Delusive

by Courtney Lane

  I tried to pull myself together when inside, I felt like I was falling into a bottomless chasm straight into a hell of decadence. “If you don’t let me go to work”—I croaked in between a moan. I was so distracted I couldn’t think of anything else to say, other than something silly—“I will break every priceless antique you have.”

  He abruptly stood, taking me with him and shoving me out of my travel into a pit of dangerous yearning. “I admire your creativity, but now that you’re no longer distracted, maybe you should select a more adult approach.”

  The irony of his statement almost pulled me into a fit of laughter. “You can pick what I wear and you won’t get any fight from me.”

  He placed his palms against the wall behind me, ensuring we were close enough to kiss. “You’re almost there. Keep trying.”

  “I’ll give you a reason to be very happy you let me go to work.”

  He inched closer, wedging me between his hard body and the wall. “You can’t lure me in with sex.” As he spoke, his lips brushed against mine, further diminishing the hold I had on defiance and strength. “It’s not a gift you can give me to reward me for my good behavior.”

  “That’s not what I meant, Elias.”

  “You only have one more thing to say.”

  “I can’t promise you I won’t run. I know you’ll hurt me again and maybe my pride will make me walk away, but…” I tilted away, giving myself space to breathe and think clearly. “No matter how much I try not to be weak, I run out of the energy I need to keep running away from you. I think it’s because I can’t run on empty. Even though you exhaust me and I wish I felt nothing for you, I feel…empty when I’m without you for too long. I feel the way I used to before I met you. I thought the way I used to be was better, but it wasn’t. I was so fucking numb. I wasn’t okay before, but you’ve made me so wrong.”

  He took my mouth with a lasciviousness that made my knees buck and my head spin so severely I felt dizzy. He didn’t need to say it. His lips said everything he needed to say: I’d successfully negotiated my surrender. He caressed my face, tempering the intensity of his kiss. When his mouth separated from mine, I was left reeling over the way he lorded over every inch of me, internally and externally.

  “All I ask is for your obedience. I meant every word of what I’ve told you many times before. If you give me what I want, you can have everything and anything I am able to give you. All I want is to give you everything you’ve dreamed of. I can’t do that until I know I can trust you indubitably.” He kissed my forehead and sauntered to the table, pulling out a chair for me.

  I rubbed my neck harshly, hesitating for a moment. When the moment passed, I sat at the devil’s table and relished in the way he made me sin.

  TWENTY-THREE

  IT HAD BEEN ALMOST three weeks of the same routine. Elias would take me to work and pick me up after I was done. During the workday, I barely interacted with the male customers, hindering Jaco's need to flex his muscles. Skylar never showed up during the shifts in which she was supposed to work. Claudia was forced to hire a new woman, who, for some reason or another, had it out for me. She either shirked her responsibilities and made me do what she wouldn’t or acted rude toward me in the most unnecessary ways. If I didn’t know any better, I would’ve thought she was sent to La Dentelle to make me hate the job enough to quit.

  For two weeks, Elias wouldn't allow me to go anywhere outside of work. If we had dinner, he ordered in. While he went out to functions, I wasn't allowed to. At times, he would take a trip and be gone for a few days. It didn’t matter if Elias wasn’t present, Jaco became worse than Elias at making me stick to a rigid and controlling schedule. When Elias was around, he continued to be cold toward me. As it was, we hadn’t had sex since the disaster with Skylar.

  I could've fought. I should've fought, but something went wrong with my will.

  Fearing he'd listen in on my conversations, I hadn't spoken to my father in weeks. From the gossip at work, it was made known my father hadn't moved. If he hadn’t moved and the Caris hadn’t made a move on him, it was safe to say our identities hadn’t been compromised.

  My sister had many aliases in the past due to her job, and while Elias might’ve found her, it might not have been with her birth name.

  After another night in which Elias decided he wouldn't return home at a decent hour, I woke up out of my nightmare and attempted to track down Milton. It wasn’t easy to find him; we’d exchanged contact information the first time we had met, but it had changed since then.

  In order to escape, I slipped two crushed-up sleeping pills into Jaco’s beer while he sat in the living room watching a sports network all night.

  THE NEIGHBORHOOD I was directed to made me double check the address I was given because it was only a few blocks from the house my father and I were living in. The house was a colonial-style McMansion that reminded me of the houses my mother lived in with her many husbands. Crowding the circular driveway were about six cars that indicated the caliber of the guests inside, and they were obviously very well-off, or pretending to be.

  Looking back at my Camaro, I slid my cell phone out of my purse and put it back together. I pressed the speed dial digit for Elias’s number and let it drop to the ground when he answered.

  Skylar came to the door and rushed me inside the second my fingertips grazed the doorbell.

  Her eyes were heavily lidded and she wore a very revealing negligee made of black lace. “You were told it was a pajama party. Why aren’t you in pajamas?”

  I wasn’t going to question why she was there. It was a small flaw in the plan, but it shouldn’t have negatively affected it. “I wasn’t expecting you to be here.”

  “Neither was I,” she replied with a phony smile.

  “Well…now that you are, can we talk alone, and maybe I can apologize to you for what you think happened a few weeks back?”

