CUCKOO IN THE HEAD; THE BREAKING POINT

**NIGHTFALL**

The night stretched on, and I couldn’t fucking sleep.

Adeline had ordered me to bed, saying the day had been wasted, and tomorrow morning we had things to do, plans to make, places to be. I had swallowed the damn pills they gave me, followed her instructions like some obedient child, and still, I was here—wide awake, restless, my body itching from the inside out.

I turned onto my side, pressing my face into the pillow. The fabric smelled clean, like fresh detergent, but I hated it. It didn’t smell like anything I knew, anything familiar.

I flipped onto my back.

The ceiling loomed above me, smooth, white, too perfect. The room was too fucking quiet. No cars honking outside, no city noise filtering in through a cracked window. Just silence. Cold, suffocating silence.

I felt trapped. 

I hated it. 

Suffocated. 

I wanted it to end.

I turned onto my other side, pulling the blanket up, then immediately threw it back off.

I was hot. Then cold. Then hot again.

The bed creaked under me. My own breathing sounded too loud. Every inhale, every exhale, dragging in my ears, matching the slow, steady pound of my pulse.

I squeezed my eyes shut. Opened them again.

The only light in the room was the bedside lamp, but it was dim, almost doing nothing, and the darkness felt heavier, pressing against my skin, sinking into my bones.

Somewhere in the distance, a pipe groaned. Soft. Hollow.

I ran a hand down my face, fingers trembling just slightly. The medication was supposed to help. Wasn’t it? It was supposed to settle something inside me, make it easier to breathe, easier to exist. But I felt the same. Like I was drowning in a body that didn’t fit me anymore.

I turned again, staring at the door now.

It was closed. But I swore I had heard something earlier.

Maybe I was just losing it.

Maybe I was already lost.

**DINNER**

Hours earlier, I had sat in a grand dining hall, surrounded by more women than I could count.

The room was huge—long white walls stretching high, giving it an almost holy, untouched feeling. Chandeliers hung from the ceiling, casting warm, golden light over everything. It should’ve felt comforting, but instead, it felt staged, unnatural, like something straight out of a dystopian movie.

There were rows upon rows of long tables, each one lined with women of all ages. At least four hundred of them, all eating in sync, their movements precise, practiced, like they had done this a hundred times before.

No one spoke louder than a murmur. No laughter. No unnecessary noise.

Everything was in order.

Even the food in front of us looked like something out of a royal banquet—perfectly seared meat, delicate vegetables, bowls of soup so smooth it looked like cream. Golden plates, polished silverware, napkins folded so neatly they could cut through air.

I had forced myself to eat, even though my stomach had felt hollow.

I chewed slowly, watching them.

So many women. So many different faces. Some young, some old. All of them here for a reason.

It felt like a fucking army.

Clarissa wasn’t there.

I had scanned the room, my gaze darting over every table, every face, but I hadn’t seen her.

And I needed to apologize.

I had lost it earlier. Gone feral, thrown hands, let my head spiral into whatever dark pit it loved to crawl into.

I chewed my food, my teeth grinding.

I’d find her later.

Maybe.

But then again…I scanned the room. 

Sat there, fork loose in my fingers, pushing a piece of meat around my plate while my eyes drifted over the room again. The air was too still. The murmurs too soft, controlled, like everyone had been programmed to talk at the exact same fucking decibel. There were too many of them. Too many girls. Some were young, barely out of their teens, their faces blank but focused, their posture stiff but not forced, like they had already learned how to carry themselves in a way that wouldn’t draw attention. Others were older, women with harder edges, ones who had seen things, done things, moved through life with purpose. But none of them were sloppy. None of them fidgeted. No one picked at their food. No one shifted in their seat too much or slouched or even spared a glance around the room unless it was with intent.

It was unnatural.

People weren’t supposed to move like this.

Girls, especially.

