Trust No Bitch: Part 2

Lilly Philipps: Monday, 16th November, 2015

Where the hell am I?

It was the first thing Lilly thought as she opened her eyes; even that hadn't felt normal, eyelids practically glued shut as if she'd just escaped from a week long slumber. Upon opening them however, she was greeted by the same cocoon of near darkness she'd experienced when her eyes were closed. Her second thought as her other senses began to wake up was what the liquid on her hands was. She'd been so preoccupied by her disorientation she hadn't realised it straight away. But there was something there, something warm and mucoid. Her nose screwed up in repugnance as she brought her hands closer to her face, squinting in an unavailing attempt to see what it was. It was only once her eyes began to adjust to the darkness that something became clear; whatever it was, it was crimson. Shit, she thought to herself.

Blood?

With that realisation, she became painfully aware of her heart, throbbing tempestuously in her chest as if being repeatedly struck with electricity, flying against her ribs and then contracting again. Her breath became short and ragged as she got to her feet and began to flail about in the dark for a light switch, one arm outstretched and waving wildly like a blind man without his cane, the other running over her bump, the fact that all seemed to be well in that area doing little to abate her panic. After a good 45 seconds, her hand finally latched onto a piece of string and she yanked it with all her might. What she saw filled her with a fugacious sense of relief; it was just red paint on her hands. A tin of it lay open on the floor where she had lain minutes before along with a few more tins, a couple black and one white. She quickly grasped that she was in a store cupboard of some kind. The tins of paint, the shelves with various cleaning products, the broom and dustpan in the corner, were all a giveaway.

But why?

Must have been a wild night, Lilly thought, audibly spluttering. She could barely remember a thing. She repeated what she could remember from it as she turned round to face the door; she had got to the club, they'd had drinks, she'd fought with Tess, she'd texted Clara, gone to leave and then, everything slowing down, head heavy, stumbling down the corridor...

Shit.

"Someone drugged me..." She said under her breath.

The dread of her realisation was met with the dropping of her heart, from what felt like the top of the Empire State Building, to the bottom of her stomach as her eyes fell upon the door behind her. Where the handle should be, was a circular patch of wood lighter than the rest of the door and smeared crudely in the same red paint Lilly found all over her hands, a message:

Come on, Lilly, the dumb blonde trope is overused.

We all know you're smarter than that.

There's still time:

Give me a name and you shall go to the ball.

The ball? She thought as she paced back and forth, the cupboard seeming to shrink by the second, the ceiling lowering, the walls edging closer and closer together like lift doors. They were just ready to crush her body in between them, leave her an amassment of guts and bones on the floor and then, as if they really had done so, all air promptly exiting her lungs, her heart itself emitting a horrified, imperceptible gasp, it came to her:

The wedding.

Her dad's wedding. What time was it? Was it the morning? How long had she been in the cupboard for? The wedding began at 12. Lilly immediately began pounding on the door, convulsing with fervent sobs but she knew her aim of attracting help or attention was forlorn; in the time she'd been awake in the cupboard, the only thing that had punctuated the silence was the frolicsome tweeting of the birds outside, almost as if they were teasing her.