  Her eyes brightened a tad. “What I think you did?” She wobbled and nearly fell. I supported her to help steady her. She jumped back, shaking her head. “I think you mean what I know you did. You crushed on me so badly you set up that whole thing with your boyfriend.”

  “If you believed that, why haven’t you gone to the police?”

  Her fake sense of happiness disappeared as she stared at me. “Why don’t you come in, Hanley?” she asked, even though I was already fully inside the house. “I told the guests all about you and they can’t wait to meet you.” She linked her arm in mine and guided me out of the foyer into the grand room.

  When I walked in, I was a little stunned. Eight gentleman sat on the various pieces of furniture surrounding a coffee table with a punch bowl filled with packets of drugs and condoms. A few of them were men in business suits, others wore typical street clothes and had various knife and/or bullet wounds on their faces and arms. They all leered at me, paying very particular attention to my breasts

  Milton came around, appearing to be high, if not higher than Skylar. He outstretched his arms and attempted to hug me.

  I backed away with my hands up. “I’m leaving.”

  Skylar grabbed my hand, suddenly looking apologetic. “If you want to talk. We’ll talk. Come down to the basement. That’s the only place we’ll have privacy.”

  The basement lighting was turned to the dimmest level, offering very little in the way of light. A large circular bed was in the center with a seating area and flat screen playing a muted porno accompanied by the sound of bass-heavy music. A stripper pole was in the corner, and something that looked like a harness hung from the ceiling in another corner.

  “Don’t worry about all of this.” She waved it off and sat on the bed. “So…talk.”

  “What is this place?” I asked, walking around. “And better yet, why are you here?”

  “I don’t need your judgment after you drugged me and made me eat your pussy.”

  The heavy steps descending the stairs attracted my attention. Wearing a silly grin, Milton appeared at the bottom of the step
, and the eight men I saw earlier weren’t far behind him. “The fucker cut me out,” Milton snarled, “so I’m gonna do his slut in. He built this town on drug money. He’s big time and dealing in big money, too? He owes me and he’s gonna give it to me.”

  “If all of that is true, you have a reason to be scared, don’t you?” I asked, putting my hands on my hips.

  Milton shrugged. “You won’t tell him, ‘cause if you do, I’ll go to the police and snitch on your boyfriend.”

  “You don’t have any proof,” I countered.

  Milton chuckled and looked at Skylar. “If you live, it will be too bad. He’ll kill you after we have our fun. That asshole has a bug up his ass about women who can’t keep their legs closed, just like his goddamn father. Let’s get this party started.” In his hand, he held up a syringe full of a brownish substance, instead of the cloudy yellow one I expected.

  “Wait. What is that? Is that what I think it is?” Skylar jumped up showing every ounce of the concern I suddenly adopted and successfully repressed. “It isn’t supposed to happen like this. Milton? Why did you change the—” She stood up, looking as though she was coming out of her high. Her pleas became muffled, turning into cries as two men accosted her, covering her mouth and restraining her.

  “Don’t touch me,” I backed away and fell back on the bed. I opened my mouth to scream, but my mouth was covered. My limbs were pinned to the bed, The pinch of a tourniquet, and the puncture of a needle pricked the crook of my arm. My screams became harder to keep up as a burning sensation ran up my arm and warmed my body, making me feel calm and weak. My heart began to pound at the same beat as the loud music.

  He continued to push the drug into my veins slowly. “Silly whore. You thought I’d fuck him over for a bitch he don’t care about? That asshole fired me. I’m on my own fuckin’ agenda.”

  An acidic fire coursing through my veins leveled out to a heavy warmth. Pressure pushed against me. The sounds became muffled and the surrounding area became clouded over with a haze of beautiful colors. A herd of elephants danced above me, growing louder and louder. The pressure and constraints on my body released. The pounding began to resound through a tunnel with short little bursts. Pat! Pat!

  Every so often, my body was sprayed with liquid, making me feel as though I was underneath a fountain. I reached my hands up to touch it. To feel it. I came in contact with something hard. When I ran my hands down it, I realized it was a body. The pressure was removed from my arm and the warmth of my blood trickled down the bend of my arm.

  Feeling giddy, I giggled and clenched at the fabric between my fingers. It drew closer and made me feel as though I was flying.

  Echoed and hollowed out screams followed my flight. Nothing was seen but a blur of streaming lights.

  A muffled voice was at my ear, repeating things I could barely make out.

  Slap! The sting at my cheek brought me out of it for a moment, I could barely see, but I could hear him clearly. “I’ve got you, minha amada. You’re safe.”

  MY SCREAMS WERE deafening and weren’t enough to stop the pain. Every part of my body was in agony. I felt like I had burning bugs under every inch of my skin and I couldn’t get them to go away. I tried to dig them out, but my arms were restrained.

  I cried, screaming, begging for someone to kill me or put me out of my misery. Nothing anyone said made sense. Nothing I said made sense. I would’ve done anything to make it go away. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t stop expelling what little was left of my stomach. I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t want to stay awake. It was the worst feeling I had ever felt in my life.

