Page 52 of Deliria

As I try to move again, I realise I’m not wearing the nightdress I put on hours ago. No, I’m in something else, something sexy, something sheer.

And I’m in a bed. My bed? I don’t know. I don’t know – the panic rises in me like a tsunami and my hands grip the soft sheets like I need an anchor to keep me up, to keep my sane.

I blink rapidly, trying to force my damned brain fog to clear. What the fuck is going on right now?

I’m drugged. Someone drugged me. I know it’s true. I know it. I can feel the way my body is reacting, the way I’m struggling to move, this isn’t normal. This isn’t right.

I try to shift off the bed and it feels like the world falls from beneath my feet. I doubt I could even stand if I tried.

A light tapping reaches my ears and I realise that its footsteps. People. Someone is approaching.

Are they going to hurt me, kill me even?

I glance back down at the way I’m dressed and that makes my heart thump even louder.

I need to get out, I need to hide, I need to…

The door opens, a whimper escapes me before I can stop it, but my eyes meet his. Meet his blue, familiar ones.

“Alex,” I whisper.

He pauses for just a second, while something unreadable flickers across his face. “You’re awake?” He murmurs, sounding more than a little surprised.

I nod back, holding my hand out, needing the reassurance of him. If he’s here, if he’s with me, then I know I’m safe, I knowI’m okay. That all those nasty little thoughts in my head are just that, thoughts, paranoia, my own stupid imagination running riot and nothing more.

He crosses the room, comes to sit beside me and starts soothing me, calming me, telling me everything is okay.

Behind him the door shuts. But it’s too far for where we are for him to have done it, and then more footsteps fill the room. I look up, seeing Vincent standing, leaning against the solid oak like he’s barricading us all in.

“Wha..?”

My words are cut off as my husband pushes me back against the pillows.

“You should have stayed asleep, Darling.” He says in a tone so utterly bereft of emotion.

My stomach drops, my fear explodes in my chest, and my eyes dart to the man behind him, the man rapidly closing the distance between us.

“You did dress her up very nicely,” Vincent says, staring not at my face, but at my breasts, at where I know my nipples are poking through the sheer fabric.

“Al, Alex…’ I whimper. I don’t know what this is. I don’t understand what is happening right now. My head feels so dazed that it’s like I’m fighting my own self to stay awake and yet I can’t give in, I can’t.

What little composure I have left crumbles entirely and I start lashing out as self-preservation takes over.

I swear I can hear a clock ticking. I can know that any minute whatever drugs they gave me are going to take over completely, that I’ll be completely helpless. I need to fight now, I need to get out, to hide, to get somewhere safe before it’s too late.

But my limbs are refusing to obey me. My body is too sluggish to have any meaningful impact. How can I fight them when I’m literally having to fight myself?

My dear husband grabs my arms and wrenches them above my head where he holds them in place. His dad is now here, having clambered onto the bed. His belt is undone, his trousers are open and I know what that means, what this is.

“No,” I scream. “No,” flailing more.

Alex backhands me. Hard. It’s enough to gain my compliance, enough to temporarily disarm me, and I fall back like a dead weight.

The bed tilts more with the weight of someone moving beside me.

I can feel it, his hands, my father in law’s hands, his fingers as they crawl over my skin, as they linger over the parts of me, he clearly likes best. With a hard tug, the straps are yanked down my shoulders and my breasts are bared entirely.

I don’t want this. I don’t want…

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