T H E R E ’ S A R E A S O N
The desert. Delilah had never left the confines of Battery City in her entire life. There was no reason. They reassured the masses that all that was out there was danger. Threats. The only businesses those who functioned illegally. The desert. A playground filled with criminals and she’d always known better than to play with bullies. And now, here she was: kicking up dust across the barren landscape, wind whipping through her hair as a tune she’d never heard before played from the speakers. She found herself moving to the uplifting beat — soft, reassuring, a taste of the security she’d always known — igniting her with newfound courage as she sped toward what would undoubtedly be a risk. Delilah didn’t take risks. Not like this — and every single time, she felt that pit form in her stomach, a chant warning her what could happen if she kept breaking the rules. Laws. It doesn’t matter how good it feels, death feels worse. Prison. Worse. Be smart, Delilah. Don’t fuck up.
Too late now. Now, she had to welcome it, open her arms to the dangers ahead because if she didn’t, the fear would build up, the music would become noise, and her heart would create its own furious beat, a bird in a cage… warning, warning, warning. Her boss did this work all the time. She’d accepted the job and now it was her work too. They helped everyone. It isn’t worth the risk. It isn’t worth it. It isn’t worth death. Then why didn’t you quit? While she didn’t go looking for the answer, she knew where it remained, lying in wait, years and years of doing everything right giving birth to a rebellion that rooted itself in her. Quiet. Waiting. Because one could only do right for so long without wondering what it felt like to be wrong. She’d gotten tastes of it. The few trysts she’d had leaving her with a gaping hole of want, filled in temporarily by the laws in place, by the consequences, but it never satiated the hunger for something more. Somewhere in her all that right meant nothing when she wasn’t authentically herself. She was a perfectly crafted image of a perfectly crafted Battery City citizen and it was comforting. Safe. Boring. Lonely. Scary…
It was those very facts that put her on the road, in the desert, on this day. Curiosity and a hunger for more that’d been buried too long. A hand drifted out the window to weave between invisible wind formations, because where there wasn’t safety, there was freedom… and Delilah’s mouth opened, lips curved in a smile as she let out a scream.
