"Is the glass half empty, or half full?"
The words came out as barely more than a whisper. Levi wasn't sure if he'd meant to say them out loud or if they'd just escaped on their own.
His chin rested against the desk, positioned so his eyes were level with the glass of soda sitting in front of him. The liquid inside had gone flat sometime during the night. Maybe longer. He couldn't remember when someone had put it there.
Brown and lifeless, just sitting there.
He stared at it, not blinking, barely breathing. Dark circles hung under his eyes like bruises. His skin had taken on a grayish pallor over the past few weeks, the kind that came from never seeing sunlight. His hair, dark brown and too long now, fell across his forehead in greasy strands. When had he last showered? Three days ago? Four?
The lamp in the corner of the room provided the only light. The curtains were drawn tight across the window, blocking out whatever time of day it was. Morning? Afternoon? It all felt the same anymore. The space heater hummed in the opposite corner, fighting against the October chill that seeped through the old window frames. Someone had brought it in last week. Joel, probably.
His hand twitched slightly, fingers moving an inch toward the glass before stopping. The effort of reaching for it felt too great, like his arm weighed a hundred pounds.
Around the glass, papers lay scattered across the desk in chaotic piles. Manuscript pages mostly, covered in red ink that wasn't his. Most of it was corrections to scenes he'd already written, but some of it was demands for new content, things that made his stomach turn when he read them. Whole paragraphs had been crossed out and rewritten in someone else's handwriting.
The laptop beside the glass glowed with a pale blue light. No Wi-Fi icon in the corner. They'd killed the connection the second week, "too distracting," they said. His phone wasn't on the desk either. It hadn't been since one of them pocketed it on day five, claiming he'd "keep it safe." The cursor blinked at the end of a sentence he'd written an hour ago, or maybe two hours. Time moved strangely now.
'People love that saying,' he thought. 'The optimist sees it half full. The pessimist sees it half empty.'
His gaze stayed fixed on the glass, watching the way the lamplight caught in the liquid. No bubbles, it was just still.
'Like it matters. Like your perspective changes what's actually in the glass.'
He'd been an optimist once. Back when he'd started writing, back when he'd believed that hard work and passion were enough. That if you poured everything you had into something, it would eventually pay off.
And it had paid off. For a while.
'If you're born rich,' he thought, 'the glass doesn't matter. You already own the bottle. The factory. Everything.'
The thought drifted through his mind without any real emotion attached to it. Just an observation.
'And if you're talented, naturally gifted, the glass fills itself. People line up to pour into it because you're worth the investment.'
His eyes moved slowly from the glass to the small trash bin beside his desk. Needle caps littered the bottom along with empty insulin vials and a crumpled protein bar wrapper that had been sitting there for days.
'But if you're neither? If you're just someone trying to fill the glass one drop at a time? What then?'
His wrist itched where the IV line was taped down. The clear tube ran up to a bag hanging from a portable stand someone had wheeled in beside his desk. He watched the steady drip of fluid flowing down through the line and into his arm. The bruise on his forearm from when he'd tried to rip it out during the first week was still yellow at the edges. It kind of served as a reminder that resistance only made things worse.
'What happens when someone else drinks from your glass while you're busy trying to convince yourself it's half full?'
The question sat heavy in his chest. He'd spent so long trying to be positive, trying to believe that effort mattered and that the pursuit of happiness was real and that dreams were worth chasing.
'The pursuit of happiness.' The phrase felt like a joke now. 'Chase your dreams. Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life.'
His vision blurred slightly at the edges. When had he last taken his medication? Yesterday morning? The morning before?
'What they don't tell you is that dreams can turn into nightmares. That passion can be used against you. That people will take everything you love and twist it until you don't recognize it anymore.'
Footsteps sounded in the hallway outside his room.
His jaw tightened and the muscles in his shoulders tensed even though he was too exhausted to actually move.
The door swung open without a knock. There was never a knock.
A woman stepped inside. Early twenties, blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail that looked deliberately messy. She wore an oversized hoodie, the expensive kind designed to look casual. Her eyes went immediately to the laptop screen.
"You're still on the same paragraph," she said. Her voice was light and casual, the way you'd comment on the weather or ask someone how their day was going.
He didn't turn to look at her. Just kept staring at the glass.
She moved across the room and leaned against the edge of his desk with her arms crossed, waiting.
When he didn't respond, she leaned over slightly to get a better look at the screen.
