ELARA
679 Words
I was getting ready for a late stream when the doorbell rang.
It was midnight. The kitchen was lit for the camera. Notes were on the counter. Coffee brewed. I knew my plan.
I looked through the peephole.
Elara Montgomery stood in my hallway.
---
I had thought about this moment.
In the quiet hours after streams. In the library. During late nights when sleep wouldn't come. I had planned what to say. How to stand. How calm I would be.
I looked through the peephole at the woman who represented my loss. Anger surged.
Then I saw her face.
She had been crying for a long time. Not new tears. The kind that shows deep pain. Red around the eyes. She slumped. She looked exhausted. She seemed like someone with nowhere to go.
I had three seconds to decide who I would be.
I opened the door.
---
She stepped inside before I could speak. Her hands gripped my arms.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't know where else to go."
My camera was on in the corner. A red dot glowed. Two hundred thousand people watched.
I stepped back and looked at her.
"Who are you to me right now?" I asked. "Tell me."
She laughed, a broken sound. "I'm the woman you hate. The one who took your husband."
"And?"
"Except I didn't." She wiped her face with her hand. "I never took anything. Everything I have was arranged by someone else."
She reached into her coat pocket. Her hands shook. She pulled out a folded piece of paper. It was worn at the creases. It had been handled many times.
She held it out. I took it.
---
I read it twice.
Formal language. Dated eighteen years ago. Two children. Fifteen years old. Taken from a shelter by a man named Harrison Vale who offered housing and education in exchange for compliance.
*Maintain the relationship narrative as directed. Accept marriage assignments as directed. Maintain absolute secrecy regarding all terms.*
I looked up.
"You were fifteen," I said.
"We had been in a shelter for four months." Her voice was soft. "Harrison Vale came in with promises. Two kids with nothing said yes to things they didn't understand."
She looked at her hands.
"By the time we understood, we were already inside."
The kitchen was quiet. Outside, the city hummed. The red dot kept blinking.
I thought about being fifteen. About who I was then. A person still forming. Shaped by the right pressure at the right moment.
"Damien wanted out," Elara said. "When he met you. He thought if he built something real with someone he chose, it would be beyond their reach. He thought love was the one thing they couldn't control."
"He was wrong," I said.
"Yes." She closed her eyes for a moment. "When you started streaming, Vale saw you as a liability. They told Damien to end the marriage cleanly. If he didn’t, they said they would handle you."
The word handle struck me cold.
"He was protecting me," I said.
"He has watched every stream since the divorce. Every single one." She looked at her hands. "He was trying to keep you alive and didn't know how to tell you without putting you in more danger."
I processed that. The weight of everything shifted. The envelope. His face in the hallway. The trembling hands.
I had read trembling as guilt.
It was fear. Not for himself. For me.
---
"Why are you here now?" I asked.
"Because watching isn't enough anymore." She showed me her phone.
*THE AURORA SITUATION HAS BECOME UNTENABLE. PREPARE FOR EXTRACTION.*
Extraction. In reference to me.
"When?" I asked.
"Soon. Days. Maybe less." She grabbed my hands. "I have been compliant for fifteen years. I am done."
Her phone buzzed. She looked at the screen and went pale.
"They tracked my phone. They know I'm here."
The lights went out.
Footsteps approached. Fast and deliberate. Glass broke somewhere behind us. Figures moved through the dark.
Elara grabbed my arm. I grabbed hers back.
"Run," I said.
- Writer
