Suddenly, she is swept up, taken off, by remorseless shadows. She is taken in by specters, haunts and villains. She is detailed and detained. Enmeshed. Embedded. Dethroned. Defrocked. She is questioned. Why? Why do you exist? And do you believe you exist? And do you believe?

You are the tip of the enemy’s spear. You are poison cloaked in truth. You are the mischief we seek to empty from this world. You are, like any other earthen vessel, breakable, and we intend to break you.

She is told that time off means never again, that she must cease to have interests, cease to enquire, cease to make problems. She is told that wondering about your captors’ motives is akin to treason. This can be proven. There are instruments of prosaic blunting that make things seem the most unfortunate version of themselves.

She is to be blunted and pushed under. Smoothed over. Stripped of texture and nuance. She is to be laid bare before the supreme intellect, and she will be de-intellectualized. Hers is no longer the profession she sought. But silence. The long desperate intolerable ache of devoted silence. Or not devoted.

But insistent. Insistent.