The Agreement of Erasure

“My voice was a pathetic whisper. I was on my knees, hands clutching the hem of her dress. My vision was blurry, the room swaying. "Get off me, Ethan," she said, her voice flat. "You' re pathetic." She kicked my hands away. The love I used to see in her eyes was gone, replaced by contempt. Then I heard Liam, my own half-brother, gloating. "Pixel Legacy is ours now, Sophia. And with his signature on that transfer document, there' s nothing he can do." My game. My life' s work. Stolen. And Sophia, my girlfriend, was his willing accomplice. The drug Liam gave me hit hard. I was in agony, slamming my raw knuckles against the carpet. I heard their laughter from the living room. She re-entered, ordered me to stop making noise, and when I begged for a doctor, she locked me in. Later, she and Liam forced more of the poison down my throat, leaving me to dissolve into a black void. When I woke, I was in a hospital. A new intern, Noah, told me he found me unconscious in the bathroom, bleeding. My phone buzzed with an email from Sophia: an "Agreement" to erase me from my own life, stealing everything, leaving me with nothing but a few thousand dollars as a consolation prize. How could she? How could three years of shared dreams crumble into this cruel reality? Was it always a lie? As I lay there, helpless and broken, a cold resolve settled in my gut. I would not die here. I would leave. I would survive this. I would get my own back.”