There should’ve been some level of chaos, the usual kind, even in a setting like this. A quiet giggle. A muttered joke. Someone shifting in their chair because their ass was falling asleep. Someone whispering too loudly. A scrape of a fork against a plate that wasn’t perfectly controlled. But there was nothing. Just the scrape of metal against porcelain, neat, even, soft. I hadn’t noticed it before, not at first. But now it was all I could hear.

I exhaled through my nose, my fingers flexing against the handle of my knife before I set it down. The movement felt too deliberate, like I had to think about it, like I had to make sure I wasn’t doing the same thing they were doing. My tongue dragged over the inside of my cheek, my stomach twisting with something I didn’t have a name for yet.

I wasn’t stupid. I wasn’t blind.

Something was fucking wrong.

The way they sat. The way they ate. The way their movements were synced without even looking at each other. It was too smooth, too practiced. It wasn’t military—there was no barking of orders, no stiff spines like they were waiting for someone to inspect them. It was different. It was quiet. It was… eerie.

A cult.

The thought slithered into my mind before I could stop it, wrapping around my brain like a noose.

What if that’s what this was? What if this wasn’t just a place for women to train, to prepare, to do whatever the fuck it was Adeline had in mind? What if it was deeper than that? Bigger? What if all of them had been pulled in, slowly, until they didn’t even realize they were part of something dangerous?

What if I was already inside it?

My stomach clenched, a dull pressure pushing against my ribs, not quite pain but not comfortable either. I swallowed, the food that had once tasted like something out of a royal kitchen turning heavy in my throat. My fingers tapped against my thigh, an old habit, one I hadn’t realized had started up again until I felt the movement against the fabric of my pants.

I was spiraling.

I needed to stop.

I forced my gaze back to my plate, forced my hands to stay still, forced myself to chew and swallow and pretend I wasn’t slowly unraveling inside my own fucking head.

But I couldn’t ignore it.

I couldn’t ignore the way my skin prickled, the way my brain wouldn’t shut up, the way my gut was screaming at me that something was wrong, even if I didn’t have the evidence to back it up.

Or maybe I did.

Maybe I was just refusing to see it because that would mean accepting that I had walked into something I might not be able to walk out of.

Or maybe—

Maybe this was just another symptom.

Maybe this was the shit the doctor had warned me about. The paranoia. The inability to trust what I was seeing. The feeling that something was always lurking in the shadows, waiting to swallow me whole.

Maybe this was just my brain, rotting from the inside out.

I exhaled, long and slow, willing my body to settle, to stop reacting to thoughts I had no proof of. My eyes flicked up, scanning the room again, looking for some kind of break in the pattern, some sign that I was just losing my mind and not actually picking up on something real.

But there was nothing.

And that made it worse.

**MISSING KIDS;**

After dinner, Adeline had told me about the kids.

Missing children.

New York.

She had laid it out in numbers, raw and factual.

“Last year, over one thousand kids went missing in New York alone. Some of them runaways. Some of them just… gone. No trace. No leads.”

My fingers had tightened around the edge of the table.

“We think Vaughn is behind it.”

The words had settled in my chest like stones, heavy, sinking.

A thousand.

A thousand fucking kids.

The city was a beast, swallowing them whole, spitting them out into whatever nightmare Vaughn had created.

I had sat there, silent, my fingers curled so tight around the edge of the table that I could feel the wood pressing into my skin, the bite of it grounding me in a way that nothing else could. My breathing had slowed, my chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm, but inside, something had cracked open, raw and bleeding, spilling out memories I had locked away, ones I didn’t let myself touch too often. A thousand kids. A thousand lives swallowed by the city, by the streets, by whatever darkness Vaughn had built, and for the first time in a long time, I let myself think about him now.  Really think about him. My son.

Was he okay?

Was he warm?

Was he safe?

I had spent the past two years telling myself that he was fine, that the family who had taken him in was good, that they were what he needed, what I couldn’t be for him. A mother. A home. A soft place to land. That was what I had told myself, that was what I had clung to, the thing that had let me sleep at night, because if I let my mind go to the other possibilities, the ones that clawed at the edges of my brain, whispering that maybe he wasn’t okay, maybe he wasn’t safe, maybe someone had come and taken him too—then I wouldn’t be able to function. I wouldn’t be able to breathe.

