chapter 11

When Blossom had been small, maybe eight, she'd excitedly shoved her latest story into her mum's hands. It was about a moon princess who turned shadows into fireflies. Her mother, tipsy on white wine, had laughed politely, called her "my little author," and then forgot the story halfway through.

Her dad had been different. He was blunt—less polished, more glass than silk.

When she showed him The Cannibal's Lullaby at age twelve—her first true dive into horror, filled with teeth and funeral hymns—he had blinked slowly, then muttered, "What kind of twisted shit is this?"

She'd flinched. "It's just a story, Dad. It's fiction."

"You need to get your head checked."

That phrase never left her.

She could still hear Dr. Kesler's soft voice, his glasses slipping down his nose as he leaned over her notebook like it was sacred.

"You write trauma like it owes you money."

At thirteen, she beamed. That sounded poetic.

"These stories... they're beautiful, Blossom. But they're sharp. They cut."

"Is that bad?" she'd asked.

Kesler had paused, choosing his words like chess pieces.

"Not bad. But... telling stories is how we learn what's been left unsaid. It's what you're not writing that I worry about."

She'd clammed up at that.

"Stories are easier than feelings," she mumbled. "Feelings don't have plot twists."

He'd smiled, bittersweet. "They don't. But they have consequences."

Now, at sixteen, Blossom sifted through her old work like reading her own psychological autopsy. Her stories started whimsical—full of glitter and talking animals. But the tone changed somewhere between age twelve and thirteen. Titles like Shadows Have Names and The Girl Who Drowned Her Sadness started appearing.

She found one poem, tucked behind a birthday card from years ago. It was short. Brutal.

She cleaned the house with bleach and breath, Because Mum couldn't clean her soul. She wrote about monsters, So she didn't scream at the ones inside her home.

She pressed her thumb against the page. "Did I really write this?" she whispered.

But she knew the answer.

Blossom wasn't just a writer. She was a girl who learned to dissect emotion with prose. She wrote pain like it was mapped across her ribcage. Her stories were not escapes—they were hauntings. Her characters wore her bruises. Her villains whispered like her mother in a gin-fueled rage. Her heroines broke so she didn't have to.

And they always—always—survived.