Chapter 1: A Girl Made of Clippings
— Alyo
I was humming again. Not a real song, just a Frankenstein patchwork of TV jingles and half-remembered pop melodies. Things I wasn’t supposed to hear. My voice slipped out without permission, barely louder than a breath. Just enough to make me feel like I still had one.
My room was dim, like always. The kind of dim that swallowed time. The wallpaper peeled off in long, curling strips that reminded me of shed skin. There was a water stain on the ceiling shaped like a face. Blank-eyed, mouth open in a permanent “o.” It looked like that one painting. I used to be afraid of it. Now, I talk to it like it was my best friend.
The radiator hadn’t worked since the first frost. Every gust of wind outside slipped through the cracked window frame like a whispered warning. But I liked the cold better than what waited outside my door. At least the cold didn’t talk back. At least the cold didn’t hit.
But this was my space. My corner of the world. And for a moment, it was enough. It was mine.
I sat cross-legged on the wooden floor, knees pulled to my chest for warmth. A fashion magazine lay open in front of me, its glossy pages smudged. A woman draped in red satin stared back at me. Eyes dark and smoky. Lips parted like she knew all my secrets, even the ones I didn’t know.
I slipped the scissors beneath her body, careful not to tear her. Snip. Snip.
Another piece of the puzzle. Another sliver of the person I wanted to be.
I glued her onto the latest page of my diary, right beside a laughing actress in glittering heels and a girl with neon eyeshadow and chipped black nails. Page after page of borrowed faces, stolen limbs, strangers’ smiles. I studied them like blueprints.
Like if I could just get the pieces in the right order, I’d figure out how to be whole.
A girl made of clippings. A version of me who could exist without flinching.
Suddenly—
Click. Groan. Slam.
The front door.
My entire body tensed like a wire pulled taut. The scissors dropped with a loud clatter, too loud, too real. I slapped the diary shut and shoved it beneath the loose floorboard beside my bed, my hands moving on instinct.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
His boots hit the hallway floor like drunken punctuation, uneven and heavy. Then I hear her laugh. Not his. High-pitched. Performed. Like a recording someone kept replaying.
My stomach knotted.
Another one of those nights.
I dove under the blanket, its rough fibers scraping my skin. I tucked my face into the darkness and tried to pretend I didn’t exist. But I couldn’t stop myself. My eyes turned toward the door, to that thin slice of yellow light seeping in from the hallway.
They didn’t even make it to his room.
He pressed her up against the kitchen table. I heard the thump of her body. The gasp. The bottle rolling across the floor. His belt hitting tile. Her laughter cracking into a moan.
And then came the sounds.
The kind that stick to you.
Wet slaps. Rhythmic grunts. Giggles twisted into something else. The table groaned like it hated being a part of it. Or maybe it was just echoing me.
I shut my eyes, covered my ears. But I couldn’t block it out. Not really.
Every creak. Every pant. Every sound that didn’t belong to a home.
I slid deeper beneath the covers, past breath, past warmth, until I felt like a ghost. Until I imagined my skin peeling away, slipping off like the wallpaper. Like I could melt into the floorboards and vanish into the cold.
I didn’t cry.
Not because it didn’t hurt.
But because this was normal. It was the kind of pain that got dull over time. The kind that wore grooves in you.
Eventually, it went quiet.
The thumping. The giggling. The whole world paused, holding its breath. I uncurled slowly, one limb at a time.
I imagined the woman in the red dress stepping out of the diary, full-sized, full-hearted. She’d take my hand, tell me I was allowed to be soft, be pretty, be me. She’d wrap that long, silky dress around my body like armor.
We’d walk past the stained walls and rotting cabinets, past the empty vodka bottles and doors that never fully closed. We’d walk into something new. Something warm. Something real.
But morning was coming.
And with it, the silence.
The kind that settled between us like smoke. Not loud, not violent, but heavy. A silence made of all the things we didn’t say. Couldn’t say.
He’d grunt something in the kitchen. The clink of a bottle. The rustle of a plastic bag. She’d be gone by morning. Maybe steal something too.
And I’d sit in the same spot on the floor, gluing a stranger to the page. Making a girl from scraps. From pieces.
Trying to figure out how to be someone else.
Anyone else.
