she began to cough.

Delilah lay in the garden. She felt the soil dirtying her wind-whispered white dress as she watched the stars exploding in the black sky. She reached her five fat fingers out beside her, eager for the feel of fresh earth on her palm. Instead she felt hair. Piles and piles and piles of hair. And something alive. Somethings. Somethings tickling up her forearm, between her toes, gliding soundlessly across her scalp. She looked down to find her body engulfed in tiny caterpillars, their millions of feet trespassing upon her freckled skin. She tried to scream but couldn't. She tried to move but couldn't. She could only lie beneath the vast sky, feeling the caterpillars overtake her ribcage, her chest, her throat –
One by one they began to slither into her helpless, gaping mouth. Her breaths quickened and then died away as hundreds of caterpillars inched down her dry esophagus. Delilah felt them congregate around her vocal chords, spinning miles of cold, lifeless silk string, wrapping it again and again and again and again. A soundless sarcophagus.

Delilah awoke coughing and sputtering. She stumbled to the bathroom almost carelessly as she tried to breathe normally. She leaned her head into the immaculate sink and shut her eyes to avoid watching her saliva splay itself across the porcelain. Her hacking finally subsided as her knees gave way and she collapsed to the floor. She pulled her knees to her chest and lay still. Her eyes fluttered sleepily as she found surprising comfort in the sound, her own sound, as it ricocheted off the tile and held her in an invisible cocoon.

Her head banged the tile as Delilah violently started from the floor. No telling how many cracks she had just so haphazardly splayed herself across. As she scanned her body for tell-tale imprints, her eyes fell upon her hands.
Black with dirt.
Horrified, she jumped in the shower and let the icy water pierce its way through her pajamas. She took the bottle of sanitizing soap and squeezed five large globs into her hand. She rubbed until her fat fingers were raw. But they were still black.
Out, out.
She took her nails to the opposite palms until she nearly broke the skin. The water had exhausted to a light drizzle to match the atmosphere right outside her window. But her palms remained tainted with earth.
It's not...real. It's not real.
I need to get out.
Delilah, embarrassed in her own skin, got out of the shower, her clothes dripping icy pellets onto the unforgiving tile. She grabbed the closest towel and began drying herself. She tricked herself into believing that she didn't check the towel for signs of dirt.
But she did.

Delilah grabbed her elegant coat and, today, her red leather gloves. As she walked out of her apartment, she glanced back at the unopened letter on her kitchen counter. Tempted to just hold it once more, she resisted.
One more day.
Like a new mother reluctant to leave her child, Delilah turned her back on the envelope and stepped out into the hall.
The lobby was bustling for early afternoon. It was Saturday after all. Delilah stayed focused on the cracks in the hideous tile beneath her feet, so much so that she plowed into a woman from the ninth floor. She was about Delilah's age, and when Delilah looked up apologetically, she, for once, got the feeling that the woman understood. Understood why she was not looking before, understood why she would not explain herself now. For Delilah, such an encounter was rare and comforting.
The weather reminded Delilah of her uncomfortable situation. The drizzle had become so commonplace that the children continued playing basketball at the park as though it was sunny and 75. Delilah walked around the court, admiring the long, slender, black fingers of the four players as they bounded up and down the asphalt. She longed for one more player to join the game.
As she strolled aimlessly, Delilah begged the neighborhood surrounding her building to provide her with some distraction. Something was changing. She tired of counting the number of cracks careless pedestrians tread upon. She tired of counting pigeons in intervals of fives. Delilah could no longer find peace and contentment within the confines of her own mind.
She began to cough.
When even her well made coat could not deter the rain enough to make it remotely bearable, Delilah began her short trek back home. She kept her eyes on the ground until she neared the building. An unfamiliar sound drifted stealthily towards her. She raised her head and tilted her ear to the wind, trying to identify the soft tinkling. Something was taking her back to Annapolis. Summer in suburbia. Barefoot children running down the road, dodging sprinklers, wrinkled bills in their hands.
It can't be.
Delilah began to think she was imagining things again when a decrepit ice cream truck rounded the corner. The corners of her mouth had just begun to twitch slightly when two strong hands grabbed her from behind and pulled her backwards. Struck motionless from fear and outrage, she nearly choked on both as the half full wine glass shattered right in front of her. She hopped gingerly backwards to avoid to blood red liquid slithering along the pavement. Delilah looked up just in time to see a slender white hand drop a cigarette butt and slide nonchalantly back through the window. The butt sizzled and coughed in the pool of wine and began to deteriorate. Grateful to her savior, Delilah turned back to thank him as best she could, but the tall black man was already a good twenty paces in front of her.
Delilah entered her building as the ice cream bells faded out of earshot, and she thought of the beautiful future that lay right below an envelope flap – a future without falling goblets or the mournful song of a forgotten ice cream truck.