CHAPTER 3 : Midnight letters
297 Words
The morning after the Red Room, Aira woke with the scent of sandalwood still clinging to her hair and the taste of wine on her lips. But Damien was gone. No note. No goodbye. Only the lingering echo of his voice, “Every muse, a cost.”
She tried to paint, but the canvas rejected her. Her hands trembled, her mind pulled in too many directions. Sleep came in strange fragments that night—heat, shadows, the press of invisible hands. When she awoke, there was something unusual on her windowsill: a black envelope, sealed with the same crimson wax as before.
Inside was a letter.
"You see the world through bleeding eyes. Let me show you what it means to touch it with fire. You felt it in the Red Room. And you will feel it again. — D"
No date. No invitation. Just the message, pulsing with temptation.
Aira told herself it was performance art. A man like Damien surely enjoyed games. But a part of her—the same part that had stepped willingly into that mansion—was… thrilled.
The letters didn’t stop.
Every night, around midnight, a new one appeared.
"Your skin remembers what your mind forgets."
"Lust is not the opposite of love. It’s the seed of obsession."
"I dreamed of you. Awake."
Each note was more intimate, more twisted, as if peeling back layers of her she didn’t know existed. Sometimes, her own body responded before her mind did. A chill, a flush, a quickening pulse.
She never saw who delivered them. She never asked.
Until one morning, she woke to find a letter under her pillow—though she had locked every door and window before bed.
Her heart raced.
He’d been inside.
And she hadn’t even felt him.
- Writer
