Persephone

The waiting room is vast, a liminal space thick with the weight of unspoken trauma. The air hums with a tension that no one acknowledges. The lights are dim, flickering intermittently, casting elongated shadows that stretch and contract like breathing specters.

The man enters, his gait careful, calculated. He is not here to comfort, nor to acknowledge. He is here to perform a function. A woman beside me—her face blurred by the haze of grief—receives his offering: thoughts, empty and weightless. The hollow exchange ignites something within me, something raw and unyielding.

I rise. My voice follows him before my feet do.

"I was raped. I need more than thoughts."

He hesitates but keeps moving, his pace quickening. I follow, my words relentless, sharp as the blade of memory itself. I do not let him leave, do not let him brush past my pain as if it is dust beneath his feet. He turns toward a doorway, but there is none. Only walls. Only barriers where exits should be.

Panic flashes in his eyes. He gestures, desperate, towards the two figures stationed on either side of where a door should exist. Guardians, sentinels. They stand silent, their presence both oppressive and indifferent. He points to one, urging me to address them instead.

I turn.

The figure’s mouth and eyes snap open, impossibly wide. Inside, there is only fire—roaring, consuming, a wordless abyss of anguish and fury. The flames flicker in the reflection of my own gaze, a testimony to suffering that neither of us can escape.

"He cannot speak to me," I say, my voice steady despite the inferno before me. "He has been raped too."

The man presses his back against the wall, searching for an escape that does not exist. I continue, my voice unwavering, recounting the numbers, the stories, the quiet, insidious epidemic that stains the history of men and women alike. The statistics weave into the fabric of the waiting room, pressing against its walls, against its silence.

There is no exit.

The man knows this now. He knew it the moment he entered. The only way out is through.

He does not look at me when I say it. He does not answer.

The flames rage on, and I wake up.