Page 7 of Delivered to the Devil

I gulp past a growing knot in my throat. No. Not even her. She might think she’s nothing like our parents, having left our oppressive hometown years ago, but she, too, would think I was partly to blame. I remember all too clearly how she tried, but failed to play the supportive sister after the incident that drove me away at long last and made me come to get a fresh start. I could see the judgment tightening her expression, and I’d surely hear it in her voice now too.

Racking my brain, I try to think of a friend I could call instead. Or maybe someone I know from the BDSM clubs I used to attend back in Denmark. But no. Whatever friends I had turned their backs on me like the rest of the town when I refused to accept their oh-so well-meaning “help.” And I always kept the men I met at the clubs at an arm’s distance, unable to let anyone in.

I drop onto my bed with a defeated sigh, then punch in the Hungarian emergency number on my phone. I’m not sure this classifies as an emergency anymore, but I don’t know what else to do. A Hungarian woman with rusty English picks up, and it’s not without difficulty that I explain to her that I’ve had a break-in.

Half an hour later, the police show up, snapping pictures of my door, wrists, and legs and dusting surfaces for fingerprints. They pick up a couple, which they seem confident will be a help.

When it’s time to give my statement, I tell them everything—not in detail, but enough to give them the whole picture. When one of the officers asks if the men raped me and I shake my head, he raises an eyebrow. I’m not sure if he doesn’t believe me or he’s just mystified by my most unusual story.

“Any other kind of penetration? Fingers, toys… glass bottle?”

I shudder at the question and shake my head once more while staring at my wringing hands in my lap.

“So, you say they tied you up, touched you a little, then left?” The officer glances at his partner with disbelief edged into his features.

“Yes,” I murmur in a barely audible voice and slump my shoulders. This is almost as humiliating as the attack.

The officers leave me with an assurance that they’ll get back to me in a few days.

Despite my statement being bizarre, they at least have enough evidence to know that a crime, indeed, was committed, and I didn’t make up the whole thing. So I allow myself to hope they’ll at least attempt to catch my perpetrators.

***

The following days, I’m constantly on edge, fighting an unwinnable battle against crushing anxiety.

When I get off work in the middle of the night, I take the fastest route home and half-run most of the two miles. I constantly glance over my shoulder as I clutch my phone, and adrenaline pumps through my system as my muscles tighten, preparing to flee.

Once I’m finally back inside my apartment, where I should feel safe, the anxiety builds to new heights that almost have me running back to the streets to be among people. But instead, I drag a dresser into the hall to barricade the door. It’s a hassle and probably as effective as the door chain, but it gives me a sense of security that I desperately need, so I keep doing it every night.

After having secured the door, I curl up under the comforter and lie stiffly in bed with the night light on for hours, unable to find a moment’s rest.

Several nights go by like this, and I’m more than embarrassed by my appearance when I show up at work in the afternoons.

I look wrecked—tired to the bone. Dark lines circle my otherwise clear, green eyes, my round cheeks have lost their glow, and my usually rosy, plump lips are colorless and drawn into a straight line.

When Elek asks if I’m okay, I write him off, saying there’s been a lot of noise from the streets at night.

In an attempt to cover up the weariness, I become more generous with my makeup, spending half an hour in front of the mirror until I look like many of the Hungarian women I see working the restaurants along the river.

The makeup only seems to make everything worse, though. When I enter the kitchen, I get a shrill whistle and a smack on my ass. “Someone has gotten dick all night.” Izsák’s sleazy voice makes my skin crawl like I’m covered in a thousand bugs.

He keeps going like this for the next couple of days until he shifts to a different kind of scorn. “Get some fucking sleep, will you? I can’t have my employees looking like hookers that have been working all night.” He doesn’t need to put the underlying threat into words. I’m well aware that he’s implicitly threatening to fire me if I don’t get my shit together.

I can’t do anything about the horrible anxiety that sneaks up on me in the darkness of the night and robs me of any and all rest, so I attempt to sleep during the day instead. Curtains open and window ajar so people in the street will hear if I scream for help. It’s difficult to sleep with all the noise and light, but I manage to get a few hours a day—which is more than I get at night. It gives me just enough energy to get me through my shifts, but I’m still tired and slow. I try to compensate by putting on a wide, soulless smile every time Izsák is near. He clearlydoesn’t care that my smile is as fake as a Chinese Gucci bag because my strategy seems to work.

A week after the break-in, the police call as promised.

“Unfortunately, we don’t have enough evidence to make a case,” the man on the line tells me.

“What about the fingerprints and the scratched-up lock?” I ask, my voice tense with shock and outrage.

“I’m sorry, but we’re unable to make a case,” is all I get.

My voice gets shriller as I explain that they were here, taking pictures of both the lock and the marks on my body and picked up fingerprints, and it doesn’t make sense that they don’t have enough.

The officer doesn’t even try to argue. He only repeats the phrase, saying they’re unable to make a case, then apologizes and hangs up. I’m left with a feeling that it’s a bad excuse, covering up something else. What happened to me clearly isn’t severe enough for them to spend their precious time investigating it.

The rejection hurts and hits a little too close to home. My family wasn’t much different when they wrote me off after I refused to follow their advice and seek help for “my perversions,” like my mother so nicely put it.

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