  I vaguely recalled a discussion when things began to get better: Jaco stated, “If Milton had injected her with all of it, I don’t think she’d be alive right now. You were right all along about what needs to be done. I know I never said anything before, but I have your back fully on this one.”

  I never heard Elias’s answer or got clarification on what they were talking about. They either left the room, or my state prevented me from hearing what was said.

  HALFWAY THROUGH DAY one, I was coherent enough to tell Elias no when he wanted me to go through withdrawal using methadone. I said it quickly before I regretted it, and I did. For every minute of the next seventy-two hours.

  IT TOOK A little over ninety-eight hours before I could get out of bed to shower and get dressed in a simple T-shirt and a pair of fleece pants. My hair seemed permeated with the smell of vomit, so I washed it as well. Allowing my natural texture to show, I put it up in a messy bun.

  The moment I hit the landing of the stairs, I was in Elias’s arms. He held me tightly, kissed my forehead, and whispered, “Thank God.”

  “I should’ve listened to you about Skylar,” I said, my voice husky and weak.

  He shook his head. “We don’t have to talk about that right now.” He held my hands, intertwining my fingers with his. “I don’t have to tell you how terrified I was.”

  “I barely remember most of it. I remember the pain. Fuck, do I remember the pain.” Noticing the four finger scratches down his neck, maybe a day or two after healing, I touched them. “Did I do that?”

  “You also kicked Jaco in the groin more times than he’d care for you to, but there’s no need to apologize about that, either.” His eyes darted briefly toward the kitchen. “Are you hungry?”

  I shook my head, looking down at my stomach. “It’s still too raw.” Bits and pieces of how sick I was came to mind. Embarrassed, I closed my eyes and apologized again, because no one should’ve had to see that or clean up after it, except maybe a well-compensated nurse.

  “I’m ignoring your apology, because it’s not needed. I did what I’ve always promised I would do if you only gave me one simple thing.”

  It scared me, because looking into his eyes, I knew nothing had changed and we’d hopefully returned to where we were before our big fight after the gallery. For anyone to go through what he did with me and still look at me like the world around us didn’t matter, it made me believe he would do all he promised me. As though my problems needed to be exacerbated, I knew wholeheartedly my feelings for him had strengthened.

  “What are we going to do about you and me?” I asked quietly.

  “Tomorrow, you’ll find out.”

  I looked at the invisible space between us, unsure of why I cared about someone who betrayed me. I expected Milton’s betrayal within reason, he behaved mostly as expected. I did not expect Skylar. It was yet another aspect of my plan that went awry. I expected to be sick, but never that sick. It was all due to Milton switching the drug he was supposed to have given me.

  “Did you kill her?” I asked, hanging by my every word. My heart would’ve broken if he had. Like Elias, she could do the worst things to me and never diminish the way I felt about her.

  “She’s alive. I’m going to ask you to stay away from the news for a while.”

  “I don’t pay much attention to the news as it is,” I stated with palpable skepticism. Although it was the truth, I had sudden urge to find out what the latest news was. So, I lied. “It won’t be a problem.”

  He suddenly smiled, alleviating the pressure from the moment. “Is your passport up to date?”

  I searched his eyes, wondering where he would take me that I needed the new passport I received when I changed my name. I had been to Canada with the new one, but it wasn’t the full extent of my travels. “As far as I remember it is. Why? Where are you taking me?”

  He gave me a wink and took my hand, pulling me to the dining room. “You’ll find out tomorrow.”

  I sat on the edge of the kitchen counter while I watched Elias rummage around the kitchen.

  “Don’t make fun”—he glanced at me with a coy simper—“but I only know how to make one dish, chouriço and peppers, and you’re going to eat it. You’ve gone too long without food.”

  I looked down at my left arm and picked at the bandage affixed to the crook of my elbow.

  “It
was only to make sure you weren’t dehydrated,” he reassured me. “It was interesting, even with the way you were, you knew methadone is used for heroin withdrawal.”

  “I…did a paper on dependency in college,” I replied. “The information stuck with me, because the withdrawal from methadone could be equal, if not worse. It was something I remembered. It’s interesting to me how you knew what was given to me.”

  He leveled a brief look in my direction before returning to his mission.

  To cut the suddenly tense air between us, I recalled the debacle that included Skylar. “I can’t believe someone can be so angry to do that to another person. She had to have known I would never do what she thought I did.”

  With his back to me, he sighed dramatically. “We’re no longer going to talk about Skylar, because she’s no longer an issue, nor will she ever be one for you or me again. That is…if you’ve finally learned your lesson about staying away from her, because she definitely won’t seek you out.”

  Feeling slightly weak, I bowed forward with my chin resting on my closed fists. “I thought you said you didn’t hurt her.”

  He glanced over his shoulder at me, his eyes cold and stark. “Do I have to repeat myself, Hanley?”

  “Can you give me a break, Elias? I just went through the hell of heroin withdrawal. Arguably the worst withdrawal there is. I completely understand why people are so easily addicted to it. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you, you’re probably familiar with what it looks like.”

  “And why would I be?’ he asked, placing the onions, peppers, tomatoes, and chouriço bundled in his arms on the counter beside me.