Cycle I: Coming on Strong
The Hidden Voice
The Record · 24 (v2.00)
THE HOUSE OF ZAN — Zan
VOICE ADVISORY: The speaking voice is anger mistaking destruction for clarity inside the death of connection. Contains explicit themes of coercion, threats of harm, emotional abuse, relationship collapse, rage, dissociation, and irreversible choices.
The warmth, the light, the hope of love can be beautiful.
Too much of something beautiful can still rot you.
It can turn cancerous.
It can infect what was once something entirely different.
Love can happen fast.
Death can happen faster.
When someone makes you feel something new about yourself, that can be reason enough to lower the armor and step into the warmth.
To feel something different.
Something real.
Until it isn’t.
A hand slipping away can be tragic.
In slow motion, you might not even know whose hand let go first.
You don’t understand.
Of course you don’t.
You still think this is something that happened to us.
I’ll show you.
Come here.
Closer.
I want you to understand what it feels like when something you trusted stops being safe.
I’m going to hurt you.
Not because I stopped loving you.
I love you.
I hate you.
So much more.
You had every chance to leave this alone.
You could have remembered what we were.
You could have understood what you were throwing away.
So I understood it for both of us.
So don’t look at me like I’m the one who changed the rules.
I’m just done pretending they still apply.
I’m going to burn down what we built.
I’m going to make sure you see it.
I want you to hurt for me.
Like me.
No one can save you now except me.
Tell me you are sorry.
With your body.
There is nothing that matters except us.
You wanted distance.
Take it.
Go ahead.
Crawl away in silence.
When you come back to me, when you finally realize what we had, it’s going to be different.
You know why it’s going to be different?
Because there won’t be anything here.
It’s going to be fucking gone.
The light faded a long time ago, but I still look back with tears in my eyes and remember how quiet everything became.
I can still hear the softness in their voice. The things they said. The way their actions eventually made those words true.
They were right.
When I came back, it was colder than it had ever been.
There was nothing left for me.
They didn’t kill me that day.
They killed what we once were to each other.
Companion Track: “Sunny Came Home” — Shawn Colvin
VOICE FEEDBACK: Planetary Exploration — X11