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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.”
