Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 85224 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 426(@200wpm)___ 341(@250wpm)___ 284(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85224 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 426(@200wpm)___ 341(@250wpm)___ 284(@300wpm)
I know something’s wrong when I blurt those words. My pain tolerance is high. Usually, I can dissociate. Float away to somewhere else. But not now. My heart is racing. I’m sweating. And the room is spinning.
“Give me something,” I beg. “Anything.”
Magda presses her hand to my forehead and grimaces. “You’re burning up.”
She opens a bottle of Tylenol and hands me two. Instinctively, I know they aren’t what I need. But I take them anyway and wash them down with the glass of water that she hands me. And then I promptly heave myself over the toilet and vomit them back up a moment later.
This is when Alexei reappears, frowning at the scene before him. I’m sprawled out on the tile floor, naked and shivering as my brain spews words out of my mouth.
“Just let me die!” I scream. “Give me something. Anything. End it. Please.”
I’m crying. For the first time in too long to remember. There’s no numbness, no comfort for me. I feel everything now. Even the weight of his concerned gaze as I writhe on the floor. I don’t want his concern. I want his mercy.
He takes four quick steps and kneels down to scoop me up into his arms. He clips out something in Russian to Magda before she scurries out of the room to do his bidding.
“You are going through withdrawal,” he tells me. “It will pass.”
I shake my head and sob into his chest. “I can’t. I can’t do it. Please…”
“You can and you will.”
His voice leaves little question. He’s sending me straight to hell.
And then we’re moving. He carries me into the other room and places me into the bed which Magda has prepared just now. The covers are folded down to the end, and he gingerly places only the sheet over my skin. It still feels like knives, so I kick it off, and he doesn’t argue.
“The doctor will be here soon,” he tells me. “It won’t last forever, Solnyshko.”
“I hate you!” I scream in a demonic voice.
He flinches, and it surprises me. There is something on his face that looks familiar. Pain. It hurts him to look at me this way. It hurts him to hear those words. The fucked up part of my brain latches onto that information and takes note of it before he gives me one last glance and then leaves the room.
Magda sets a glass of water on the nightstand and smooths back the tangled hair in my face the way that I’ve seen mothers do to their children. Not mine. Mine kept us locked away where we couldn’t disturb her.
I squeeze my eyes shut and tell Magda to stop. She does.
“It’s okay, child,” she murmurs. “Everything will be okay now. Mr. Nikolaev will take very good care of you. You are safe here.”
Her kind words anger me and I want to tell her so. I want to tell her that she’s a liar. That you are never safe. That you can never count on anyone to protect you. Only yourself. And even then, you will fail. But I don’t say anything. Because another sharp jolt of pain seizes my body and I flop onto my side and curl up in a ball.
“Try to get some rest,” she tells me in a soothing voice. “I will be right here.”
I hear her soft footfalls move to the chair by the window, and a weak thought enters my mind. Even though I lashed out at her, I am grateful that she is there. Because if I’m going to hell, at least I won’t be going alone.
Pain.
I understand now that the word truly meant nothing to me before. The thing I thought I knew well was merely a shadow of the demon that courts me now. Howling inside of me, clawing at my insides, desperate for more poison. My body is at the mercy of this demon. The sanctuary inside my head no longer exists. Nothing exists. Only the pain. The want. And the demon I cannot control.
I continue to beg Magda to end it for me. To kill me. I say horrific things that I didn’t even know I was capable of. At one point, I hear her sniffling from her chair across the room.
I think I black out for a while. Everything is fuzzy when I wake, and Magda is shaking me.
“Miss Talia,” she says, “This is Dr. Shtein. She is here to give you an exam.”
A groan is my only answer. I can’t move. I can’t even see anything but the fuzzy figure of a woman hovering over me.
“She isn’t going to hurt you,” Magda says gently. “Just making sure you are alright. It won’t take long.”
The poking and prodding that takes place over the next twenty minutes barely registers. The pain is gone, and now there is only exhaustion. I think I’m hallucinating too. My limbs don’t feel like my own as she lifts them and examines every inch of me. I’m still naked. But there is no shame anymore. There is nothing.