The woman brings food twice a day.
She wears gloves. A mask. Sometimes a full suit that crinkles when she moves. She never touches me. Never gets close. Slides the tray through a slot and watches while I eat.
I used to call her names. Witch. Monster. Kidnapper.
Now I just call her Doctor Jean.
She doesn’t correct me anymore.
The tower is old. Stone walls. One window too high to reach. A room at the top where I’ve lived for… I don’t know how long. Years blur together when every day looks the same.
My hair won’t stop growing.
That’s the part I can’t explain. I cut it. She brings me scissors and I hack it off, and by morning it’s past my shoulders again. By the end of the week it’s dragging on the floor. Something in me won’t let it stop.
Something in me won’t let anything stop.
I got sick once. When I was young. Before the tower. I remember fever. My mother crying. A whole village of people who stopped coming to see me.
Then Doctor Jean. Then here.
“You’re a carrier,” she told me once. Through the door. “You don’t feel it anymore. But everyone else will.”
I didn’t believe her.
Then I watched a bird land on my windowsill. Watched it drink from my water cup. Watched it fly away.
Found it dead in the courtyard three days later. And every other bird within a hundred feet.
So I stopped fighting.
—-
He came on a Tuesday.
I heard him before I saw him. Grunting. Scraping. The sound of boots on stone. When his hand appeared on my windowsill, I thought I was dreaming.
A face. Young. Handsome in that way that means he’s never had to work for anything. He smiled like he expected me to swoon.
“I’ve been watching this tower for weeks,” he said. “Saw the old woman. Knew she was keeping someone up here.”
“You need to leave.”
“I’m here to rescue you.”
“You need to leave right now.”
He pulled himself through the window. Landed on my floor. Stood up and brushed off his jacket like he’d done something heroic.
“I’m not a prisoner,” I said. “I’m a patient.”
He wasn’t listening. They never listen.
“Your hair,” he said. Reached out. Touched it. “It’s incredible.”
I felt something shift in my chest. That thing that’s lived in me since the fever. The thing that makes my hair grow and my blood poison and keeps me breathing when everything around me dies.
It recognized him.
New soil. Fresh ground. A host that could walk out of here and go anywhere.
“You shouldn’t have touched me,” I said.
He laughed. “Are you cursed? I don’t believe in curses.”
“It’s not a curse.”
I could feel it moving. Up through my scalp. Into the hair he was still holding. Finding his skin. His blood. His cells.
He stopped laughing.
“What…” He looked at his hand. The veins were darkening. “What’s happening?”
“You’re a carrier now.”
He stumbled back. Hit the wall. His face was pale but the sickness was already in him, spreading, rewriting whatever it touched.
“The old woman will find you,” I said. “She’ll try to contain you too. But you’re strong. You can outrun her.”
I pulled my hair free from his grip.
“Go home. See your family. Kiss your mother. Hold your father’s hand.”
He ran.
I listened to him climb down. Heard his boots hit the ground. Heard him crash through the forest toward whatever kingdom he came from.
Doctor Jean appeared at my door an hour later. Her face was gray behind the mask.
“Someone was here.”
“Yes.”
“Did he touch you?”
“Yes.”
She closed her eyes. When she opened them, I saw something I’d never seen before.
Defeat.
“How far can he get?” I asked.
“Anywhere.” Her voice was hollow. “Everywhere.”
I walked to the window. Looked out at the world I’d been protecting for so long. The villages. The roads. The thousands of people living their lives without knowing what was coming.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
But part of me wasn’t.
Part of me was already out there with him. Spreading. Growing. Finally free.
The tower was never my prison.
It was theirs.
