Page 40 of Delivered to the Devil

I shake my head, tears slipping onto my cheeks.

“Stay here,” he urges.

Slowly, memories seep into my mind. Ugly and brutal. Images, feelings, and sounds. Hurt, grief, longing, and loss. It’s one big jumbled mess. I break into heavy sobs as everything pushes to come out at once. My throat strains with the desperate sounds, my muscles constricting in painful spasms.

I fall off the bed—or someone pulls me down. I’m not sure. But strong arms catch me, and I land in a lap where I’m held with a tenderness so intense it hurts. At this very moment, I don’t care whether it’s real or fake. I just want more of it, and I cling to the man who offers it.

He lifts me back onto the bed, tucking me into his embrace as he lies beside me and pulls the comforter over us. I have no idea how long we stay there, but it’s for a long time. Sobs keep tearing at my throat and wrenching at my chest. When they finally stop, a violent fit of shaking seizes my body. Somewhere along the way, darkness takes the light, and we remain in the same embrace until I go still, breathing heavily against his neck.

Mere hours ago, I was paralyzed by the lack of emotion; now I’m paralyzed by too many. I don’t dare to move, afraid it will allslam back into me. Slowly, the fog of several days’ detachment clears, and everything comes back to me. The forced move, the week of settling in and gaining a sense of safety, and having Gabor shatter that safety in the blink of an eye as he defiled my body and reduced me to nothing.But most of all, I remember the breach of trust. I remember how these arms that I somehow had come to trust betrayed me. Suddenly, I can’t stand feeling them.

I pull out of them and push up to sit on the bed.

Janos reaches for me, and I move farther away. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t pretend that you care,” I say in a trembling voice.

He watches me for a long moment, and even though his features are hidden in the darkness, his eyes stand out. I search them, hoping to find something to hold on to.

“I tried to stop him,” he says, voice thick with regret. It’s the first truly profound words he’s ever spoken to me, and I stare at him in shock as he continues with a defeated sigh. “I tried to tell him you weren’t ready, but he was hell-bent on going through with it. So I tried being there for you instead—ease the pain by holding you.”

Fresh tears gather in my eyes, and a few drops fall from my cheeks, disappearing into the darkness.

I should hold on to the hurt and keep hating him. Because he just sat there, watching as Gabor kicked me around on the floor and tore me apart from behind. Maybe he did try to stop Gabor, but he didn’t do it even though he easily could have.

Yet, this small new piece of information is enough to break through my pain. Knowing he tried means everything. Knowing he cares enough to ease my pain is more than I could hope for in this darkness that has consumed my world. So I cling to it with everything I have, letting that small sliver of warmth be my beacon of light.

***

Janos is here most of the time during the next few days. Whenever I think he has left, I find him on his laptop in the living room or filling the tub for me in the bathroom.

I could spend hours in that tub, and sometimes I think I do.

Janos always sits on the closed toilet behind me when I’m in the water, watching over me like a hawk. Even as I hear him tapping away on his laptop, I constantly feel his eyes prickling at the back of my neck. I think he’s worried I’ll slip into the water and stay there. I can’t blame him. The idea frequently pops into my head. But I don’t think I could go through with it. I’m not strong enough—or maybe I’m not weak enough.

When I’m not in the tub and I’m not sleeping, I’m crying. Janos often comes to lie with me in bed, letting me sob into his shoulder. At first, the grief only gets worse at the feeling of his strong arms closing around me with an empty promise of safety. But after some time, I stop caring about intentions and lean on his strength to carry the burden with me.

I’m constantly jumpy and anxious. The doorbell sends me into a full-fledged panic attack more than once. “It’s just the delivery guy,” Janos reassures and rushes out to get the food, so he can return and take me in his arms, where he holds me until the tears run dry and the food goes cold.

Eating is hard the first few days after I’ve left the coma-like state. Janos always places me on the edge of the bed and sits in front of me to feed me, never letting me control the food myself. Sometimes, a hard look is enough to make me open my mouth, but other days, I refuse and turn away from him or even fight him.

It doesn’t matter what I do; Janos is adamant about getting nourishment in me. So when I go belligerent, he simply setsthe plate aside and carries me to the living room—crying and begging or kicking and screaming—and ties me to a chair.

The defeat of being physically subdued is often enough to make me cooperate, but one day, I’m stuck so deep in my own defiance I can’t give in despite the defeat of the ropes. I bite my lips together like a petulant child even as the tears keep trickling down my face.

Janos leans forward and presses his index finger into my stomach. “Maybe I should get someone to come insert a feeding tube, huh?”

I stare at him in horror, but there’s no flinch or hint of a bluff. He means it. And why wouldn’t he? Janos doesn’t care about my dignity. So I part my lips and let him shove a spoonful of stew inside.

It takes a few days for my senses to come back to life, and as they do, it gets easier to eat. Still, Janos keeps insisting on feeding me. I’m not sure if it’s a control thing or a fucked-up way to take care of me. I let myself believe it’s the latter and find comfort in the gesture. It’s deeply intimate having him control something as basic as my food, and one day when he sits in front of me, watching me intently as he feeds me, I find the courage to ask him something I have been aching to know.

“Why are you here all the time?”

Janos digs the spoon into the steaming bean stew and holds it up for me. “I have to make sure you’re good to go again on Friday.”

My stomach sinks, a heavy rock slamming into the empty pit. I don’t know what I hoped for. A confession of feelings or a promise to protect me? I want to hit myself over the head for being so naïve. A small glimmer of something human doesn’t mean he’s suddenly a different person. He’s still the man who comes at night and prepares me to be raped. Being here is onlypart of his job. He comforts and holds me because I’m so brittle I’ll break if he doesn’t.

I’m seeing things I need to see, not things that are actually there. Survival, I guess. I’m losing my grasp on reality. Everything floats around in a chaotic mess, and I can’t tell the truth from what’s false, reality from fantasy. First, it was my body failing me when it made me orgasm at the hands of my perpetrator. Over and over. Now, it’s also my heart and my mind.

Nothing is mine anymore. I have no control or say in anything.

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