I was ripped from sleep by another dream about Delilah—Dane Landomunn the nut farmer’s Delilah. Although, it feels a bit reductive to refer to her as belonging to him since I only saw her working at the Landomunn Farms’ booth one time. “Working” is also a deceiving descriptor; all she did was try, fail, and then to whine until Dane Landomunn came over to help her do whatever it was she was there to do. It wasn’t her meekness or sheer ineptitude that hogtied my attention enough to summon these chronic, repetitive nightmares. No. In fact, on the day I came into contact with Delilah, I was visiting the Landomunn Farms’ booth expecting to see someone else—another of Dane Landomunn’ revolving assistants.

In truth, a parade of middle-aged women guest starred with Dane Landomunn helping him work the Landomunn Farms’ booth at the farmers market each Sunday. In the long line of many, Delilah felt entirely non-descript. Yet, she stood steadfastly in the middle of my mind like an ever-present volcano erupting at intervals based on some cosmic timekeeping. Visions of her haunted me since our single encounter those many weeks ago, regularly crimping my sleep. An unwanted rumination, some celestial cord formed out of a mistake I made tethered me to her.

The day I met Delilah, I went to the farmers market, same as countless Sundays before, to salve my addiction to Landomunn Farms’ nuts. It’s no exaggeration to state that eating a Landomunn Farms pistachio is nothing short of a religious experience and I went to claim my sacrament. Seeing Dane Landomunn’s aide-du-jour offered an added amusement I looked forward to during these pilgrimages. That was, until the week he brought the fervent and helpful Linda.

Completely unlike his previous seconds who did nothing more than people-watch, Linda knew her stuff. An eagerness hung about her as if she were auditioning to be Dane Landomunn’s forever. While peering at her hopeful face, still stained with last night’s makeup, it dawned on me that I wanted to see her again. She cured my curiosity for the next recycled face. I rooted for Linda and wanted her to get the part. But on that fated day, I met Delilah instead. There she sat, occupying the seat I considered Linda’s, her voluptuous curves spilling onto the table in front of her. Her shapely flesh shared space with the piled-up sacks of Landomunn Farms’ nuts, which made for a bric-a-brac scene that looked almost baroque. Despite this, Delilah somehow just melted into the scenery, herself indeterminate. Glistening sweat that sparkled like a tiara as it reflected the spring morning sunlight off her forehead betrayed her mousey demeanor. Her face wore an expression that said she wanted nothing more in life than to disappear. Her attention seemed arrested by this desire to fade away, saving no space at all for the aggravated customer standing right in front of her.

The customer harrumphed. Delilah behaved as if caught in an illicit act and scrambled to collect all the nuts the customer impatiently dropped in front of her.

“Dane…Daaaaaaaaaaane…” she cried with diffidence, holding up the customer’s prospective purchases. “I don’t…I don’t know how much these are.”

In an exasperated huff, Dane Landomunn ran over to assist. He scolded her like a child then, like a pinsetter, he restored order with a stiff, efficient machination. My head spun. I flushed with an itchy confluence of emotions that pushed me into a corner. Though not a fan of Delilah’s feigned helplessness, I felt a more vehement revulsion to Dane Landomunn’s impulse to infantilize her—in front of an audience, no less. In an unusual desperation, I broke with the one, true, and only rule I held for myself. I touched Delilah—on purpose.

I should probably back up a bit and divulge that I’m clairsentient. It’s similar to being clairvoyant except for the fact that my visions are brought on by way of touch as opposed to any kind of visual or mental foresight. Because of this, physical touch with people can be something of a conundrum. Any skin-to-skin contact sends a ticker tape of visions flashing through my mind like marbles down a drainpipe. One could get the impression that this is some sort of covetable ability, but let me state for the record: it is not. I don’t see hopeful things like vacations, first kisses, or graduations. In fact, I don’t see into the future at all. Only a person’s past. And not the fun stuff, either. Much like Alex in A Clockwork Orange, I’m captive with my proverbial eyelids propped open and tortured with a highlight reel of someone’s suffering. I see a person’s worst day or deepest fears. I’ve witnessed so many bizarre happenings and real horror shows of trauma that I’ve been robbed of my faith in humanity. When it happens, I’m bathed with an odd cocktail of deep compassion swirled with a homicidal rage that blights my nervous system.

