Chapter Four: The Silence Machine
Felicia's world shrank to the size of a single, suffocating room. It didn't matter where she went—her home, the grocery store, the school parking lot—she carried the same invisible prison with her. The walls weren't made of stone or steel, but of silence, suspicion, and static. The man behind it all had seen to that.
It started with her phone. One morning, she tried to call her mother. The line rang once, then died. She tried again—voicemail. She texted, but her messages never showed "delivered." She switched to email, then to social media, then to every messaging app she could find. Nothing went through. Her words disappeared into the void, as if she'd never typed them at all.
She tried to call the school to check on Lillian and Gary. The secretary answered, but her voice was muffled, distorted, like a radio stuck between stations. "We…not…your…Felicia…call…back…" Then the line went dead. Felicia stared at her phone, heart pounding, realizing she was cut off from everyone. She was alone.
She tried to reach out in person, but the results were even worse. Neighbors crossed the street to avoid her. Friends who once shared coffee and laughter now looked through her, their eyes blank and wary. When she spoke, their faces twisted in confusion or pity. Sometimes they flinched, as if she'd shouted or cursed. Other times, they just walked away, shaking their heads as if she'd spoken gibberish.
Felicia's isolation was total. She couldn't even trust her own voice. She'd stand in front of the mirror, practicing what she wanted to say, watching her lips move, but when she spoke to others, the words came out wrong. She began to wonder if she was losing her mind, if the world had always been this cold and she'd just never noticed.
But the truth was much worse. The man—her tormentor—had escalated his campaign. She discovered the truth by accident, late one night, when the static in her head grew so loud it drowned out her thoughts. She pressed her palms to her ears, desperate for relief, and then she heard him. Not on the phone, not through the walls, but inside her own head.
"Well, well, Felicia. Still fighting, I see. Still stubborn. I like that," his voice sneered, thick with mockery and self-satisfaction. It was the voice of a spoiled child with too many toys and no one to stop him. "You know, you really should just give up. Nobody's coming to save you."
Felicia's breath caught. She stumbled to the bathroom, locked the door, and pressed her forehead to the cool tile. "Get out of my head," she whispered.
He laughed, a sound that vibrated in her bones. "Not going to happen. You're my favorite game. You know how much money I've spent on you? How much tech? You should feel special."
She realized then that he had put something in her body—some device, some horror she couldn't see or touch. He used it to send electric pulses, to flood her with static, to make her hear what no one else could. He could speak to her whenever he wanted, wherever she was. He could make her body twitch, her ears ring, her skin crawl. She had no privacy, no peace, not even inside her own mind.
Every day became a new assault. He'd wake her with a jolt, a burst of static that left her gasping. He'd whisper insults while she tried to eat breakfast, taunt her as she dressed her children, mock her as she tried to hold on to some scrap of normalcy. Sometimes, he'd hijack her senses—make her see things that weren't there, hear voices that weren't real, feel pain that had no source.
He took special pleasure in her humiliation. Once, while she stood in line at the pharmacy, he made her body jerk and twitch, her voice crack and stutter. The people around her stared, some with concern, others with disgust. She tried to explain, but the words came out wrong, twisted by his interference. The pharmacist handed her the wrong prescription and then refused to listen when she tried to correct him.
Felicia lost everything. Her job—gone, after a series of "outbursts" she couldn't control. Her bank account—frozen, flagged for "suspicious activity." Her car—towed, though she'd paid the bills on time. Even her children's school began to distance itself, sending polite but firm letters about "concerns for the children's welfare." She was being erased, piece by piece, until nothing was left but the shell of a woman fighting to be heard.
The resilience it took to survive was beyond anything she'd ever imagined. Every day, she woke up knowing she'd face another round of torment, another day of being ignored, dismissed, or ridiculed. She learned to savor the smallest victories—a moment of quiet, a smile from Gary, a hug from Lillian. She clung to her memories, her sense of self, her stubborn refusal to give in.
She kept documenting everything. She filled notebooks with her experiences, encrypted files with her suspicions, hid flash drives in places only she could find. She wrote letters to herself, reminders that she was real, that her pain was real, that her fight mattered. She forced herself to eat, to sleep, to care for her children, even when every instinct screamed at her to give up.
The man's voice was a constant presence, a parasite feeding on her fear and pain. He would taunt her with stories of other victims, boast about his power, threaten her children. Sometimes he'd grow bored and fall silent for hours, only to return with renewed cruelty. Felicia learned to tune him out, to focus on her own thoughts, to reclaim her mind inch by inch.
Years passed in this hell. Felicia watched as the world moved on without her, as people forgot her name, as her children grew wary and distant. But she never stopped fighting. She never stopped hoping that one day, someone would hear her, someone would see her, someone would help her climb out of the darkness.
And every night, before she closed her eyes, Felicia whispered a promise to herself:
I am still here. I am still fighting. I will not be erased.
No matter how deep the silence, no matter how powerful her enemy, Felicia Hook would not let him win.