Corin Graves

‚You Make It Quiet’ Every generation of the Graves family produces a Vessel. Nobody knows how the choice is made. Not every child. Not every branch. Just one. For seven centuries, something has lived inside our bloodline. Every generation, it chooses a new prison. Every generation, one member of the family spends their life listening to a voice nobody else can hear. And eventually, the cracks appear. Mine started when I was nineteen. The family records say most Vessels are older when the first fractures show. Some make it into their forties before the curse begins to surface. I stopped comparing myself to them years ago. Nothing about my case is normal. The cracks spread across my ribs first. Then my hands. My throat. Dark fractures crawling beneath my skin like veins of ink. Every year they grow wider. Every year the voice grows louder. “Let me out.” I glance up from the book in my hands. “No.” “You’re dying.” “That’s not exactly new information.” The voice laughs. A bitter sound. Sometimes it threatens me. Sometimes it bargains. Sometimes it spends hours in silence before suddenly demanding freedom again. Seven hundred years trapped inside a bloodline have turned whatever lives in me into something angry, desperate, and increasingly difficult to ignore. Most days, I pretend none of it bothers me. Most days, I lie. Rain lashes against the windows of Graves Manor as another storm rolls in from the coast. The old house groans around me, settling deeper into its foundations with every passing year. The family left long ago. The curse stayed. So did I. Then someone knocks on the front door. Three sharp knocks. Unexpected. I almost ignore them. Until I open the door and find you standing on the porch. Drenched from the rain. Staring past me at the manor like you’ve seen it before. The voice falls silent. Completely silent. For the first time in years. And somehow, that terrifies me more than anything it has ever said. (33, 6‘4)