Chapter Three
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Ily
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I MANAGED NOT TO CRY.
I didn’t cry as Henri cut me.
Didn’t cry as he fucked me.
Didn’t cry as Peter gently unbuckled and unshackled me, shoved off the tatters of my torn negligee, or when he slipped his kind arm around me and guided me, ever so tenderly, to Dr Belford’s private rooms. The same rooms he’d been slipping out of when we’d found him an hour or so ago.
God...has it only been an hour?
Eager dawn did its best to lighten the midnight sky, quickly glimpsed in the arrow slits along the corridor as we moved like ghouls in the dark.
It couldn’t have been a single hour.
I felt ancient.
A time-worn antique that no longer knew how to walk or talk or breathe.
Peter didn’t say a word as he knocked softly on the door and waited for an equally soft voice to grant us entry.
I didn’t cry as he guided me inside just as Dr Belford clicked on a lamp and shrugged into a pink fleece dressing gown. Didn’t cry as she took one look at my naked, cum-smeared, blood-letted state and patted the operating table shoved against the wall of her private sitting room.
Everything about her space scrambled my head.
She was as much a prisoner here as us. Once a slave and now the tending physician to a hundred more, she’d invoked Victor’s generosity enough to warrant clothes that weren’t see-through and rooms with locks on the doors.
Yet even in her quaint lounge with its grey couch and normal-looking glass coffee table, the large metallic cupboard with neatly typed labels on its many, many drawers screamed surgery.
Trembles found me as Peter helped settle me on the white-sheet-covered table. He didn’t speak as he went to Dr Belford’s couch and snagged the thick yellow-and-cream knitted blanket that looked homemade.
Dr Belford went to argue but then nodded. “You can’t take it down to your quarters, but you can use it while you’re here. Not my rules, you understand. If it were up to me, you could take every damn thing he’s given me and share it around.”
“I know.” Peter gritted his teeth and bundled me up. He wrapped me so tight, drawing the corners beneath my chin, he almost choked me.
Sighing heavily, he kissed my forehead and spoke to Dr Belford. “He used a clean blade. Shallow cuts. She didn’t bleed much.”
“How much is much?” Dr Belford asked.
“I think Victor ordered about five mil or so.”
“Good. At least she doesn’t need a transfusion.”
I shuddered.
The fact that she had the ability to do such a procedure painted horror stories in my head.
I huddled deeper into my borrowed blanket.
Opening a few drawers of her medicine cabinet, Dr Belford selected whatever she needed, then came to join us by the wall.
Placing a small metal bowl, iodine, some antiseptic cream, and beige bandages and band-aids beside me, she looked at me carefully.
“I need to tend to you, okay? I’m just going to slip the blanket down and the moment I’ve cleaned your wounds, you can have it back. ”
I knew she spoke.
I saw her lips move.
I heard her words fall.
Yet...there was a strange kind of separation. A fog that wasn’t quite a fog. A silence that never quite faded.
I shivered as she glanced pointedly at Peter until he stepped away. Once he no longer clutched me in the blanket, she gently pushed it off my quaking shoulders and inspected the cuts Henri had given me.
Cold air licked me.
Pungent antiseptic stung me.
I didn’t look.
I just stared at nothing.
At a single speck of dust on the flagstones.
A speck that danced and morphed into tiny replicas of my past.
A teddy bear I’d given to Krish from my own collection.
A Barbie doll I’d dressed up in a matching saree when we went to our neighbour’s son’s wedding.
A quartz crystal tower that I used to meditate with that Father gave me on my tenth birthday.
The drugs still twisted my reality.
My thoughts still gluggy and nonsensical.
But they weren’t as chaotic as before.
Not as technicolour or fantastical.
While Henri cut me, I’d been swept away by them. Pinwheels and fireworks exploded over my vision as the pain in my body became colour in my fractured mind.
I’d sunk into those refractions.
I’d studied the shapes my mind conjured depending on what part he sliced.
When he cut over my heart, I recognised the flower of life pattern from my pendant Krish had given me. The pendant Victor had stolen.
I’d heard that symbol was revered.
Part of the sacred geometry of energy and accession—portals into other realms.
I’d tried so hard to step into a portal and be gone.
To sink into a meditation and be free of him.
But each time he cut me, I couldn’t escape my mortal body or the burning, slicing agony.
And so, I’d been trapped.
Mindless by a drug that faded but refused to let me go. Imprisoned by cuffs and buckles, completely at Henri’s mercy as he mounted me.
That was where the numbing fog first found me.
Where all feelings and hopes I’d nursed for Henri Ward died a quick and silent death.
