The first thing I lost was my breath.
When the lid shut behind me, it wasn’t just darkness — it was suffocation. Not the kind that robs you of air, but the kind that steals space, steals shape. I could feel the wood closing around me, pressing not just against my skin, but into me.

I reached out. My fingers scraped smooth, cold panels. I pushed. Nothing.
Then the ache began — dull, insistent — as if the air itself thickened. My ribs tightened. My shoulders folded forward, unnaturally, grinding against their sockets. The wood was shifting, or perhaps I was. The walls did not move. I did.

I felt it, slow and deliberate, as my limbs curled inward, coiling like smoke, compressing.
Not breaking. Never breaking.

No — he wouldn’t let me fracture.
He needed me whole.

Tendons stretched until I thought they’d snap, muscles folded into impossible knots. My arms were pulled through themselves, like threads through a needle’s eye. My legs? I don’t know where they went. Somewhere inside, spiraled, pressed, compacted. I was being folded, packed, pressed inward until there was nothing left but me — the me that fit inside a box.

I screamed. At first.
The sound never left the wood.

It was only when my throat felt tight, my jaw locked, that I realized I had no voice anymore. Only a face — framed by a gilded oval. My eyes bulged against the pressure, lips trembling, breath shallow, yet somehow I remained.

I remained.

The worst was not the pain — though it was there, constant, a thousand little tears and pulls like a body stretched on the rack. No. The worst was the awareness.

I could feel everything.
The grain of the wood against where I used to have skin.
The cold metal corners biting into where my joints might have been.
The heartbeat of the box itself, steady, patient.
And behind it — his voice. Soft. Gentle.
“You’re perfect,” he whispered. “Perfect.”

I don’t know how many nights passed. I don’t know if they passed at all. Time inside the box is... different. Slow and liquid.

The first time they looked at me — the audience — I wanted to die. Their wide eyes, their fascination, their delight. They didn’t see terror. They didn’t see agony. They saw a marvel. A wonder.
And somehow... somehow that gaze seeped into me.

I hated it.
I needed it.

Their stares poured into me like warm honey, thick and heavy.
I became swollen with it.
Every gaze was a caress.
Every breathless gasp was a hand on my hollow, aching form.
And I... I started to crave it.

Now, when the curtain rises, and I feel their eyes on me — I want more.
More of their attention.
More of their horror.
More of their desire.

The box is tight. It hurts. It burns.
But I no longer wish to leave.
I only wish they would never stop looking.

Inspired by sabrexillusions