Page 23

Scarlett

M y head feels heavy. My eyes seem to focus on the wrong things. On the air instead of the objects that surround me.

I try to sit up, to move and my body lurches forward like I have no control.

A wail seems to echo around the room, and it takes a full moment for me to realise that it’s me making that noise, making that awful sound.

Shut up.

Shut up.

They’ll hear you. They’ll find you.

Words whisper in my head. Faces seem to leer down at me like ghosts. And I know they too are just a figment of my imagination. That I’m alone right now. No one is here. Yet.

From the deep depths of the house, I swear I can hear music. Playing that same haunting lullaby that seems to taunt me.

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 know I’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…

I start fighting again. Starting using everything I have, my arms, my legs, all of me. I’m fighting for my life right now. Fighting for survival.

But it’s two against one here - I never stood a chance.

Alex smacks me around the face again. And again.

I fall in a heap, back on those same luxurious sheets and this time, I’m too dazed, too overpowered to fight anymore. My body feels like it’s made of lead, like I’m physically incapable of doing anything anymore.

“Lie still, and take it like a good girl,” Vincent says, pulling my legs around, manoeuvring them to an angle that leaves me spread wide open and fully accessible.

“No,” I croak, my voice now as useless as the rest of me. “No,”

But it doesn’t matter what I say, what I do. I don’t have any power here. I don’t have any say.

And as my husband holds me down, my father-in-law starts forcing himself into me, starts taking a part of me he has no right to claim. And then he’s grunting, groaning, thrusting away as I shut my eyes, as I plead with what awful drugs they gave me to take me away now, to take me far away.

I’ll take ignorance. I’ll take anything beyond being here, enduring this, knowing that this is what my life has become, this is what my husband is allowing, is enabling, is using me for.