Not because he’d transformed into a heartless beast but because the psilocybin chose that moment to do what Peter said it did.
It ignited my blood.
It heated my clit.
It triggered my hurting, horrified body into despicable desire the moment Henri licked me.
I’d hated all of them.
Despised them.
As Henri performed such a sensual act and somehow made it an act of sabotage, I cursed everybody.
I hated Peter for drugging me and leaving me at the mercy of a substance that tore apart my mind before tearing apart my body. I hated Victor for hurting so many and the guards for keeping everyone in-line.
But I hated Henri most of all.
I hated him with the fire of a thousand suns I was named after.
I wanted him dead even as I came on his tongue.
My orgasm was detested and defective with none of the tingling magic of enjoyment.
Psilocybin might have given me sexual sensitivity, but it’d failed at quickening my heart.
It taught me a valuable lesson.
Yes, it could prepare my body for sex.
Yes, it could make me find a biological release.
And yes, it could protect my mind from the pain of unwanted coupling.
But when it came to granting me peace in this hellscape, it failed spectacularly.
I felt empty.
Cavernously, gale-howlingly empty.
The numbness spread as Dr Belford tended to me.
Exhausted anaesthesia crept over me, bringing listlessness and coldness as she cleaned the cut on my upper thigh and gently placed a plaster over it.
I was detached and paralysed.
But I didn’t cry.
Didn’t cry as the blanket was once again tucked under my chin and held in place by Peter. I didn’t cry as Dr Belford packed away her things and asked if I wanted any drugs to dull the pain.
“No drugs,” Peter said. “Ever. Put that on her file or whatever notes you keep on us. No drugs, got it?” He shuddered and shook his head. “I-I gave her psilocybin. She reacted poorly. She’s still suffering and it’s all my fucking fault.”
“Your fault?” Dr Belford laughed tragically. “None of this is your fault, Pete.”
He looked away. “I shouldn’t have forced her to take one. I thought...I thought I was protecting her. That she’d slip away like the rest of us. Have a little trip into fantasy land and come back to earth when it was all over.”
“Didn’t she?” Dr Belford frowned, then shone a pen torch into my eyes.
I didn’t even flinch.
Didn’t cry.
Didn’t cry.
“Her pupils are heavily dilated.”
“Will she be okay?” Peter asked, his voice cracking with guilt.
“She’ll be fine. She just needs to sleep it off.”
“Yeah, for the two hours left of the night.”
Dr Belford stepped away. “I guess you better get to sleep quickly then. You both need some rest.”
Peter nodded and went to unwrap me from my cocoon.
“Wait.” Dr Belford placed a hand on his bare arm, studying the cuts she’d already tended on his skin. “You’re shaking, Pete. Did something else happen?”
He scoffed under his breath. “Nothing that will kill me. Unfortunately.”
“Did Victor make you serve again?” Her lips twisted in disgust. “Knowing what Master K did to you?”
“He doesn’t know. He never wants to know.
He sees I’m still standing, and he’s satisfied.
” He hung his head. “And don’t worry. He only made me blow him.
That I can handle. Nothing a little finger down my throat when I get back to our quarters won’t fix.
At least he didn’t fuck me. That...that would’ve been agonising. ”
With a wince, Dr Belford whispered, “Use that numbing cream I gave you. Rub it in. I know you have a thing against suppositories but I’m telling you—”
“I have enough people sticking things up my ass without me joining in.” Peter chuckled blackly.
“Regardless, insert one for the next few days, and whatever tearing you’re suffering from will heal far quicker.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He waved her concern away. “I’ll survive. I always do.”
Not believing him, Dr Belford glanced at me. “Did her Master have intercourse with her?”
“Yep.” Peter shuddered. “Hard.”
Cupping my chin, Dr Belford filled my faltering vision. “Did you split? I’m aware Peter doesn’t want to give you any more drugs, but I have others as well as psychostimulants. Paracetamol, ibuprofen, codeine. I even have liquid morphine...when the occasion calls for it.”
I didn’t answer her.
The effort was too much to swallow and blink and speak.
“I’ve got some stashed downstairs. If she wants some later, I’ll give them to her,” Peter said quietly.
“Okay.” Stepping back, she grimaced. “In that case, off with you both. Sleep is the best healer, so go get some.”
“Hear that, Ily?” Peter grinned far too wide for my benefit. “Chalne ka samay ho gaya.” (Time to go.)
The Hindi words sank into my cotton wool head, reminding me that I’d implored in it, chanted in it, begged in it.
It’d been as useless as English because I was still here, still trapped, still lost and alone and so, so afraid.
But I didn’t cry.
Didn’t cry.