I detail all this to say that no one could’ve been more shocked than me as I watched my own hand extend to grab Delilah. Her face reddened, her lower lip trembled, and she looked on the verge of tears. Dane Landomunn walked away in a huff after a spritz of verbal condescension. I felt bad for her, but that’s not why I touched her. I don’t know what I was looking for or even thinking exactly, but I needed to know…something. Anything. What made a Dane Landomunn woman a Dane Landomunn woman? Where was Linda? Why had Delilah taken her place? What did Delilah see in Dane Landomunn that made it worth giving up her Sunday? Like a car crash in slow motion, I witnessed my fingers wrap around Delilah’s forearm.

“Hang tight,” I said while feeling out of body, “I’m just gonna grab a bag of candied pecans from over there.”

Like blood dripping from a fresh wound, thick stains of Delilah’s history flooded my mind. First, I saw a disturbing image of her as a little girl taking a bath. A man in his mid-20s stumbled through the bathroom door while fishing inside his fly. His agility must have come from muscle memory because he was able to lift the toilet seat with a single foot while balancing, albeit wobbly, on the other. He could barely stand up straight while he let a clear stream of urine fall clumsily into the toilet bowl.

“Oh, hey there, Delilah,” he slurred with his head cocked to the side, having just noticed her. He moved his eyes off Delilah and back to his pee stream. He chuckled to himself, then for some unknown reason, swung around and peed on young Delilah’s head.

I thought about this vision, filled again with shock and horror, as I culled through this latest installment in the plague of bad Delilah dreams. The visuals that stole me awake this morning left me feeling equally disconcerted. The nightmare opened on a white tiled wall speckled with beads of water. The damp, dense, and thick air reeked with a pungent bouquet of unwashed body parts, and the shower ran at full power. Then came a wet and naked Dane Landomunn. Tufts of gray hairs decorated his chest in patchy splotches that looked like an Arctic Archipelago. The current-day Delilah emerged from a thick cloud of steam that hovered near the shower floor, rose up, and met face-to-face with Dane Landomunn. She turned her head toward the tiled wall and released a clear stream of warm fluid from her mouth, making her look like a whimsical Venetian fountain. Her mouth ran empty then she grabbed Dane Landomunn on both sides of his face like he was the last man on Earth. He, in turn, grabbed the tops of her hands, seemingly in retreat.

She kissed him with a forced madness then whispered into his mouth, “Now call me Jezebel.”

I never witnessed any moment in Delilah’s life that she would have willingly invited me to see. The dreams, always cryptic and strange, bounced back and forth between young and current-age Delilah, and young Delilah never stayed in the same place. The homes changed as frequently as her mother’s boyfriends, but the empty bottles, full ashtrays, and stained carpeting followed her everywhere. Current Delilah didn’t fare much better. In what could only be a clinging to the familiar, Delilah seemed predestined to repeat the mistakes of the generation before. I’d been subjected to so many lascivious visions—a few of which featured Dane Landomunn—that my only reprieve was quick snippets of a chaotic yet fanciful painting of sunflowers. The doggerel creation attempted to imitate the style of Van Gogh. The dripping swirls of sunshiny yellow insulted the forlorn heavy blooms as a promise of brightness taunting the blossoms of the sun they could never be. The painting would flash in between apparitions of mounds of tangled flesh like a subconscious advertisement inserted into various frames of a film reel.

