Page 102 of Disturbed Lucidity

“Assholes.” Vicious glared, flipping his brothers the one-finger bird. “Like I was saying, who are we to judge them? I can’t speak for the brothers in Disturbed, but Montana, take a really good hard look at everything your old man’s done? Mercy, look at your wife’s past. Hell, my beautiful Linsey’s past wasn’t pretty. Fury, look at your past and tell me you can condemn two innocent people for shit they didn’t know about or had any control over?”

Fury sneered at being singled out, “You fucking know I can’t.”

“He’s right,” my brother Trash said, shocking all of my brothers, me included.

Trash never spoke. Like ever.

“Some of us have spent a lifetime trying to forget and move on from a past that was not of our making. Some succeeded. Some didn’t. Not gonna let Ivy fall victim to hers. Don’t care how she came to be here. I’m not throwing her away like... trash.”

“Uh.” Slash frowned, holding up his hand. “Am I the only one curious about what happened to Ivy’s baby?”

Chapter Thirty-One

Ivy

Pain.

So much fucking pain.

Everything hurt. The pain was so excruciating that it made my body shudder uncontrollably, spasm involuntarily, and ache relentlessly, leaving me struggling to catch my breath.

I didn’t know how to control it.

Nothing worked. There was no reprieve.

It was a constant presence, crashing over me like an unrelenting tidal wave. In a moment of agony, I screamed and instinctively clutched my stomach. Desperate to alleviate the torment coursing through my veins, I attempted various methods, but none offered respite.

With each passing moment, the pain intensified.

Father brought me in here when I wet myself. I pleaded with him, my voice filled with desperation, but he remained unmoved by my words. He never listened to me. I tried cleaning it up before he found the mess I made, but I wasn’t fast enough.

I found myself trapped in the blue room, feeling a sense of despair as there was no escape and no one around to offer assistance. Throughout the course of several months, I’d experienced a constant feeling of sickness, resulting in frequent episodes of throwing up, regardless of the time of day. My father subjected me to relentless whipping as punishment for my inability to exercise self-control. With the passing of each month, I noticed that my belly was starting to grow larger and rounder. Fearing my father’s reaction to my weight gain, I began restricting my food consumption to avoid any potential anger. But that only made things worse.

Then I felt it.

A strange sensation stirred within me, an internal movement that seemed to twist and kick, as though something was alive and restless, trying to fight its way out of me. I screamed bloody murder the first time I felt it move. Trembling with fear, I looked to my father for comfort, and he calmly assured me that everything was part of God’s plan.

He gifted me with a new pillow that night.

It was really soft.

Following that, my father reassured me that I no longer had to endure encounters with his friends. That I was fulfilling God’s plan, and I was to stay in my room. I didn’t understand.

During the next few months, I didn’t leave my room and became increasingly mesmerized by the sight of my stomach swelling with each passing day. I knew that there was something extraordinary brewing within me. Father said it was. Excitement coursed through me while I eagerly anticipated uncovering its identity, but at the same time, I couldn’t help but worry about its means of escape.

I slept a lot during that time.

I was so tired.

A sharp pain in my back abruptly awakened me last night. No matter how much I shifted and adjusted, I couldn’t find a comfortable position. It helped when I walked around my room for a while or when I sat on the toilet. Tired, I tried to go back to sleep and that’s when I wet myself. It got everywhere.

My bed, the floor, my rug.

On my knees, diligently cleaning up the mess, I caught a whiff of my father’s cologne when he walked in.

He smiled and yanked me from my room. He dragged me down the hall toward a room I knew well. I pleaded, begged him to let me stay in my room. That I would do better next time, but he didn’t listen to me.

Now I was in the blue room.

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