"Open wide, OK?" An authoritative voice said through the blinding light that was probing, sticking itself into Delilah's eye. Her other eye--the good one--was closed. Delilah got the sense that she was in familiar territory. And that, she had chosen to close her eye.

For whatever reason, it wasn't exactly clear, she knew she had followed directions of some kind that had placed her here. But where she was, what was happening and what the blinding light was--in the current moment--she couldn't say.

Delilah blinked rapidly and stared into the light. It felt like a doctor's office and it felt like her eye was back, but she couldn't tell if she was still dreaming. She stared ahead until her eyes watered.

"Am I...ok? Where's my mom?"

"What's the problem, sweetheart?" Delilah heard her Mom's voice ask. But shen she turned around to look, she saw someone that clearly wasn't her Mom, even though the voice was the same.

The mouth was stretched impossibly back with an ear-to-ear grin. Delilah barely had time to notice that her own eye was not completely functional.

OOC: Delilah loses condition 'One Eye'

A terrible tremor ran up Delilah's legs and back. Her limbs shook like jello and she nearly fell off her perch in the doctor's office. Her legs windmilled in confusion trying to climb over the furniture and run away at the same time. She shrieked and took in a shuddering breath to scream again. Her eyes could not look away from the skinless thing with her mother's voice.

"What's wrong? Calm down. Are you OK?" The doctor's voice sounded distant. Delilah could sense that he was coming closer, felt his movements, one hand extended outward.

The thing that answered to Delilah as 'Mom' stood up, all normal looking, except for the face. There was something familiar about the way 'Mom' came closer, out of the dark corner of the room and into the dim light of the examination room.



"What's wrong?" Delilah's Mom asked, with the same exact voice as, well, Delilah's Mom. Everything about Mrs. Gray's demeanor seemed similar, except she somehow had blonde hair and her main distinguishing feature was a  grinning smile, in which its lips were fixed wide open, exposing  teeth and gums within at all times.

Delilah backed into a corner with her hands up to ward off the thing walking towards her. It moved like her mother. And sounded exactly the same. Only her face was all wrong. The blonde hair was confusing, but nothing prepared Delilah for that hideous face. Not enough flesh. Far too many teeth.

Back in the snow fort, a monster pretended to be her father. It wore him like an old coat until all the seams split open. This was the opposite somehow. Her mother was inside this freak-faced creature.

"Mom?"

Tears tumbled over her cheeks. The doctor moved and Delilah flinched to see him better. He was not familiar at all.

"Just calm down dear." Delilah's Mom said. "Just calm down sweetheart. OK?" The wide-smiling thing said. The doctor didn't seem to notice the strange, permanent smile on her face, or he did but didn't care.

"Just take deep breaths." Mom said. "Through the nose out out through the mouth."

Mom began to breath just like the old Mom had. It was a routine and ritual that Mom used to show Delilah when she was as young as two or three to control her temper tantrums. Delilah's tantrums however, had lasted long into her 4s and even her 5s. Delilah remembered her kindergarten teacher Mrs. Wells complaining to her mother about that.

"Smell the flowers..." Mom inhaled. "blow the candles..." she breathed through  her smiling mouth.

Delilah stood with her knees locked and her legs bracing her back against the wall. She wanted to close her eyes or cover them with her hands, but she was too afraid. What if, right at that moment, the Mom Monster pounced?

Delilah swallowed hard and lowered her gaze to the Momster's feet. If she didn't look at the face, it was just like normal. It was just Mom trying to calm things down. Breathe in. Quiet. Breathe out. Focus. Same as at home. Or at practice before trying a new routine. Delilah always liked to imagine she was blowing out candles one at a time. She counted them down under her breath.

She counted down from thirty. Her fists were still shaking when she reached zero. She looked up again.

"It didn't look like you. At first. I dunno." Her throat felt like a sandbox. She looked over to the doctor again. She couldn't stare into those teeth.

The Mom-thing was unmoved. Its broad smile stretched its face from ear to ear unnaturally.

"Not me?" The face would have smiled, but it already was. The eyebrows arched up in surprise, the mouth unmoving. A skull's grin.

"It's me honey." It chuckled as if in disbelief. "It's me! Mommy!"

Delilah shuddered and shrank back, but there was no room for worming away.

"No! Quitit!"

The horrid face loomed closer. Delilah could see into the crevices between the overcrowded teeth. Even all the way back in the stretched corners of the mouth. She scrubbed her eyes with the back of one fist and wiped the tear tracks off her cheeks.

"Forget it! I'm fine, okay? My eyes're fine and I want to leave! Now!"

Her mouth wobbled into a frown and she sounded close to tears again.

There was an awkward silence as the Doctor looked down, perhaps embarrassed by sitting around watching a fight between a daughter and her mother. The Doctor, had appeared by all means normal and clearly didn't seem to recognize the strange smile on Delilah's Mom's face.

The silence stretched out still.

And this emptiness stretched out to an almost infinite silence. Mom was smiling. But the lack of sound also meant that Delilah was able to focus on her own words.

Her eye was...was there. She could see, exactly as she had seen. She could moved her eye. She could blink. Everything was just as it was before.

Delilah gingerly touched around her face. She could feel her eyelid slide and blink. The painful, sickly emptiness was gone. Everything was almost like it was before. She got her eye back, but it made things look wrong.

If the doctor couldn't see her mother's new face, then she was screaming like a loon. He thought she was crazy. Mom didn't say anything. She stood with her gross grin, though Delilah could tell she wasn't happy. An awkward feeling came over the girl, embarrassment.

"It's fine. It's nothing. I'm s--" She grumbled, but couldn't bring herself to apologize for her outburst.

Delilah crossed her arms and glowered at the floor. Her eye was back, but the circus did something to it. She knew she'd made the deal and she was angry at being tricked somehow. She'd see the pig again. Maybe when she went back to sleep. She hugged herself tighter.

"Are we done now?"