She never told anyone.

Of course she didn’t. That’s the point. That’s the cost.

A girl in a small town, a girl who swallowed the words for what was done to her. Still, the town knew and too many eyes watched her, mouths whispering, talking about her. So she kept her mouth closed and attempted no truths. Bit her tongue. Swallowed silence until it curdled her soul.

She whispered it once—not in words, but in a sob, drawn out of her by a clawed prayer to nothing.

She was wrong.

Something was already listening.

It heard her under the floorboards. In the crawlspace where water pooled, where the mildew wrote its own history. It tasted her grief in the coppery rust on the old pipes, in the fungus behind the drywall. It swelled with it.

She forgot her whisper, her one moment of weakness and truth.

It did not.

⸻

He never thought about her again. Of course he didn’t. That’s the point. That’s the pattern. One and done, and onto the next.

He left town. Found new places. New placements. New lives and souls to sully.

Years later, when the basement in his city flat began to flood—he blamed pipes, weather, someone’s negligence, global warming.

Not memory.

Not consequence.

The water rose. Only in his building. Only when he was home alone and not watching.

The walls grew soft.

The floors began to give.

The first tentacle came through the sink, slick and silent. It didn’t grab. It touched.

Identity confirmed. Verified. Action authorised.

The second did not ask.

⸻

He did not die quickly. This was no gentle passing. That was the point.

His screams didn’t echo. They gurgled. They were taken from him and rendered futile, just as her objections and refusals had been.

When they were done—when he had been taken by the thing that remembered her…

There was nothing left.

No trace. No body. No complaint or complainant.

Just a damp ring on the floorboards and a smell no bleach could lift.

⸻

She never knew.

She didn’t need to.

It wasn’t about her—it never was.

Yet: years later, when she passed through that town, she glanced toward the water and thought she saw movement beneath the reeds.

For the first time in her life, she felt safe. Vaguely, but still: comforting.

Not because the world was kind, no she knew better than that. She had learned his lessons well. She had learned: somewhere in the world’s wet, dark places, where most people never look…

Records are kept. Filed.

When the time is right, they are actioned.