Letters With Your Red Gel Pen

Hey There, Delilah, You Wrote Your Letters With Red Gel Pen

Your name is Jake English. You are a 19-year-old male who moved to Texas for your boyfriend. 4 months ago, said boyfriend, Dave Strider, went away for "work". But you sincerely doubted that even as he was leaving. He works at the antique store 3 blocks down from the house. And he sent in his notice the proper 30 days before this event.

Dave always was good with time.

The only reason you hadn't notified the authorities (aside from the fact that you were certain the scoundrels wouldn't help), was because every week, you get a letter. It's addressed to you in the name only he calls you, in handwriting only he has, and in a pen only he would use.

Sparkly red gel pen.

In these letters, he tells you silly things. How he loves you, how he hopes you're happy, and how he swears he's coming home soon. Along with some things he's seen. There is always a single constant in these letters, and it's the CDs he sends in them. All the same song. Some melancholy, horror-esque version of some Alternative song by some band about T-Shirts. American things were weird, you had come to learn.

Your name is Dave Strider. And for the past 4 months, you have been on the run. You had felt Him there. It was small at first, barely noticeable, and easily brushed off as paranoia. Just little things. A shadow in the corner of your eye, the fleeting thought that you hear a second person breathing when you're alone. It wasn't until you managed to catch view of Him watching through the window of the store an hour before you got off work. Normal people wouldn't have noticed; would've thought that He just happened to spare a passing glance as He was walking into the restaurant next door. But you knew better. Knew Him better. That's when you realized He'd been around longer than you'd thought. You ran away when you were 13. Six years of hiding, of Him not trying to find you, though you know He could've. So why was he back now?

That didn't matter. All that did matter, was that He found you. And you had to get away. Not even just to save yourself. You had friends now. A family. And you couldn't let Him get to them. Besides, if you leave now, He might think you died or something, so if you waited long enough you could come right back home.

Right?

You were wrong. You were so, so wrong. 

You finally thought you could start heading home. It had been 5 months, and you haven't heard or seen a single lick of Bro. You were going to send Jake this one last letter and head on your way.

You took the back streets. It was in an alleyway by an Olive Garden. You had always loved Olive Gardens.

A fitting place to die, you suppose.

It goes like this: You're walking in the alley by the Olive Garden, fiddling with your note, CD in your hands. And then you hear the voice.

"Bout time I finally caught up to you, Lil man."

And that's when you knew you were done for. There was no use trying to plead with him. You didn't even have the time to put away the envelope or the disk before he was on you.

And you wish you could say it was quick and merciful.

Long story short and friendly as it can get, you got absolutely shredded. You try not to think about it. Before they finally caught him he had thrown your mangled body into the garbage. It had taken your body a week to be found, about 30 hours to get a solid guess on who killed you (based on security cameras and eye-witness reports), and another three weeks for them to find Bro.