She wakes with a sharp inhale, disoriented before her eyes even open. The cold of the floor seeps into her skin, sharp and unfamiliar. She’s not in her bed. Not anywhere she recognizes. Something about the silence feels wrong.

Then she sees it—glass walls, seamless and thick, enclosing her like a specimen. The air is too still. Too controlled.

Her stomach knots.

She scrambles to sit up, the blanket sliding off her legs. Her heart’s already pounding when her gaze lifts

It hits her all over again—the box.

The little box hiding in the bathroom ceiling she wasn’t supposed to find. Full of things that belonged to her. Her panties. Her notebook. Her old broken phone. A photo she didn’t know he took. A lot more things she didn’t even know were missing.

Not only that, but also things that belonged to people she knows, who were now dead. A finger. Blackened teeth. Her friend Peach’s phone, and her ex Benji’s. Also, his exes necklace, Candice, who was also dead.

None of it needed any explanation. Now, everything was out on the open.

She tried to act indifferent, acted like she didn’t find anything so she could just… leave, without getting suspicious. Run away, go to the cops, it doesn’t matter. None of those worked. The switch in Joe’s face was what she saw last before he hit her to make her pass out. And then—

Now here.

She scrambles to her feet, breathing too fast. Her palms slap against the glass, hard. “Joe!” Her voice is raw, frantic. “Joe!” But no answer comes. Just her own breathing echoing back at her in this strange, hollow place. She spins around, searching the corners, the ceiling, the shadows—trying to make sense of this surreal nightmare.

Behind the glass, in the dark, he watches her. Motionless. He’s been standing there since before she woke. Not ready. Not brave enough.

Until now.

He steps forward—slow, deliberate—and places both palms on the glass. His voice is low but steady, cutting through the thick silence like a blade.

“I’m here.”

She freezes, her back to him. Shoulders tight, her hands still clenched at her sides as she turns. There he is—Joe. Her boyfriend who she thought was completely normal.

His eyes don’t leave hers. There’s desperation in them. Like he knows he’s crossed a line he can’t uncross, and he’s still hoping he can explain it away. And something else. That same delusion he always wears like armor. Like this—all of this—is love.