Page 82 of Devious Delusions

Ghost leans forward and softly kisses the highest point of my cheek. My skin warms with false nostalgia, and he whispers, “Nice try, koukla mou. We’re not done playing yet.”

He steps back and walks out through the glass doors in the kitchen. His eyes remain on me as he takes the steps down and I tilt my body, walking backwards to sit on the chair without looking away from him. All the answers are leaving and it’s the right thing to do, but I want someone to give me the truth.

I’d rather be hurt with the truth than comforted by lies. Either way, I’ll be left with a mess like I am now. At least one offers clarity.

The only person who has been harsh enough to give me the truth is my mother. My life has gone to shit to such an extent that I actually wish I had that toxic bitch in it. It’s that thought that controls my hand and I stare into the trees as I take out my phone and dial my childhood phone number that my parents always paid to move with them.

The line trills and I hope that habit hasn’t changed. My knee rocks with each repetition and I’m about to end the callwhen a soft feminine voice answers, “Good afternoon, Leroux residence.”

My voice lowers at finally recognizing someone. “Anna? Do you still work for my parents?”

I thought the housekeeper would have fucked off by now. She’s a saint for spending a minute around their demands, never mind the forty years of service she’s approaching.

Her voice is still kind as she asks, “Miss Delilah, is that you?”

I smile and bring my knees up to my chest with my shoulder pressed against the chair back.

“Yeah, is my mom there?”

“Don’t come back,” she whispers and slams the phone down. The receiver hits the metallic holder and I’d know the sound anywhere with my parents treating the rotary phone like it was made of gold.

I once saw my mom take Anna’s measurements because she thought she was stealing food. She would do it every day and compare them while making her bitchy comments about her figure, Anna didn’t even stop her or smack her in the face like she deserved. She held her arms up and lifted her hair so my mom could take an accurate measurement of her neck. But she put the fucking phone down onme.

36

DELILAH

My thoughts are a dangerous place to exist with the continued confusion in my every waking moment pulling at my flesh and I can’t find anything to stop it all drowning me.

The loneliness is worse since Ghost has left. He’s done what I asked for and I hate it. Two weeks without him and my mind is deteriorating faster. The house is too big, and it feels like a zoo with all the windows, an enclosure for other people to stop by and examine me at their leisure while I’m left to wander within the same prison day after fucking day.

I have no life. I’m caged in the middle of nowhere with nothing other than trees and a freak who I’ve pushed away, and the phone I have only has one number programmed into it, which is Asher’s. After Ghost’s random bullshit, I don’t know who to believe. There’s nothing to indicate that Asher and I have spent a moment apart since I left my parents.

My eyes close as the thoughts I had at seventeen come back. That was the last time I was hopeless and confused. There was only one way out then and it landed me in that godforsaken hospital my parents chose. Each moment of confusion and notreally being able to live is pushing me closer to the edge and the plummet is enticing, the pull of it all ending and being blanketed in the peace that death can offer is so fucking strong. But I didn’t want to die then, and I still don’t. I just want to understand the world around me.

I fall to the side beside the piano and curl up in a ball with my knees tucked to my chest. The roses Ghost made me out of my sheet music are in front of me and I trace the curled edges with the tip of my finger. I know the pages, I wrote the notes, and they are real. The sun begins to rise on another day, but I haven’t moved from this spot for two sunrises, and I don’t foresee that changing any time soon. This spot beside the piano is the one I know. I can play without any confusion and I crawl forward to hide under it within reach of the roses.

My only goal is to stay awake to stop the vivid dreams plaguing me. The creepy eyes are too realistic, too bright in all the darkness, and I don’t know what type of person dreams about their father fucking them, but I cannot be that person. I refuse to. Because if that’s what my mind holds when it’s relaxed and supposed to provide me peace then I’m wired wrong, and no pills will fix me. I take them even though they make me feel like shit and all the leaflets and forums say that it will get better, they talk about how everyone is different and there’s no predefined number of days where they’ll magically begin working, but I crave the feeling of being normal and they don’t offer that. All the pills do is highlight that there’s something different about me, something in need of fixing. Worst of all, they remind me of my mother. Each time I push a pill through the metallic tab and hear the foiled cover crinkling, it’s like being transported back to my childhood and watching her swallow them dry so she can be the queen of the wealthy socialites and the powerful wife who does it all beside an equally powerful husband.

The rest of the world blurs as I remain focused on the sheet music in front of me. I don’t need to gather any energy to play to obtain the same sense of numbness it used to give me, it already exists, and I can hold it in the palm of my hand as long as I have the roses. The roses tell me this is real, that I have a connection with Ghost and that I’ve shared things with him. If I keep taking the pills, it might help me sort through my memories and uncover exactly what that connection is.Or if I take them all it can all stop.

Something touches my shoulder, and the piano shadow rolls away from me, unveiling me and refusing to let me hide. I blink and look up. There’s no mask and I blink again. Asher. He lowers to his haunches and his hand is on my shoulder. Worry lines his face and he slowly looks at every inch of my body as he gently pushes his arms under me.

“It’s okay, baby.” He whispers the lie. “You’re okay.”

Hard plaster presses against the back of my thighs as he drops down to sit on his ass with his knees up. Cradling me to his chest, he kisses my forehead, but it’s all numb as he hugs me closer with one arm.

I wrap my arms around him. Not to return the embrace, but to find answers. Tracing the scar on his back over his t-shirt, I feel him harden. I never asked how he got it before and now I can’t stop thinking about it.

My voice is muffled into his chest as I feel some of the numbness leave. “I missed you.”

It’s a partial lie. I missed the feeling of knowing who I was. Before he left I was grounded, and I had things to prove my brain wrong. In his absence, all I had were the false memories of living a life where he died.

“I missed you too,” he whispers into my hair, kisses my crown, and holds me tighter.

I press my middle fingers to each point of his scar, testing Ghost’s information and I look up as I ask, “How did you get this?”

He strokes my hair back and restrains his anger. It consumes his eyes and turns the soft green to a harsh jade, but his voice remains soft.

---