Dear Delilah West

Chapter Three

My room is very small, very bare, and no one ever visits except the purple-eyed woman when she brings my food. She doesn’t talk to me again. The way she avoids my eyes and quickly hurries from the room after setting the bowl on the bench makes me suspect that she was caught talking to me. I look up to the small camera in the corner of the room and wonder who is watching me right now. Could it really be the FBI? Somehow, after seeing that woman, I don’t think so anymore. I think it might be something worse than the FBI. What had Delilah gotten herself into? I don’t resent her though. Only these suited men who have turned my life upside down.

Although I have no evidence that those people had anything to do with Delilah’s death, I just know. I usually have good instincts, and even though my judgment has become clouded since I lost the person I loved most in the whole world, I know that it is still reliable and these men were the cause of Delilah throwing herself off a cliff that night.

So I hate them, and I want my revenge on them. The only emotions I feel these days are depression, desperation, and anger. All three of them are pushing me to do something about these men. The hatred I feel for them runs so deep I can feel it in my heart, in my bones, in the very center of my being. My soul yearns for their pain, for them to suffer the emotional pain I felt because of them, the physical pain they caused for Delilah. Delilah. My love for her is the only thing I have ever felt that is stronger than this hatred, this hatred for the people that killed her. The people that caused her to destroy herself, to lose her will to live.

I huddle up in a ball, hugging my knees to my chest as tightly as they will go. The smallness of the space combined with the fact that no daylight reaches this room makes me feel claustrophobic and horrible. I begin to sweat all over, and have to wipe my damp hands on my pants repeatedly to try and get it off. I get up and start to pace around the small perimeter of the room, and it makes me feel a bit better. But my room is so small that I begin to feel dizzy making endless circles, so I just sit on one of the benches and lay my hand in my hands. 

If these men didn’t exist, where would I be right now? I close my eyes, imagining. I would probably be with Delilah. We could be at a park, sitting on my mother’s favourite tartan rug, with a basket of sandwiches and strawberries and lemonade, talking and laughing. I would give her a quick kiss on the cheek and she would smile and tell me she loves me. Or, we could be at the movies, holding hands in the dark and she would hug me at the scary parts.

We could be at the beach. I remember when we did that once. We were walking on the sand, parallel to the water, hands entwined and swinging as we ate fish and chips with our free hands. It was a cool day, but not freezing. The beach was deserted anyway. So we just walked, and talked about trivial things that I can’t even remember. It was so nice. And then a big seagull swooped in and grabbed the fish and chips box, and Delilah fell over, straight into the water. I lent her my coat and we kept walking, laughing so hard.

I think hard. Where did we go after that? That’s right. Up the trail, to the cliffs. We sat up there for ages, until the sun started setting and we went home.

It was such a nice day.

It wasn’t until the purple-eyed woman opened the door and entered the room that I looked up, and in doing so realised that my cheeks were wet. Tears were streaming down my face, and I quickly wiped them away with a brush of my hand. But she had seen them. She looked at me, then glanced nervously at the camera. Then she made a decision.

She walked quickly over to me. She sat next to me and spoke rapidly in my ear. I leaned closer to hear what she was saying and her cool breath tickled my ear as she talked with urgency.

“You’re Delilah’s boy?” she asked.

I withdrew, looking at her in shock.

“Just answer the question!”