"Hey." The casual tone sharpened by just a fraction. "I asked you a question."
"I heard you."
"Then answer me. Why haven't you written anything?"
"I'm thinking."
She let out a short breath through her nose, not quite a laugh and not quite a sigh. "You've been thinking for two hours."
Had it been two hours? He'd lost track.
She reached over and grabbed the laptop, pulling it toward her. Her fingers left smudges on the screen as she scrolled through the document.
"This scene was supposed to be done by now," she said. "Marcus wanted to read it before lunch."
Marcus. The name made something cold settle in his stomach.
Marcus had been the first. The eager super fan at the book signing who'd offered to help carry boxes of unsold hardcovers out to his car. Who'd somehow known which coffee shop he liked and shown up there the next morning with bagels and compliments about the book.
Just a fan. Or so Levi had thought. Marcus was his top fan, after all.
Until he wasn't.
"I need a break," he said quietly.
"You took a break yesterday."
"For twenty minutes."
"Still counts." She let go of the laptop and straightened up. "You know how this works. Finish the chapter, we proofread it, then you get your meds."
The cold feeling in his stomach spread outward. "I haven't had my insulin since yesterday."
"I know. Joel's tracking it." She said it like she was doing him a favor, like she was helping him stay organized. "You'll get it when the chapter's done. Think of it as motivation."
His hands were shaking against the desk, not from fear but from his blood sugar dropping too low, from weeks of irregular meals and interrupted sleep and stress that never ended.
Four weeks.
It had been four weeks since Marcus had stopped showing up alone. Since he'd brought Vanessa with him, and since she'd brought Joel, the quiet one who'd installed cameras in the corners of the room.
For insurance, they'd said. To make sure everyone was protected and to avoid misunderstandings.
But the cameras only pointed at him.
"Come on," Vanessa said, tapping her fingers against the desk. "The scene with Elara and Kade. You know what needs to happen."
He knew.
They wanted the two characters to sleep together and wanted it described in detail. Never mind that it made no sense for the story or that Elara was married to someone else or that it destroyed the entire arc he'd spent months building.
"It doesn't work for the plot," he said. His voice came out weaker than he'd intended.
"It works for the readers. Your last few chapters got comments saying the quality dropped. People want more romance and more drama." She leaned in closer, lowering her voice like she was sharing a secret. "We're helping you. You should appreciate that, Levi"
Appreciate.
The word hung in the air between them.
Appreciate being held in his own apartment. Appreciate having his story rewritten by people who thought they understood his characters better than he did. Appreciate having his medication withheld unless he performed like a trained animal.
"I can't write it," he whispered.
Her expression didn't change. Still patient and still calm. That was somehow worse than if she'd gotten angry.
"Yes, you can. You're a good writer. That's why we're here." She glanced at the IV bag hanging beside him. "That's almost empty, by the way. Joel will swap it out after you're done."
She pushed off from the desk and headed toward the door.
"Get it done," she said over her shoulder. "Marcus is getting impatient. Don't make him come back here. You remember what happened last time."
He did. The memory of Marcus's hand around his throat, the calm explanation that they were "all in this together now," the way Joel had simply stood there and watched.
Then she was gone and the door clicked shut.
Not locked. It didn't need to be locked. Where was he going to go? He'd tried on day three, made it as far as the hallway before his legs gave out and Joel found him collapsed by the stairs. The neighbor from 3B had knocked the next morning, asking about a noise. Joel had answered the door, smiled, explained that Levi was just clumsy with his health issues, said everything was fine. The neighbor never came back.
His wallet was in Vanessa's bag somewhere. She'd offered to "handle his finances" while he focused on writing. His debit card, his credit cards, his ID, all of it locked away with his phone in whatever room they were using as their base.
He sat there, staring at the glass of flat soda.
The brown liquid hadn't moved or changed. Just sat there, exactly as useless as before.
'Half empty or half full,' he thought. 'What a stupid question.'
'The glass is empty. It's been empty for weeks. They drank everything and now they want me to bleed myself dry refilling it.'
The cursor on the laptop screen continued to blink with endless patience.
Elara and Kade.
His hands moved to the keyboard, not because he wanted to and not because it made sense, but because the room was starting to tilt slightly and his vision kept blurring and his body was shutting down one system at a time. The only thing keeping him functional was medication locked away in another room.
Diabetes, high blood pressure and Chronic fatigue syndrome.
