Rodan's Embrace

Overwritten

ELLA

Sunlight seeps between my eyelids. By the brightness, I assume it is midday. I do not wish to wake. I wish to sleep. But I must get up. I must find out what Stravos and I were given at that party last night. My stomach is upset.

The air smells different. Of sweat. I stretch and inhale the unpleasant aroma.

And that's when I feel the hand wrapped about my own. A smooth hand. A thick hand. Immediately I take mine away.

This must be a dream.

My heart races.

Breathe... breathe...

The mantra I used as a girl no longer works. Fear keeps me from turning to face Stravos. But when I do, he's not there. He's not there.

Instead, asleep in my bed is a man I do not recognize. Bald. Pudgy. Hairy.

I scream.

"Stravos! Stravos, help!"

The man stirs. I rip the sheet from the bed, and I wrap it about my naked body.

The man leaps from the bed and covers my mouth. Tears roll down my face. My muscles harden, prepared for a fight. One I would be destined to lose. This man is very large. There's a musket next to Stravos' side of the bed. That hadn't been there last night. At least not that I can recall. My throat aches as my body is capable only of wailing at the instantaneous, deep despair and confusion over what I'm seeing.

No. This cannot be real. This must be the effects of the capsules. Delusions. Yes. I'm simply hysterical. That's all. Breathe. Breathe.

Only after I have stopped screaming does the man remove his thick palm from my lips. I taste the salt of his sweat. The smell whirling through the air is old and familiar but I cannot quite place it in this daze and Stravos is nowhere. I look about the room.

"What have you done with him? Am I seeing things, Stavos? You look different. Do I appear as a different woman to you? Those capsules—we never should have taken them."

The man releases me and his distant eyes scan my body. The way he looks at me makes me shiver. The rest of the room is exactly the same. Nothing else has changed.

"You're the woman I married. Five years ago today, doll."

Doll. That word rips me apart. My lips quiver as I manage to speak. "What have you done with him?" I rush into a corner where I crouch as the tears tumble over each other.

"Done with whom, my love?"

I sob. Heaving, uncontrollable sobs, recalling the weight of Stravos' hand in mine, night after night for five years, and the presence of a different weight this morning.

"Stravos!" I choke out. "What have you done with my husband?"

The man crouches next to me and swipes his palm through my hair. It's a gentle gesture, but it only causes me to tremble.

'Whatever are you talking about?"

I look into his blue eyes. They harbor a haunted expression, a pained expression. I scream again for Stravos, but there's no answer. The chambermaid enters the room, but she takes a single look at me and hangs her head. She turns to leave but I plead with her to stay. She only shakes her head. I yell for her again, for Stravos.

"Hush, woman," the man grunts. My stomach churns. Bile rises in my throat.

"Stravos! Help me, please!" I yell, but I'm hyperventilating, and the words come out as a whelp. I repeat my husband's name over and over as I hug my knees to my body. Rock back and forth as my mother never did for me when I was a child, and though the actions are meant to soothe, they simply caused more tears to roll over and over. To splash on the wooden floor, to soak the sheet and my shoulders.