Page 63 of Devious Delusions

He turns sweet and peppers the side of my face with his lips. The kisses continue down my neck to my shoulder and then to my bicep. Each one gets more obnoxious than the last until I’ve softened, and he smiles widely as he stretches his neck around me.

“Are you ever going to write something for me?” He pulls me into his chest.

I hum and delay answering. The truth will just lead to an argument, and we can’t argue in this house. My parents will hear, and they’ll start bitching about me ruining the perfect match. Everyone talks about us like we’re going to donate organs to each other, not like we’re in a relationship.

Each piece I write is because of an emotion, positive or negative. It has to be felt before I can string the notes together to something coherent. I love Asher, but it’s not maddening. It doesn’t make me sick to my stomach or inspire something deeper. It just exists in the same way I eat cherries—I’m happy to have them, but I don’t crave them.

28

DELILAH

Curiosity gets the better of me after finishing my call with Asher and attempting to soothe the ache in my muscles with a steaming shower. Each step I take is slow for more reason than the ache settling back into my body. I expect the freak, the ghost, to be waiting for me as I walk through the house.

The top floor is empty and there’s no other evidence of him being here. My shoulders sag and I have to force my dragging feet to move down the stairs. Everything’s the same; there’s not a single thing out of place since he turned up in my bedroom.

Pausing on the second-to-last step, I turn my head, looking around the open space. If I see him, I’ll lie and say I’m checking for my safety. The real reason is something worse, something terrifying and wrong. I can barely admit it to myself, but he intrigues me. It’s not due to the masks, or the fact he’s fixated on me. It’s deeper and I’m drawn to him.

My excuse will be my clearly fragile mental state because around him I’m normal. For the first time since I woke up in this strange world, married to a man I mourned, I am normal. My memories aren’t being questioned. Ghost is altering them, buthe’s slipping himself between what I know instead of rewriting them entirely.

The phrase my father loved is called forward as I stand in an empty house and hold the banister for support.

“There are three versions of the truth. Your version, the other person’s, and what actually happened.”

My mother’s voice decides to add her two cents.

“But an intelligent person knows how to meld all three together to get what they want. They know the importance of preserving just enough information that it wins over the fickle mind of what’s standing in her way.”

Even when they’re out of my life and in my head, they both manage to find a way to be manipulative cunts and she always has to have her voice heard.

A slip of card is sticking out under the door, the edges framed in red, and I slowly walk towards it. My inner thighs burn, and it feels like I’ve been torn in two. A pained whimper leaves me as I bend in half to pick it up. The soreness between my thighs is mentally painful as well as physical. The physical ache is good, I enjoy it, but the mental anguish is fucking hell.

Turning the card over, I smile and hate the curve on my face as I read the typed note.

Good morning, koukla mou.

There’s ice and a heating pad waiting for you.

I can’t wait to test out the new chairs when we play next.

Mine.

I can’t stop staring at tangible proof that he’s real. I haven’t had some freak accident or a vivid dream, he was here and I’m not imagining things. I keep staring at the thick card as Iinelegantly shuffle into the kitchen. The table I picked is set up in the corner and there are no boxes or packaging laying on the floor.

The thick oak slab adds warmth to the space and Asher won’t be able to topple it with the wide base, but the chairs are new. High-backed with long bars breaking up the sleek wood that runs the length of the back of the chair and reaches the floor. I know I’m fucked up when I smile wider at the thought of what Ghost will do.

A heating pad sits in the middle of the wood beside a bucket of ice, condensation pooling on the outside of the stainless steel, and near the rim is the normal reflective silver, but the bottom is duller with the droplets slowly dripping down to the towel he’s rested it on.

He’s left things to comfort me and made sure not to fuck up the table with any rings on the wood. This weird freak, who only wears black and a mask, had the forethought to lay down a towel to collect the condensation on the table after he built it.

Realization hits me. If he built it, he collected the delivery after cutting off my air. He couldn’t have done that in a mask, and I have to hold the wall for extra support as I walk as fast as I’m able to Asher’s office. The door slams against the wall in my urgency to check the cameras and I fall into his office chair as soon as I round the desk. I wince as the springs catch me and grab the edge of his desk to pull myself closer with my middle finger tapping against the keyboard.

The monitor in the middle of the desk doesn’t light up, but the ones attached to the wall come to life. It asks for the password, and I enter the same one that Asher showed me in the exact sequence to unlock it. Scrubbing the footage back to the previous day, I watch on tenterhooks for the moment the ghost is revealed.

My boredom before him is visceral. I’m the ghost haunting an empty house as I walk through it, and it shows me pausing in the kitchen. It must have been when he was standing in the tree line watching me, but the other vantages didn't pick him up. Speeding up the playback, I lean forward, ignoring the soreness of more pressure applied to my ass and thighs.

The footage doesn’t glitch. Instead, there’s a smooth transition of something that never fucking happened as I leave the bedroom.

Alone.

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