"Are you OK sweetheart?" It was a faint voice. Mom's voice. Delilah opened her eyes, it was hard to see past the pain in her back.

"Mom?" she croaked. Delilah could hardly move her head towards the comforting voice. Even her eyelids hardly stirred.

The pain was unbearable. Every inch of Delilah's body hurt. From the base of her back to the center of her neck. Her arm felt numb. The fingers on the edge tingled. There was a dull, white looking clock above the door frame, the seconds hand ticking away. It looked like it was 3:15 in the morning. She was in a hospital bed. A blue blanket wrapped over her body, white linen sheets that smelled sterilized draped over her leg.

"Honey. You're awake." Mom said, sounding alert, but there was a hint of something else in that voice. Was it relief? Fear? Mom wasn't much in the way of that department. Delilah had never even seen her cry.

The hospital? Delilah's breath quickened. She'd made it! But how?
 She puzzled over what became of her father and her friends, all the kids on the hill. And the Things that had dogged her through the snow. Had it all been real? The debilitating pain was real, but worse was the creeping dread and the look in her mother's eyes. Something was very wrong.
"Mom, wh-where's...dad? Where is everybody?"
This message was last edited by the player at 04:02, Tue 11 Apr 2017.

"Dad isn't here." Mom said flatly with a hint of pain a hint of anger. "I told him not to go outside and look what happened." She said, voice partly choked with pain and regret before finally leveling out.

"Now its just the three of us. You, me, and Susan." Mom explained.

Susan. Delilah's sister was a year younger. Mom and Dad had never really loved Susan the way they loved Delilah.

Delilah heard her little sister's name. And she mentally glossed over it, same as always. In one ear and out the other.

"It was a clown, Mom! A clown was slicing everybody up! And he has giant scissors!"

Delilah struggled with her tingling limbs as she tried to shape the events with her hands. It was a strange feeling, like she wasn't in control of her body.

She didn't care how it sounded. It was the truth and adults had to do something. Or else the clown would keep killing.

"What!?" Delilah's Mom said, her tone sharp and unforgiving. Her hands gripped the blanket, white-knuckled.

"What do you mean, clown? Were you kids up there playing pretend with knives?" She asked, tone disapproving, despite Delilah's weak condition.

"Noooo!" Delilah's wail waivered with fear and urgency. And the frustration that comes from adults not listening properly. "It wasn't any of us. It was a man. A tall man clown and he st-stabbed me! And he cut Roger's nose off! And he made the spiders hurt Dad and John! And you gotta get the police and go back for Hannah and the rest now! 'fore it's too late!"

"You mean.....a PEED-o-File?" Mom asked, eyes wide open with horror.

"A what? Noooo, a clown!"

Delilah sobbed and kept saying No, again and again. Mom still didn't undunderstand. And everything burned throughout her body. Doctors were supposed to make things better. Why did it all hurt so much? Even shaking her head was torture. Delilah tried to turn away and see if there was anyone else in the room.

"Stop it! Stop it now!" Mom shouted. "Just stop it! There's no Clown! No clowns god dammit!"


OOC: Delilah Rolls Wits + Composure with the following results

0 successes: Delilah is cowed by Mom's sudden shouting which silences her

1 success: Delilah and Mom shout over each other

2+ Successes: Delilah stands strong inspite of her mother, fear driving her past her Mom's dismissive attitude.

Delilah's eyes bugged. Mom never shouted at her. Something inside Delilah's head popped. She shouted back until her neck felt tight and swollen. Her face went beet red to her hairline and out to her ears. She shouted like she was in a playground scrap.

Mom wasn't there. She didn't know. She was wrong. And Delilah used every dirty word she knew to prove it.

It when on like that for some time. Both Mom and Delilah shouting. Maybe it was the fact that Delilah felt her feelings weren't being heard. Or maybe it was Mom, angry and lonely because of Dad's death. Whatever the reason, both of them had tears in their eyes after a few minutes.

