Page 99 of Deviant Illusions

Some are standing against the wall dressed in all black, wearing mirrored masks. Even their hands are covered. Others are dotted around the table. They all stand when we enter. Apart from one woman who looks like the definition of frail. There’s barely any meat beneath the skin over the back of her hands, showing every bone and tendon.

Yet it’s her eyes that are fucking with me. They’re stark white and her chair at the head of the table is higher than the others around it, like she’s lording over them. Helene takes her seat at the other end, which is even higher, sitting back like she’s royalty. Her fingers curl over the edges of the lion’s head engraved into the armrests. There are serpents carved into the spindles at each side of the back of the chair, resting above her head are ram’s horns and it’s not until I walk around it that Isee the fucking lion’s head attached to the back of the chair. Its eyes are open, nostrils flared, like it’s on guard and watching everything. Not a carving or a wooden structure. A real lion’s head is mounted to the back of her chair. The horns must be real too, making me think that the leathery black snakes are also another fatality of her taxidermy obsession.

Helene looks at the seat beside her, then to me. I sit Delilah next to me, then take the one she looked at in the hopes it will get us on her less evil side so we can escape. Once everyone is seated, she looks around the table, cataloguing the position they’ve chosen, and lifts two fingers. The masked people come to life and they lay silver trays covered in cloches in the middle of the table. The smell isn’t the same as the previous meal—if it can be called that —we attended with this sick bitch. She smiles, warmly, like a grandmother should. “My mother’s appetite has changed in age, so this is to appease her.”

I look at the frail woman again, trying to work out how she can be okay with this shit. In my head I always thought grandparents were warm, that they’d dote on their grandchildren, and they’d have hobbies like knitting or some shit. Not forcing their maid to go down on them while in a gimp bodysuit, performing experimental surgery at the kitchen table, or demanding rape as entertainment at a wedding.

43

DELILAH

After the worst family dinner in the history of the planet, we’re left alone. I don’t know if it’s because Kane forced me to eat so much that my stomach hurts or because of where we are, but I can’t sleep. The sun set hours ago and I spent the entire meal waiting for my grandparents to announce that I’d play for everyone.

They didn’t.

Yet the tension is still there in my joints and the urge to scream hasn’t left.

When I was younger, stupider, I enjoyed the attention at first. It morphed over the years as they became more demanding, then they introduced the bench during the lessons I’d have at my grandparents’ estate. I was so envious of Ruby’s violin lessons, because she was allowed to stand while I was forced to sit on a literal bed of nails. She always looked so elegant when she’d play, while I spent my pieces searching for someone to focus on that would provide me with the same sense of pride and attention I first felt.

Kane shuffles closer to me as he turns on his back, uncaring about his injuries, and his lips brush my ear as he whispers, “Are you on birth control?”

I have to squint to hear him when he repeats himself. The question pisses me off.

“Yeah, unless you fucked with it while you played out your fantasy of being Asher.”

Dickhead.

Hating him feels good. It gives me an outlet for all the rage inside of me. I want to argue with him, fight him, fucking hurt him. At the same time, I just want him to hold me and promise that everything will be okay. Or lie to me again, make me believe that I’m married to a man who adores me, one who’ll take care of me without the strange behavior and avoidance.

Instead, he bites out, “That wasn’t the fantasy. And good.”

“Yeah, good,” I parrot. “I wouldn’t want a child with a deranged fuck like you and your family. I’d rather kill myself than have your tainted fucking DNA inside me.”

He gets closer, his shoulder pressing against mine, his voice still low despite the fact we’re alone as he asks, “Myfamily?”

Only turning my head, I snap, “Yes. That was your grandmother who held me down while ordering you to fucking rape me, wasn’t it? Or have you forgotten our beautiful wedding?”

“Are you forgetting your father?”

“Fuck you,” I grit and elbow him in the ribs. “Sleep on the floor or in the bathtub. Better yet, dive down into the water and count every grain of sand beneath it.”

“Not happening, wife.”

My breathing is harsh as I glare at him through the dark. “I hate that word out of your mouth. I never thought it would sound like a threat, but you make it into a death sentence.”

“Good.” He grabs my thigh under the sheets. “That’s exactly what it is. ‘Til death do us part,wife.”

In my attempt to take my limb back, I end up kneeing him, and I feel better so I punch him. My knuckles probably hurt more than the small pink mark on his chest that he looks at with a stupid fucking smile on his equally stupid fucking face. Looking back at me, the arrogant fucking dickhead goads me. “I thought you’d be able to do better than that after everything I’ve done.”

The sheets get tangled around my hips as I sit up, punching him again as I seethe, “I hate you.”

He keeps fucking smiling.

It reminds me of Asher.

I climb on top of him so he can’t be like his sadistic brother and pin me down first. My arms swing wildly as I keep punching him, but he doesn’t avoid a single blow. And I deserve a reaction. I deserve him being hurt by me. He owes me the title of being in control of his pain.

So, I voice it all.

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