They had broken my leg.

They had not touched the part of me that decides, and that night, on the floor, that part of me woke all the way up for the first time in years and gave an order that the rest of me obeyed.

I think this is the thing I most want anyone in a house like that to know: that the cage they build is real, but it is built, above all, in your mind, out of the belief they have installed in you that you cannot survive leaving.

The physical locks are nearly secondary.