Three diagnoses that required three different prescriptions, and those prescriptions had become three different ways they controlled him while smiling and calling it help.
The words appeared on screen almost automatically now. Elara and Kade.
His fingers found the keys and he began typing the scene that made his skin crawl:
// Elara's fingers traced the line of Kade's jaw, her wedding ring catching the firelight. "This is wrong," she whispered, but her hand didn't pull away.
"I know," Kade said, his breath hot against her neck. His hands found her waist, pulling her closer despite the guilt eating at him from the inside.
She should stop this. Should think of her husband waiting at home, should remember all the reasons this was a terrible idea. But Kade's touch made all of that feel distant and unimportant.
"Just tonight," she breathed. "No one has to know."
Kade's hesitation lasted only a moment before, \\
The words felt like poison coming out of him. Each sentence was a betrayal of the characters he'd spent months developing, the story he'd carefully constructed. Elara wasn't this person. Kade wasn't this person. But Marcus and Vanessa didn't care about character consistency or narrative integrity. They cared about engagement metrics and comment counts.
Angel Dust. That's what he'd called himself online. His pen name. What a stupid fucking name that felt like now, something ethereal and untouchable, when in reality he was flesh and bone and breaking down piece by piece.
He was an orphan who'd aged out of the group home at eighteen with nothing but a gift card to Walmart and a handshake from his caseworker. No family to call and check in. No parents who'd notice he'd gone silent. The caseworker had closed his file and wished him luck, and that had been that.
His friends from the home had scattered to the wind years ago. The few people he'd met in his twenties had drifted away when writing consumed all his time, when he'd become too sick and too broke and too exhausted to maintain relationships.
Writing had been his escape from the loneliness. From the dead-end jobs and the mounting medical bills and the realization that he had no safety net.
And people had cared about his stories, at least for a while.
His webnovel wasn't revolutionary, just another post-apocalyptic tale about humanity fighting back against alien invaders through dimensional rifts. People awakening powers called Sparks. A ragtag group of heroes saving the world. Standard genre fare.
But he'd made it his own. Five years of his life poured into developing the power system, the alien ecology, the way society restructured after near-extinction. Characters who felt real, who made mistakes and grew. The main story had finished two months ago with over two thousand chapters.
Then readers wanted more. Side stories. Prequels. Content about characters he'd barely touched.
And because he needed the money and because he wasn't ready to let go, he'd agreed.
Four months ago, the side story had started strong. Readers loved it. Then his health collapsed. His update schedule slipped. One week he'd been hospitalized for insulin adjustment and posted nothing.
The comments turned vicious.
Most readers were understanding. But not all.
And Marcus, Vanessa, and Joel weren't just readers anymore. They'd decided the story belonged to them now.
The hours crawled by. His vision swam in and out of focus. The words on screen started to blur together into meaningless shapes but he kept typing anyway because stopping meant no medication and no medication meant his body would shut down entirely.
Finally, mercifully, he reached the end of the scene.
Elara and Kade in bed together. The carefully constructed character development he'd spent months building completely destroyed.
But it was done.
He sat back, hands falling away from the keyboard, and stared at the screen with hollow eyes.
The door opened a moment later. Marcus must have been watching through the cameras, waiting for him to finish.
"Let's see it," Marcus said, walking over with that same easy smile he always wore. The smile that had seemed so genuine in the parking lot after the book signing now looked anything but. He had his car keys in one hand, he'd be leaving soon, like he always did after checking the work. Vanessa and Joel stayed to monitor. Marcus just collected the chapters and left.
He slid the laptop across the desk without a word, too exhausted to do anything else.
Marcus read in silence, scrolling slowly through the document. Nodding occasionally. Stopping to reread certain sections. His expression shifted between satisfaction and mild disappointment and back again.
"This part here," Marcus said finally, tapping the screen. "Where Kade hesitates. Cut that. Makes him seem weak."
He stared at the sentence Marcus had highlighted. It was the only moment of genuine emotion he'd managed to inject into the entire scene. Kade's internal conflict about betraying his principles for momentary desire.
Kade's hesitation lasted only a moment before,
The only human part of the whole terrible chapter.
"Cut it," Marcus repeated.
He pulled the laptop back, selected the paragraph, and deleted it.
Marcus smiled. "Good. See? You're learning what works. This is going to get a great response when we post it tonight." He pocketed his keys and headed for the door. "Joel will take care of you. I've got to run some errands. Keep working on tomorrow's chapter. We need to maintain momentum."
