Chapter 15 Silas
SILAS
Ibolt upright with a rasping inhale. And immediately after, I groan, clutching my pounding head, the dim bedroom tilting on its axis around me. Roxana stirs next to me with a faint moan but doesn’t wake.
Dawn must be near, the first rays of dull, grey daylight falling in through the open curtains.
But when did I go to bed? When did I come home from work?
Once again, I have no recollection of that.
The last thing I remember is the lamb chop dinner Roxana made for me on Monday night.
But I haven’t the faintest clue how much time has passed since then.
A sense of paralysing dread settles over me as I’m forced to admit to myself that these blackouts keep getting drastically worse.
I have never felt so helpless in my life.
I have had things go wrong in my external circumstances, such as getting passed over for tenure once.
And I have had things go wrong with my body, like when my carpal tunnel got so bad three years ago that I needed surgery.
But to have my mind turn against me is to be more hopeless than I have ever been.
My whole life, I thought that getting cancer or other grave illnesses of the body would be the worst disaster that could happen to me.
But what wouldn’t I give for even that if it meant that I could be myself again and not lose time?
Anything.
I would give anything.
My mouth is completely dry, and trying to swallow feels like ingesting razors.
I reach for the glass of water on my nightstand, my muscles protesting and my vision swimming.
I knock it to the ground with a splash and a thud, though luckily the glass doesn’t break.
Roxana moans louder and rolls to her side, her back to me, the duvet sliding down her bare back until it rests around the sharp curve of her waist.
I groan soundlessly and collapse back onto the pillow, closing my eyes. And as I do, snippets of something come back to me. Something that is like a dream of a nightmare. I close my eyes to delve deeper into my scattered memories, replaying them in my mind’s eye.
I am in the kitchen, and I’m just a passenger in my own body. I have no control over the way it moves, no control over what I say, what I think. I’m but a watcher.
Roxana is there in her little black dress, her dark hair flowing around her shoulders, and her hip jutting alluringly to the side when she shifts her weight. Her head is thrown back as she’s chugging red wine straight from a bottle.
“That’s it, my dark darling, drink deep,” I encourage her, barely recognising my own voice, so harsh and commanding as it is.
She sets the bottle down on the island counter with a sharp clink, and she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. Her chest is heaving with deep breaths, and her eyes are drunk and a little unfocused.
“Take these,” I instruct her, handing her three pills I recognise as the really-should-not-be-over-the-counter stuff she always brings from Romania for her period cramps. “I only want you to scream with delight tonight. No pain,” I add in that same, sinister voice.
Roxana takes the tablets without hesitation and washes them down with another swig from the bottle, even though I am fairly certain that the medicine should not be combined with alcohol.
“What are you planning to do to me that I need those for?” she slurs, but is smiling excitedly, in her eyes a shine I haven’t seen in years.
“You’re getting your brand tonight,” I reply, coldly and harshly, but I burn with a desire so potent it’s like a fire raging in every cell of my being. “I’m going to mark you as my own in the Enemy’s house. It’s time to show Him that you are all mine. And that He has no place here no more.”
Roxana laughs a deep, guttural laugh as she stomps in place, stumbling a little and clapping her hands together.
The drugs and alcohol are clearly taking effect; her eyes are mad, her whole expression completely deranged.
But here’s the strangest thing. My present self—the achy and broken one lying in bed—is put off by her.
But my watcher self in the dream that doesn’t really feel like a dream is utterly mesmerised.
Her sinister side is something I always knew she had, but wanted her to suppress as much as possible, recoiling in discomfort from the dark intensity of her.
But in that moment, I’m completely overpowered by a powerful draw to her. An addiction. An obsession.
Back in the bedroom, I glance at my wife, at the flow of her ebony hair on the pillow, the graceful tenderness of her exposed neck, the intimate depression of her spine.
She is exceptionally beautiful for a woman pushing thirty, objectively I know that.
But try as I might, I am unable to summon even a fraction of the yearning I felt for her in that strange, strange dream.
I close my eyes again, and the next snippet comes to me, and my innards roll as I comprehend the meaning of the words that had come out of my mouth earlier. The Enemy’s house. He has no place here no more.