There was a heavy expectation in the air that Mark might try to pry Delilah loose, convince her that life as a pig was worth living. That's the way it looked like things were going to play out. After all, that's what he was doing, trying to pull her away from the fallen corpse of her father.

When Delilah capitulated, it spread like a plague, overrunning any sense of willpower that Mark had, rendering him as useless as little kid.



"REEE!!! **snort**...REEE!!!..**snort**....REEE!!!...**snort**

Hearing Mark say it was just too much. Fat tears spilled out from her beady eyes. She didn't care if Mark saw her bawling like a baby.

"HRC! HRK! SKREEEEE! SKREEEE!"

"GNUGH!!! **snort**...REEE!!!..

Mark wailed, he trotted around in a circle, tripping over Delilah's Dad's foot, sending the leg moving limply to the left in an awkward position. Then Mark fell face-first onto the ground with an audible snort.

Delilah hopped up. Her breathing was shallow and her eyes were blurry with tears. She ran at Mark with her head lowered to ram him. She charged at him full tilt with a bloody screech.

If she were thinking clearly, she would have known that Mark couldn't have hurt her father. He was dead. But he was an easy target. And all the hate and wrath and frustration had nowhere else to go.

"KNREEE!!!" Mark squealed in pain. His hind quarters kicked in the air and flew upward, front hooves still in the air, eyes closed. His body landed back-first onto the ground, all legs kicking for an instant. Before he righted himself and took off running.

Delilah saw him disappear behind the side of the house, ears tucked tight against the side of his head.

The bristly hair stood along Delilah's back. Her snout scrunched and her eyes rolled wildly as she screeched and screamed.

"SKREE! REE REEEEEE! SCHREEEEE!!"

She chased him, but only a little. Half-heartedly. She plodded back to the trunk of the tree, careful to keep her eyes down lest she see the mangled corpse grinning down on her. She kept walking until her snout and head were pressed against the trunk of the tree. The bark was cooler than her face, but she didn't feel any better.

A cool breeze ran through the hot air, bristling the willow tree's long, shaded, curtained branches. Sunlight poked through the seems, falling onto Delilah's snout and one eye, making it squint.

"Twwt-tweet-tweet-tweet-tweet-tweet-tweet" A bird chirped.

Delilah looked around to find the twittering voice. She looked up, squinted, then peered into the branches. It wasn't tears that make the bird hard to see, just the distance. She picked her way around the trunk to get away from the blood. And from having to see what lay propped on the other side of the tree.

"Who are you? Can you help me? I don't wanna be a pig!"

Her voice was shaky and hoarse.

The bird tweeted a sing-song that Delilah could hear clearly in the hot, summer afternoon.

"I'm a bird." It answered simply. "But I think I escaped the pet store. Not a pet store here, but his pet store." The bird sang.

Somehow, in the pit of her stomach, Delilah was certain that his, referred to the Clown's pet store, though she couldn't truly understand what that was.

Why would the evil clown have a pet store? Delilah tucked the question away.

"But you're not a real bird, right? You were a kid before? You're like Mark an' me!" She turned in a tight circle as she gathered her thoughts.

"Hey! How'd you get here from...there? Do you know a pig-face monster? Do you know the carnival?" Surely, it had to.

"I don't know." Bird responded, tweeting down from a sagging branch above, not too far from Delilah.

"I mean, I used to know. I know some things. But that's what happens when you escape like that after your soul has been captured. You stay too up here and your soul is down there in the bad part down there, near them, and you start to forget stuff."

"So, I know that I'm a kid. I mean, umm--you know--that I'm a kid and not a bird. But I somedays I know that I'm a bird and I wonder if I ever was a kid. It happens usually when I find myself with a twig trying to build a nest."

"But I was in pet store. A Clown's pet store. That's where my soul is right now. Its with the other animals. Oh, wait, they're animals but they aren't really animals. They're kids like me......I think." Bird said as he tried to piece together the memories, stitching them into some kind of patchy story for Delilah.

"My soul? What'er you talking about? And how do you forget that you were a kid? That's just dumb! I'm not gonna forget!"

Delilah's front trotters raked at the tree trunk. It was frustrating not being able to climb. She stomped on the ground and let out an angry snort. Was it possible that she could forget how to climb? Forget that she ever had arms? She thought back to one of the girls from gym practice. Stacie McCormick took a year off gymnastics when her parents divorced. When she came back, she wasn't as good as she used to be. Delilah pawed at the dirt quietly.

"But... if you wanted to, y'know, stop forgetting important stuff an' change back... what would you do?"

The words stumbled out. Asking for help was always hard.

"TWEET!" The bird snapped back.

"I dunno." It repeated, with a somewhat more defensive tone, as if guarding itself from the onslaught of Delilah's questions, not sure how to respond. Or maybe that was it, the fact that it didn't know how to respond. The shame of not knowing. Of forgetting.

"You're here. But the you. What makes you, you. That's back down in the ground. Where ever the Circus is. It's gonna stay there until you get back there. And you're gonna stay like this until you get back too." The bird sang out in a sing-song rhyme.

"If you want to get back, you have to give in to it. Next time you sleep. Give into it. Let the freedom go."

"Oh man. I wish I was in your position. I can't go back there. I can't go back to that pet store where the Clown keeps the souls of the kids in cages. Wherever  you are in the Circus, I bet its better than that place."

Delilah rooted in the dirt. She could smell the blood and the things that had been around to taste that blood. The scent of other pigs, something like the way Mark smelled now. Worms, too. Underneath it all the ghost of aftershave still lingered on the remnants of her father's flesh. Her tongue lashed out and cleared the dirt off her snout.