I swallowed, my throat tight, the muscles working against the lump that had formed there. My boy. My baby. He wasn’t a baby anymore, I knew that, but in my mind, he would always be small, soft, wide eyes and tiny hands gripping onto me like I was the only thing in the world that mattered. Before I had given him away as a baby. I remembered the way he used to bury his face against my neck, his little body warm and solid, the weight of him something I had never taken for granted. 

The food on my plate blurred, my vision going hazy, my fingers twitching against the table before I curled them into fists, pressing them against my lap, grounding myself in the feeling of my own skin, my own body, because I was slipping, spiraling, sinking into a hole I couldn’t afford to fall into right now. I had to believe he was okay. I had to believe that the people who had him were keeping him safe, that they were tucking him in at night, making sure he had everything he needed. That no one had taken him. That he wasn’t one of the thousand.

Because if I let myself believe otherwise, if I let myself think, even for a second, that he might be out there, lost, scared, taken, used, broken—

I wouldn’t come back from it.

I forced my breathing to steady, forced the thoughts back, shoved them down deep where they couldn’t reach me, where they couldn’t tear me apart from the inside out. I blinked, focused on the feel of the chair beneath me, the weight of my own body, the reality of where I was, what I had to do. I wasn’t that girl anymore. I wasn’t that mother. I couldn’t be.

But fuck, I wished I was.

**BACK TO THE ROOM**

Now, I lay in bed, my body stiff, my mind restless.

I exhaled.

Turned.

Stared at the door again.

A whisper of something ran up my spine, my skin prickling as I turned my head toward the door, my fingers twitching where they rested on the blanket. I didn’t move right away. Just listened. Focused. Let my breaths slow down. There. A sound. Soft. Faint. Too quiet for someone to notice if they weren’t already listening for it. A scrape. A shuffle. The kind of noise that could be brushed off as nothing but felt like something. My hand curled tighter around the blanket. My body went still. My breathing evened out, controlled, but my chest felt tight, my stomach knotting. My heartbeat kicked up just a little.

I waited.

Nothing.

Maybe I was going crazy. Maybe the meds were messing with me. Maybe I was so deep in my own head that my mind was playing tricks. Maybe.

Or maybe not.

I swallowed again, forcing down the dry lump in my throat, before shifting slowly, pushing the blanket off me in one steady movement. The cool air kissed my bare arms, raising the skin there, my body reacting before my mind could. My legs swung over the side of the bed, my feet pressing into the cold floor, grounding me for a second before I moved. I stood, slow, careful, my body loose but alert, like a thread pulled too tight but not yet snapping. My breaths stayed steady. I took a step, then another, my movements controlled, measured. My fingers brushed against the edge of the dresser as I passed it, the familiar drag of the wood under my skin reminding me I was here, present, awake. I wasn’t imagining this.

I reached the door.

Stared at it.

Lifted my hand.

Hesitated.

Fingers curled in, then out, then in again. My stomach twisted, but I ignored it. The air felt heavier this close to the door, the silence pressing against my ears, amplifying the small sounds of my own body—the faint inhale, the quiet rustle of my shirt shifting against my skin, the slow roll of my breathing in my chest. I reached out, my fingers barely grazing the handle, waiting for something. I wasn’t sure what. A sound. A movement. A confirmation that I wasn’t fucking crazy. I let my hand hover there, my body braced, my senses stretched thin.

And then—

A whisper of something.

Not a voice. Not words. Just a presence.

Right behind the door.

I wasn’t crazy.

I had heard something.

A scrape. A whisper of movement.

I had to check.

Just once.

Just to prove to myself that I wasn’t completely gone.

Go back to make sure no one had been in that room. 

Be sure I hadn’t heard someone needing help.