Then he was gone, footsteps receding down the hallway. The apartment door opened and closed.
Joel appeared in the doorway then, silent as always. He carried a fresh IV bag in one hand and a small pill container in the other.
"Good work today," Joel said quietly. His voice lacked Marcus's fake enthusiasm or Vanessa's casual cruelty. Joel just stated facts. "Your readers are going to love this chapter."
His readers. The people who had no idea what was happening. Who thought he was just taking creative risks with the side story. Who didn't know that every word they'd read for the past month had been written under duress.
Joel crossed the room and began disconnecting the nearly empty IV bag from the stand. His movements were efficient and practiced, like he'd done this a hundred times before.
Maybe he had. Joel had mentioned being a nursing student that first night when he'd set up the IV line. Said he knew how to manage medical equipment and medication schedules.
That knowledge had made him invaluable to Marcus and Vanessa. Had made this entire situation possible.
Joel hooked up the fresh IV bag and checked the line, making sure everything was flowing correctly. Then he opened the pill container and held out three pills along with a cup of water.
Insulin, blood pressure medication and something for the chronic fatigue that barely worked anymore.
He took them and swallowed, feeling the medication start to work almost immediately. The fog in his head cleared just slightly and the shaking in his hands began to ease.
Vanessa appeared in the doorway, phone in hand. "Marcus just texted. He wants another chapter by tonight. Think you can handle that?"
She wasn't really asking.
Joel finished adjusting the IV stand and took a step back, surveying his work with the clinical detachment he always had.
That's when Levi noticed it.
The space heater in the corner of the room. The one they'd brought in last week when he'd complained about being cold. It was an old model with a pilot light, the kind that ran on natural gas piped in from the building's central line. The kind you weren't really supposed to use in small enclosed spaces for extended periods.
And the connection valve where the gas line attached to the heater looked wrong. Loose. Like someone had bumped it and not bothered to check if it was properly secured.
He could smell it now that he was paying attention. Faint but distinct. That sulfur smell they added to natural gas so you'd know when there was a leak.
How long had it been leaking? Hours? Days?
He stood up slowly and carefully. Too fast and his vision would swim again. His hand gripped the IV stand for balance and he took a tentative step forward.
"Easy," Joel said quietly, reaching out to steady him.
But he was already moving, shuffling forward with the IV stand rolling beside him. His legs felt weak and unsteady beneath him, like they might give out at any moment.
"Hey," Vanessa's voice cut sharp. "Where are you going?"
"Bathroom," he muttered, not looking at her.
"That's the other way."
He stopped, swaying slightly. The IV stand rolled forward on its own momentum, wheels squeaking softly against the floor.
Toward the corner. Toward the space heater with its loose valve and its steady leak of gas into the enclosed room.
"Careful with that," Joel said, taking a step forward with concern that might have been genuine or might have been worry about damaging their setup.
The stand's wheel caught on the gas line connection. The loose valve that had been leaking for who knows how long.
He could stop it. No, he SHOULD stop it. Grab the stand and steady himself and prevent what was about to happen.
Instead he looked at Vanessa with her phone and her casual cruelty disguised as helpful suggestions. At Joel with his medical knowledge being used to keep a prisoner barely functional. At the cameras watching his every move. At the laptop showing a story that wasn't his anymore.
At the glass of flat soda that no one had bothered to replace. At four weeks of hell compressed into a single moment of absolute clarity.
'The glass isn't half empty or half full,' he thought. 'The glass is shattered. And I'm done trying to hold the pieces together.'
He let go of the stand.
It tipped forward, metal pole swinging wide in a lazy arc. The IV bag crashed into the space heater's body with a dull thud and the loose valve connection tore free completely.
Gas hissed into the room with a sound like a scream, loud and unmistakable and terrifying.
"Shit!" Joel lunged forward, arms outstretched, but he was too slow. They were all too slow.
The pilot light on the heater flickered. A tiny flame no bigger than a birthday candle, dancing in the sudden rush of escaping gas.
He closed his eyes and felt something like relief wash over him.
The world turned white.
~~~~
Hey, if you're enjoying the story, please support it. Toss in a few power stones, leave a comment, and add it to your library. It helps more than you think and keeps me motivated to keep pushing out chapters.
Thanks for reading, and please keep the support coming.