Something about the bird's sing-song voice made her angry. It was teasing her somehow and she couldn't quite figure it out with her pig-brains.

"You wish you were like us? Hey--" She turned to get Mark's take on the bird brain. He wasn't there. Right. She'd chased him off and now she had to think about The Clown without anyone standing beside her. It left a bad feeling in her guts. What if just thinking about the clown was enough to...? She turned in a small circle just to be sure.

"Y-yeah. I bet you do. Wish you were like me. Lotta girls did. Do. Whatever. So...so what happens to you when ya go to sleep? And...what's yer name?"

The bird fished through its plumage, beak darting in and out against one wing for a moment before it answered. The hot sun shone through the weeping willow's hanging branches, casting long shadows on the ground.

"I don't know what my name is." The bird said simply. "That's what happens the longer you stay down there. I got out. But now, I'm...just...I dunno. You change you know? So when I go to sleep, it's like...it's like...it's like I just, I dunno. Just...can't remember anything."

The bird moved its head with several quick, jerking movements.

"Honestly, I think I'm more of a bird now than a little kid." it explained. "I think that's what's happened to me. Just, being away from the place so long. Being away from the Circus, of being part of it and then being away."

Delilah tilted her head to the side to look up at the preening bird. It didn't know its name anymore. That wasn't stupid. It was scary and sad.

"I don't want to forget. I'm not gonna! MARK! MARK? Hey, Bird! Wait a minute! Don't go!"

She squealed and trotted to the corner of the house.

Delilah rounded the corner towards the corner of the house, the Bird not moving as she glimpsed behind her. It was just sitting there on the branch, letting out a few chirps.

Past the growing ragweed on at the corner of the yard and towards the point where Mark had fled...

But there was no sign of Mark. No sign of his pig form or human form. As Delilah scanned the yard, she saw three distinct things that caught her attention. The first was the scurried hoof-prints where Mark had made his dash through the side garden, trampled sunflowers marked with spats of red from Dad's blood. It was certainly possible to track them, see where they might lead. Where Mark could be.

The second was the old hole at the base of the tree, where she used to play. Carved out by nature like a door for a gnome or dwarf, the site was usually home to squirrels and the occasional fox. Delilah had never considered the site a resting spot. But it was true that now her body yearned for rest, perhaps out of exhaustion or perhaps because the site called to the animal side of her as an ideal sight. Two squirrels at the base of the entrance near the right side of the tree were foraging. It would be easy to ask them...or to just take the space from them.

The third was the sound of kids playing outside in the road. It could be neighborhood kids. Maybe the girl with the cage. Or maybe someone else that Delilah hadn't seen in quite sometime. Maybe it was even family members. Delilah's sister? The sound of a ball bouncing, the familiar 'twang' of rubber hitting the road over and over again brought back memories of summer's past.

Delilah noticed the hole in the tree trunk, but passed it by. She was small now, but the squirrels were even smaller. No way they'd be any trouble to chase off.

She called out for Mark as she followed the sound of the ball on pavement. No way it was Susan. That would be too weird. The car running in the driveway. The phone beeping off the hook. And Dad in the yard. But, even if it wasn't Susan, maybe it was someone who could get help. Or get a grown up that would know what to do about her father.

Delilah got closer still. The twang of the basketball hit harder and harder on the pavement as she turned the corner. That's when she saw Jonny. Jon, really. That's the way he spelled it. She remembered, he was in her class last year. But everyone called him Jonny.

"Be right there Mom!!" he cried out bouncing the basketball.

Jonny was a kid with a temper. He was known in school to fly off the handle at the smallest things. Around the neighborhood, he was known to hang out with Josh every now and then, but most of the time he didn't play because he was always been forced by his Dad to work. Work in the yard, work in the house. It was rare to see Jonny outside. Consequently, Delilah didn't know too much really about him.

It was Jonny! The old Jonny, not the new one. Not the one from Bald Hill. Weird that he was hanging around out here. Delilah almost never saw him. Not even on her days off. She grunted and felt her strange, porcine teeth with her tongue.

Stupid pig body! Stupid pig noises! If she could talk normally, then she could ask if he saw her mom or her sister. Or even that dumb baby Mark.

What was he doing? Could he go for help?
 She wanted to know, but she felt so tired. It would be so much easier to root around the squirrels' tree and go to sleep. She stepped out closer to the pavement and squealed to get his attention.

Jonny stopped bouncing the basketball. He's eyes grew wide with surprise.

"A...friggin'....pig?" He asked, suddenly, taking a step backwards in shock. The hum of the motor in Delilah's driveway sounded out from the front lawn.

"A friggin pig." He announced in a low voice to himself, looking at Delilah.

He noticed!

Delilah oinked again and again as she turned in a quick circle. She hurried towards the front yard, towards the car running in the drive, then stopped and oinked again.

C'mon, you meathead...

Jonny followed Delilah as she trussed through the yard, hooves brushing against dry blades of grass. He started towards Delilah, first with a walk and then with a semi-run, the basketball held in the crook of his arm, red converse sneakers hopping up onto the curb and into the front yard.

Delilah grunted triumphantly before leading the way to the front door still hanging open. She still felt uneasy about entering her own home. So much disarray and confusion. She waited for Jonny to say something --anything-- that could help her or get help for her sister.

"Whoa..." Jonny said, looking around at the mess once he got inside the house. Then Delilah saw it all at once: The boy backed up and ran away, towards his house.

OOC: Delilah Joins

Delilah: Watching Her World Collapse