Whisper House

I was a professor who taught women to name their shadows—right up until someone weaponized mine.

One lecture. One hacked feed. My private research poured through the speakers along with the sound of my own undoing. They fired me, filmed me, made me a punch line with a doctorate.

Then a will, a key, a cliffside Whisper House.
Veiled mirrors. Hidden corridors. Cameras that blink like eyes.
And three men who wear masks like sacraments.

They don’t ask what I want. They make me confront the answers I’ve

Control isn’t safety. Shame is a cage I built myself.
Fear can be a doorway—if I’m brave enough to walk through.

They circle me—watcher, wolf, priest—each promising a different kind of surrender. The house hums like it remembers every confession ever spoken inside its walls, including mine. My aunt’s letters say this place was built for women like the ones the world calls ruined.

Maybe I am.

Or maybe ruin is the first honest shape of rebirth.

At midnight they leave me a the white mask to accept their guidance, the black to claim my own darkness. Either way, I won’t be the woman who ran from her desire.

I’ll be the woman who turns and faces it—
and lets it devour what was never really me.