CHAPTER 5
The Animal Cage
---
"Don't look up."
That was the first rule he taught himself.
Keep your head down, eyes on the ground. Don't react. Don't speak. Don't breathe too loudly. If they couldn't see your fear, maybe they'd grow bored.
It never worked.
---
The day began like all the others—with a sting.
A spitball to the back of his neck. A shove in the hallway that nearly sent him face-first into a locker. A whisper behind him during morning attendance:
"Did your mom enjoy her little fame online?"
His fists clenched under the desk.
He wanted to scream. But he had no voice.
The teacher droned on about history while his own history—his real one—kept writing itself behind his back, without a single adult noticing.
Or maybe they noticed.
Maybe they just didn't care.
---
At break time, they came again.
The classroom emptied. But he was told to stay. He always knew what that meant.
The desks were pushed aside by them like they owned the room. One of the boys locked the door. Another closed the curtains.
The girl with the mask entered last, as usual.
She moved like a shadow. Silent, unreadable. Beautiful, some said. But to him, she was a mask with poison behind it.
The leader stepped forward—one of the louder ones, tall and always grinning like the devil himself.
"New game," he said.
A chair was pulled into the center of the room.
"Sit."
He didn't move.
"Sit. Down."
A shove from behind made the decision for him.
They tied his wrists to the arms of the chair with shoelaces—tight, cutting into his skin.
He struggled, but it was useless.
One of them held up a plastic collar—cheap, like the kind you'd use on a dog for a prank.
Another pulled out a black marker.
They began to write on him.
Insults. Slurs. Jokes.
Across his arms. His neck. Even his cheeks.
Each word dug deeper than any punch.
They laughed as they circled him like predators, filming every second on their phones.
"Bark," someone said.
He didn't.
A slap cracked across his face.
"Bark, mutt."
He stayed silent.
The masked girl stepped forward for the first time.
No words.
She just looked at him.
Tilted her head.
Then, without breaking eye contact, she leaned forward and whispered something no one else heard:
> "You're not even worth hating. You're just fun."
She smiled beneath her mask.
Then turned and walked out.
---
They left him like that—bound, covered in words, marked like cattle.
When the last one was gone, he sat there in silence.
The collar hung around his neck.
He could smell the ink on his skin.
But worse than all of that was her voice. Her words. Still echoing.
> "You're not even worth hating."
---
It took him ten minutes to get free.
He didn't cry.
He didn't scream.
He walked to the restroom, avoided every mirror, locked himself inside a stall, and scrubbed his skin raw.
The marker wouldn't come off.
Not completely.
The words stayed.
So he scratched at them until his arms bled.
---
When he got home, his mother was sitting at the kitchen table, staring blankly at nothing. She didn't ask about his cuts. She didn't see the collar stuffed in his bag.
He went to his room.
Sat down.
Opened the notebook.
One more number.
Eleven.
A single sentence beneath it:
> "If I'm not worth hating,
then you were never worth saving."
He traced it again and again, the ink pressing deeper into the paper each time.
Until it tore.
---
End of Chapter 5