Page 5 of Delivered to the Devil

The massive man hops onto the bed, pinning me with his weight as he straddles me.

As he leans over to reach for one of my pillows, the lights in the courtyard come on, filtering through the thin curtains and revealing a cold set of gray eyes beneath thick eyebrows. A diagonal scar intersects one brow, lending him a menacing look—or rather, enhances the danger that permeates every single feature from his detached gaze to the sharp angles of his jaw and thick bone structure.

I’m not sure how or why, but somehow, I stop thrashing, shocked and mesmerized by the unabashed danger this man exudes.

He yanks the casing off the pillow, and when he places it over my head, about to pull it down, his eyes meet mine. He stops as if something has caught his attention.

I should look away—break the contact instead of staring the tiger straight in the eye—but I can’t help myself. Confusion, fear,and a strange urge to give in become a whirlwind of emotion inside me. My breaths come in heavy drags as I blink, look away, and look back at him.

He should resemble pure evil. And maybe he does to others. But to me, there’s something potent and worthy about him that robs me of air and hits straight into that instinctive place where my submission resides.

His head tilts a bit—only the slightest of motions—as he seems to study me. Then his eyes soften. Again, not much, but enough to make them seem less cold. A trace of something... human?

Without breaking eye contact, he gently slides a hand under my head to lift it, and in that moment, I can’t help feeling grateful. Grateful for the small sliver of tenderness. Tears gather at the corners of my eyes, and I blink to contain them, not wanting to display my vulnerability to this dangerous man.

But as he cradles my head, the pools grow bigger and spill over. It’s only a single tear, but it feels no better than a full-on crying fit when his gaze shifts to follow the tear on its way down my cheek. Suddenly, it’s not fear that has me in a chokehold. It’s the vulnerability I can’t handle. Lying here with my mouth stuffed and distended, my hands bound, and my body naked and exposed. Now also with a pleading need for comfort shining in my eyes when I should only feel fear and hatred.

It’s when he reaches up to trail a finger down the wet stripe that I break. I cry, whimpering into the fabric in my mouth as tears run in streams down my temples.

When he pulls the pillowcase over my head, enclosing me in blinding darkness, I succumb to a despair that has me jerking and shaking my head. Claustrophobia closes in on me. Choking loneliness. I’ve always felt alone, but this loneliness is starker than any I’ve ever known, searing deep into my soul.

My chest heaves as air rushes in and out of my nostrils, sucking the fabric close and blocking my only airway. When he drags rope over my neck, panic fully descends like it had been accumulating during the moment of reprieve. I writhe, kick my bound legs, and scream into the gag.

This time, though, there’s no violence in his movements. He seems almost careful as he lifts my head and winds the rope around my neck. Once. Twice. But his carefulness is not enough to counterbalance the threat of the rope. Not even when I realize it’s only a practical precaution to keep the pillowcase in place can I calm down.

My struggling becomes ever more crazed, and I whip my head from side to side and up and down as I jerk and twist on the mattress. My neck hurts from the thrashing, my throat from the screaming, but I can’t control any of it. All I can do is pant in a frantic rhythm. In and out through my nose, over and over again. But no oxygen reaches my lungs, and foggy spots dance in my mind as I grow dizzy.

A large hand presses down on my forehead, forcing my head into the mattress. I try to fight it but quickly realize the futility of it and go still. Stiff and tense, but still nonetheless. It’s enough to slow my breathing to a steady tempo that pulls me back from the ledge of unconsciousness.

As I give up the fight, he eases the pressure on my forehead. His hand just lies there, and somehow I’m almost grateful for it—grateful that it shoves back the panic and prevents me from hurting my already strained neck further.

At some point, I realize the room has gone quiet. Eerily so. Nothing else happens. We just wait. And I have no idea what for.

The ticking of my clock becomes an obtrusive sound that seems to grow louder by the second until it’s almost deafening. The wind in the big tree in the courtyard cuts through the silence like a storm is rustling its branches.

But I don’t hear the slightest sounds from the men. Barely a breath. I have lost awareness of the thin one. It’s only because I haven’t heard the front door slam that I know he must still be here. The man straddling me just sits there, his hand an unwelcome, yet appreciated weight on my forehead. We’re all suspended in a strange limbo.

My mind goes through all kinds of horrid scenarios as I lie there waiting. What I find most terrifying is the way they seem to work on routine, as if this is just another night on the job. The way they seem to be here for me.

But if they’re human traffickers, wouldn’t they be hauling me out of here by now?

I rack my brain to find a plausible explanation for this strange scenario, but come up blank.

I don’t know how much time passes like this. At first, I try to count the seconds, but my brain loses focus at around five minutes, and after what seems like ten, I give up.

Tick tock, tick tock.Time keeps ticking, darkness keeps pervading, and a slow haze creeps over my senses.

More than half an hour must have passed when the sound of my front door finally breaks me out of the dazed inertia.

Click, click, click, click.The same sound of fancy men’s shoes as before approaches, and my mind conjures images of polished leather, square heels, and perforations. It’s an image I used to love—an image that now instills fear in me. Squeaky sneakers would somehow seem less ominous. Less dangerous.

When the new man stops beside the bed, the massive one hops off to sit beside me. He’s still gentle when he lifts my bound hands over my head and places his other hand flat on my chest. The hand is surely meant to keep me in place, but like when he held my forehead, the intent seems more soothing than restrictive, and my mind struggles to remember this man is my perpetrator.

The warped pull I feel toward him only grows when what must be the scrawny man moves through the room to grab my legs cruelly. I remember how the massive man handled me the same way earlier, and it’s only now that I truly realize the change in him. At first, both men were cold and indifferent; now one is calm and gentle, one cruel and cold. The contrast messes with my head, making the hand on my chest seem protective even though I know it’s anything but.

I startle at the feeling of a third set of hands—the new man. Fingertips graze my thighs almost reverently. Slowly, they make their way down my legs, then back to the junction between my thighs, raising goosebumps along my skin as they go. They find their way to my hip bone and travel up along the sensitive skin on my stomach, ending their journey at my breasts, where they draw small circles around my nipples.

I tense at the intimate touch, expecting the hands to suddenly grab on hard. But they don’t. Instead, the long, slender fingers travel back to my stomach, continuing the circling motions there.

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