopped looking away.
Whenever that phone appeared, I made sure the chain stayed visible. I let the camera see where I was being kept. I answered their mocking questions plainly instead of screaming. My voice sounded weak, but the facts were there. Each recording preserved another piece of what they believed nobody would ever have to explain.
There was one woman who always stood closest to the door. She laughed with the others, but twice I caught her staring at the phone instead of at me. The second time, her expression changed so quickly I almost thought I'd imagined it.
I didn't trust her. I couldn't afford to.
But the next time they recorded me, she moved closer. The phone changed hands for a moment, and I saw the screen clearly enough to understand something important: there wasn't just one clip. There were several. Different days. Different moments. Enough to show this wasn't an accident or one terrible night.
That was the first real advantage I'd had since the cruelty began.
I waited.
I let them keep believing I was too exhausted to notice anything. I kept my breathing slow. I kept my eyes down whenever they were watching for fear. Inside, I was tracking the phone, the chain, and the woman by the door.
Then an argument started among them about what to record next. Their attention broke for only a moment.
May you like
The woman stopped laughing.
She crossed the room, took the phone from the person beside her, and pressed it into my hand.
