Page 16

DELILAH 18 YEARS OLD

M y mind is groggy, and my tongue is too heavy for my mouth. There’s spit running from the corner of my lips, but I can’t move my arms. Even my legs are shackled. The days have run together, and I don’t know how long I’ve been trapped in this hospital for.

Well, it’s not really a hospital. It’s the place people like my uptight, image-obsessed, cunts for parents send their undesirable children.

The Lerouxs can’t have anything tarnish their shiny image. Not when everyone said they were cursed after two out of three of their children ran away, never to be seen again.

Especially not when their final daughter, their last golden ticket, decided to set their world on fire and ruin their business with the Kobalts by killing their nephew. Pain slices through me. It’s so visceral that I can feel the dagger of all the emotions cutting through my flesh and bone.

The sedative is wearing off.

Rubber-soled shoes squeak outside of my dark hospital room. The walls are all plain concrete and even the air smells wrong. I turn my head to look out of the dirty windows to the only source of light coming from a security light further away. It’s not strong enough to fully illuminate my room and the door doesn’t have a window, so it only allows a thin strip at the edges.

The glass pane is broken up with bars like a gallery wall into crazy.

Would people watch me strapped to a bed and drooling while I’m forced to lay in my own piss? Would it be entertaining to them? Do my parents stand there and reflect on how venomous their DNA is?

A dry laugh works up my sore throat at that thought and the memory of Scarlet’s last conversation.

“Guess what, Dilly?” she asked.

Always Dilly, never Delilah with my sisters. The name is there in my mind, trying to tell me there are people who care.

“I’ve got a tattoo. Want to see it?”

I was so terrified that our parents would find out that I closed my eyes, thinking she wouldn’t get in trouble that way. But Scar never gave a fuck about anything, and she rolled her sleeve up to show one word inked like a stamp under the crease of her elbow.

That was the word. I remember it in big red letters with a stamped edge around it. She was so proud of it, and I know why now. She took the very thing that created us, was our descriptor, and turned it into hers. She wore our cursed DNA as her own badge on her own terms.

But I’m tied up and the only things on my skin are placed there by other people. The gown, the padded cuffs, the tubes, and the dressings are not mine.

The door creaks as the squeaky rubber soles enter the room. I don’t turn my head. Doctor Dickface doesn’t allow it to stop his need to talk.

“How are you feeling today, Delilah?”

No answer. I watch the outside world instead. Nothing I say will get him to sign a release form, so there’s no point in wasting my breath.

He sighs like I am the inconvenience, when I didn’t ask to be here.

“You can make this all easier on yourself, sweetheart.”

The only part of my body that moves are my eyelids as he gets closer. The squeaking stops. He’s taking his shoes off. He always takes his shoes off. It’s such a strange thing for my mind to focus on, yet I do.

I know his routines now. He’ll stop exactly three paces away from me and take off his shoes. In his twisted mind, he thinks it stops me knowing he’s getting closer.

The third question out of five comes.

“Don’t you want me to change your medication?”

I blink.

Again.

The fourth comes and his voice is lower but closer.

“Wouldn’t you like to be awake during the day?”

My jaw tenses to stop any intrusion like the other times and I curl my fingers into fists as he moves closer. But the last question changes from the usual pattern.

“It all stops when you tell the truth.” He takes another step, and his disgusting thigh grazes the back of my knuckles. “Tell the truth, Delilah, or your daddy will have to punish you.”

I must be acclimating to the drugs because there’s more energy in my limbs than usual as he undoes the padded cuff of my right hand. It’s always my right. Another strange thing I catalog.

The routine is changed again as he does the same to my left hand. The difference makes me look at him. His eyes are the lightest blue I have ever seen, and even in the low light of the room, they shine. It robs me of all emotions other than fear as he walks around the bed and frees my ankles. The man isn’t the same doctor who creeps into my room to play out his twisted fantasies. He’s someone much worse, because there’s more than depraved fantasies staring back at me.

His thumbs linger against my skin as he coos, “Tell the truth, sweet girl.”

He never calls me anything other than my name. But his voice matches the doctor’s voice and I squint to examine his features. There’s familiarity in them, yet I can’t place him as someone from my life. He’s not one of my dad’s associates that would come to the parties we’d throw or a teacher. There’s no other time I’ve interacted with an adult to be able to know who he is, which makes me squint to attempt to pull all my weakening memories forward.

The padded cuffs that were around my ankles aren’t removed entirely. He adds extenders to them and pushes them up my thighs. The plastic, itchy hospital gown moves with it and fear keeps me in place.

Every inch of my skin turns deathly cold as though my soul is pushing to the corners of my body to hide from him while he smiles down at me. There’s no warmth in it and he does the same to my other leg.

Despite my body not having any fight, he walks around the bed and pushes more drugs into the bag I’m attached to. They don’t shut down my mind, it only weighs down my limbs. My hand rolls off the edge of the bed and the door opens again.

No squeaking.

That’s the first thing I notice before my eyes dart to the side to see the shadowed image of my father’s pale face. He audibly gulps and looks away from the new doctor, and me. Is he taking me home now? Yeah, he has to because he’s realized that he’s wrong, that I don’t need to be here, and the doctor will discharge me as soon as I can move.

“You chose the wrong option, sweet girl,” the doctor says softly as he traces my cheek with the back of his fingers. “Now your daddy will have to teach you right from wrong.”

Stepping back, he straightens and keeps his back to my father as he orders, “Start the show, Harkin.”

No one has ever ordered my father to do a thing. But he walks forward without saying a word as the doctor smoothly turns to avoid his face being seen. The doctor continues walking backwards until he’s in the shadows. Those bright eyes are the only thing I can see. It’s all I can focus on as my father, the man who is supposed to protect me, presses something at the foot of the bed, causing it to drop away.

The lump in his throat grows, pushing his Adam’s apple out, choking him while I can’t make sense of why he’s touching me. His hands are on the inside of my knees. They move up, going past the padded cuffs to my inner thighs.

Realization is slow but gut wrenching and I scream. The sound is trapped in my head, echoing around my skull, only coming out as a whimper.

“You never listened, Delilah,” he whispers as he pushes the hospital gown further up until it’s against my lower stomach.

“Continue the show,” the doctor says, with a threat lacing his words.

A show.

Entertainment.

But there’s nothing entertaining as the cool platinum of my father’s wedding band warms against my skin, and I can’t move. I only have control of my eyes to beg him. His eyes aren’t the harsh ones I grew up with. They’re evil and I recoil internally as the leather strap of his watch brushes my skin.

World’s best dad is engraved on the back of it. I thought it was a lie when I gave it to him at his company’s Christmas party, but that’s nothing compared to now.

Bile moves up my throat as a zipper is undone and I snap my eyes closed with the scream still vibrating through my skull.