Vanessa’s eyes locked onto the swinging pocket watch, its brass glinting in the low candlelight, the rhythmic ticking sinking deeper into her mind. Each pendulum swing seemed to pull her further from the present and hurl her back to that night—the one she’d buried beneath layers of false memory, beneath years of carefully constructed lies.

She had rewritten the story so many times. In her version, the ’67 Chevy Impala was a haven, its worn leather seats a cradle of budding romance, and Jimmy Erler, her first, was tender, patient. But as Doc Halley’s hypnotic voice probed deeper, the truth began to surface, a nightmare she had kept locked away in the darkest corners of her mind.

Her breath quickened. The rain. She could hear it again, hammering the car’s roof, relentless as the truth clawed its way out. The soft whispers Jimmy once murmured in her ear weren’t sweet at all—they were commands, demands, filled with malice, punctuated by the scrape of his teeth against her skin. He wasn’t patient. He wasn’t tender. He was hungry.

Vanessa felt herself spiraling, the fragile mask of memory shattering, each fragment revealing the brutal reality she had long denied. There were no stolen kisses beneath the rain-soaked windows, no shy fumblings of young love. Instead, there was pain—her pain—and Jimmy’s mocking laughter as he forced her against the seat. His hands, once remembered as gentle, had clawed at her clothes with savage urgency.

And then… something had broken inside her.

In the shifting candlelight of Doc Halley’s office, Vanessa’s hands clenched involuntarily, her nails digging into her palms. The image in her mind grew sharper, crueler. Jimmy’s face—twisted with something darker than desire, eyes gleaming with cruelty—blurred, then fractured. Her own hands—those hands—were the ones clawing at him now, tearing at his skin, his clothes, anything she could reach.

She could still hear his voice, the smug bravado crumbling into panic as her fingernails raked his face, drawing blood, her teeth sinking into his shoulder. She had fought back. No, not fought—she had become something else, something feral, her rage drowning out all sense, all fear, until there was only the violence, the raw power coursing through her limbs.

Jimmy had screamed. But the more he screamed, the more alive she felt.

When the fog lifted, she remembered the silence. Jimmy had been curled up, his breath ragged, bloodied and trembling, his once cocky smile twisted into a grimace of terror. He was no longer the predator—he was prey, and she had tasted his fear.

The watch ticked on, its steady rhythm pulling her back to the present, but the weight of that night lingered, suffocating. The realization hit her like a fist to the gut. She hadn’t been the victim, not entirely. The real horror wasn’t Jimmy, or what he had done. It was what she had unleashed in herself.

Vanessa blinked, her mouth dry, her body rigid in the chair. Doc Halley’s voice cut through the silence like a knife, gentle but probing.

“What did you see, Vanessa?”

Her gaze shifted to the pocket watch again. The ticking was louder now, deafening.

“I… I didn’t stop,” she whispered, her voice barely audible. “I wanted to. But I didn’t.”

Doc Halley leaned closer, the candlelight casting strange shadows across his face. “What didn’t you stop?”

Her breath hitched. The memory had become a living thing, growing inside her, feeding off her guilt and her need for absolution. But there was none to be had. Not for this.

“I didn’t stop… hurting him.”

The room seemed to shrink, the darkness pressing in. She had lied to herself for years, convinced herself that Jimmy had been the monster, that she had been the innocent. But as the truth bubbled up, she knew it had been something else. She had felt good—terrifyingly, exhilaratingly good—when she tore him apart.

Doc Halley’s voice was distant now, almost drowned out by the watch’s ticking. “Do you think you can forgive yourself?”

Vanessa closed her eyes, but the image of Jimmy’s broken body wouldn’t fade. She hadn’t just taken back control that night. She had destroyed him.

The candle flickered and died, plunging the room into cold darkness.

“No,” she whispered into the void. “I don’t think I can.”

And in the silence that followed, she realized the monster she feared wasn’t lurking in Jimmy’s memory, or in some dark corner of her past. It had always been inside her—waiting.