Deliverance [malexmale]

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Twelve

I never passed out.

Everything just turned black. I felt hot and out of breath. My throat was dry, mouth parched, and I parted my lips to anything that might be water, but turned out to be something foul. I remembered choking, because I forgot how to breath somehow. I remembered feeling phantom pains coursing up and down my back, the sound of people laughing around me, something splashed my face and I remembered trying to lick it up in hopes that it was water, only for it to be something bitter and hot.

It felt like centuries before the drug began to loosen its hold on me. I couldn't remember the last time I wasn't in a state of confusion. I couldn't remember anything, actually.

Once I began to wade through the haze of the drug, I found myself tied to a chair in a small room with a single light bulb swinging over my head. For such a tiny light bulb, it was extremely bright and stung my eyes when I managed to open them. My eyes felt sore, like they'd sunken into the back of my skull, as if I hadn't slept in ages. And I really hadn't. Everything had blurred together into a cacophony of confusion.

I had no idea where I was at.

Or why it was so cold.

I blinked a few times, scanning the room before everything in it began to come into focus. The room was bigger than I thought it was when I first regained my vision. There was a bed pushed against one wall, a boarded up window behind it. There were strange slender lamps on the dresser and desk in the room, filled with some strange goo that slipped up and down inside. There was a door opened to a bathroom to my left, and another door across from me.

The next sense that returned was my sense of smell, and my nose burned at the horrid stench of the room. It reeked of blood, filth, piss. It felt like the worst smells had been gathered into this one room and there was nothing to filter it out.

And then sound... The sound of music thumping from somewhere outside the room. The sound of a man coughing outside the door. The sound of a woman shrieking, another woman moaning, a man sobbing somewhere nearby... Laughter. Laughter that sounded strangely familiar.

Where the hell am I?

I tried to remember what happened, but nothing was coming in. The last thing I remembered was... Maybe Arikos's apartment? He'd tried to kiss me. Something went wrong. Something happened and I left. I couldn't remember what happened afterwards.

I tried to move my hands to cup my aching head, but they were twisted behind me painfully and tied tight with something that cut into my wrists every time I moved. I felt something beside me jingle and I tilted my head back to see that an IV bag was hung on a stand, and a long tube that fed into a needle that appeared to have once been stuck in my neck, but now hung loosely from the pole.

Drugged. I was drugged.

Was it the same drug I'd been slipped before?

Has to be. Why else would I have ended up here? Wherever here was. However, the more I tried to remember what happened before, the less I remembered until I couldn't even remember what I was doing with Arikos beforehand... Or what happened between then and the time I'd woken up in Hannibal's apartment.

A sliver of fear and panic went through me, but I managed to control my breathing so I didn't get hysterical. Except that feeling of control didn't last as the door opened and I tensed, my stomach dropping like a heavy rock in my stomach as Tiberius stepped into the room, doing the buckle for his pants. He looked like he'd just come from a shower, a towel hanging over his naked shoulders, his hair swept back from his face and dripping from the ends.