The medicine helped. Something had been placed in the long tube that extended from Delilah's arm and led to hanging, plastic baggy on top of a metal pole. At times during the shouting, she would feel the gash in her back with an acuteness that made her shiver. But for the most part, whatever was in that baggy relegated the pain to something distant and not quite discernible.

"Dad's dead!" Mom shouted finally, causing there to be a break in the argument. The words had a terrible finality to them.

Delilah's mouth snapped closed, then crimped into a frown. She went quiet long enough for the color to drain from her face. She didn't want it to be true, but it had to be. The way the clown lounged and leered at her while he described her father's spider bite. It had to be the truth. Delilah had taunted a number of silver medalists after taking the gold. Even the bronze medalists, though they usually weren't worth it. She knew that when you're really great at something, probably the best, you don't have to lie to the losers to make them feel bad. The clown was really great at killing.

"I know."

She didn't say how she knew. It would start another fight. Delilah remembered how her father begged like a little kid. And how haggard he looked before...

She stared at her IV drip and waited for the fuzzy feeling to return.

"Well. We've got to toughen up." Mom said, face already set in stone. "I might as well tell you now, so you know. Dad and I were going to pursue other things. Other kinds of friendships." She explained in a hardened voice that sounded more like relief that disappointment.

"I have a new friend now. Several actually."

Delilah glowered at the IV drip.

"Don't care about yer friends." Her voice was flat, but the tears were still hot on her cheeks.

Mom didn't care about Josh or any of her friends. Mom wasn't going to do anything.

"That's the Delilah I know." Mom said, in a voice that said 'good job.' Mom was always encouraging Delilah to say blunt things and act as if nothing mattered. Even going so far as to demonstrate this by having arguments with other adults in front of Delilah.

"You make sure that nothing holds you back. When you get out of here--and I'm going to check you out early--you'll show the worlds something." She promised, tightening her hand into a balled fist. Thought it was true, she said nothing about Josh or any of Delilah's friends.

"So hurry up, already." Delilah wanted her mother to hurry up and leave.

Dad was dead. Roger and Hannah and John and Sammy and the rest. All dead out there in the snow. Dad was dead and Mom didn't care. Did Mom care about him when he was alive?

Delilah frowned, remembering Hannah and Olivia. When they were alive, she didn't care about them. But that was different! They were dorks. They were just going to be dorky and grow to have regular, boring, dork lives. And now nothing? It made Delilah feel mixed up and angry. It made her head hurt. But she didn't want to cry anymore. At least, not in front of her mother. Crying was lame.

"Shut you're mouth." Mom said coldly. She usually said things like that. That's why Delilah could tell that, while she really did want Delilah to shut up, the command wasn't filled with venom like it would be for other people Mom spoke to.

Mom got up, the chair screeching along the floor, black dress flapping out towards the sides. "I have to go talk to the Doctors. Find out what I have to do to check you out. And find out what the hell that ring-like scar is around your neck." she said, glaring at Delilah. "You better not have been up there doing anything with any boys. Not at your age." That comment had more of an edge to it, as Mom headed towards the door.

Delilah stayed quiet. The ring around her neck must have come from the pig's collar. The pig woman saved her somehow. And she would be back. The clown would come back, too.

She huddled in her sterile sheets and wished she could ask her mother to stay a little longer. The room was very quiet without their arguing.

Delilah's Mom left the room and a sudden sense of emptiness filled the room. The emptiness of tough love. The silence was filled with the periodic beeping noise that came from one of the many monitor machined by the bedside.

After a few minutes of being alone, there was a knock on the door, the door itself squeaking as it pushed inward but stopping so whomever was knocking was still outside, respectful.

Her mother went out the door and Delilah could feel the tears starting. There was a hot, prickly feeling to her eyes. Then everything shivered and blurred. There was a knock at the door and Delilah cleared her throat.

"Come in." She didn't want to sound as miserable as she felt.