I suffered sixteen straight weeks of unmanageable Delilah-polluted sleep, ten of which followed additional trips to the farmers market. I decided seeing the many faces of Dane Landomunn’s subsequent helpers would help to put an end to my torment, yet Delilah maintained a steadfast grip on me. She’d crocheted herself into my psyche with impenetrable cords and tied them off with a constrictor knot. I could feel an unquenchable psychosis begin to settle in. My mind now belonged to Delilah’s memories, and that made me angry.

I blinked a few times, trying to awake more fully, but it failed. Instead, I took a deep breath in through a half-yawn and settled back onto my pillow.

“Last night was crazy, right?!”

Delilah’s voice sounded in my ear as if she’d been sleeping right next to me. I bolted upright and threw the covers back. My bed was empty, but chills ran through me. Delilah’s breath lingered around the cusp of my ear, and I knew I had to resolve this haunting.

“That’s IT!” I screamed to nobody.

I hurled myself out of bed and sprinted to my computer. I didn’t exactly have a plan, but I figured since this all began with Dane Landomunn, he would be my best starting point. I looked up Landomunn Farms and mapped out its surroundings. The nut farm sat nestled amongst a battery of wineries, strawberry fields, an ostrich ranch, and even a quaint little village modeled after early nineteenth century Copenhagen. The thought of windmills and cobblestone lined streets charmed me out of my ire. I clicked around the map, zooming in and out, expecting some clear indication of what I should do next. I continued running the cursor across the map when the ‘You Are Here Lodge’ flickered. I guesstimated it to be about three miles from Landomunn Farms and immediately booked a week-long stay.

The ensuing nights featured panic-laced nightmares of a Delilah more threatening than demure. It was as if the specter of Delilah knew she was about to be exorcised and therefore summoned a menacing poltergeist to disrupt my peace. I took it as a good sign. Delilah must live somewhere close to Landomunn Farms, as I assumed all Dane Landomunn’s assistants did. How else would he find someone to make that 4:00am drive with him down to the farmers market each Sunday? I started taking detailed notes about the dreams, as any identifier could help unlock her precise location. When the time came, I packed modest supplies and embarked on a ninety minute drive to my staycation near Landomunn Farms.

During the first few days, I failed to spot Delilah, as my drives around town and past Landomunn Farms proved fruitless. I presumed I stood a better chance putting boots on the ground and taking in the local sites. I toured the ostrich ranch and even got to see one poop—a pink, inflamed, donut-shaped sphincter jutted from the bird’s backside and deposited a disgusting, fist-sized, white glob of goo on the ground. I took myself wine tasting and bought a bottle of leathery malbec. I even stopped for some strawberry topped wienerbrød—all the while seeing no signs of Delilah. Not even the notes from my dreams proved helpful, and soon, I felt dejected.

The next day, I took another aimless drive through town, spotting a restaurant called The Buck Stops Here Bar & Grill. Feeling a bit peckish and in need of a stiff drink to disappear my impatience, I bellied up to the bar and ordered two fingers of well whiskey neat. The bartender donned a black tank top with edges decorated in a frayed black lace, and the overextended material increased in transparency as it stretched across her full breasts. The worn and cracked graphic on the front read Born to Ride. She nodded in acknowledgement of my order, not in an unfriendly way, but awkward enough that my darker complexion skin raised in goosebumps. She slid over a thick coaster and crowned it with my drink. I savored the first sip then looked around the place and better situated myself on the rickety barstool.

That’s when I saw her.

Delilah looked different in the chestnut lighting. Whether it stemmed from her familiarity of the place or being free from the weight of Dane Landomunn’s judgement, she nearly glowed. She sat at the end of the bar, sucking back the watered-down remains of an amber brown liquid with a cherry stranded between the last few ice chips.

“Another Diet Coke, D?” the bartender asked her, removing the empty.

“Make it a double,” Delilah replied dryly, not even bothering to look up from the book she was reading. The bartender chuckled as if she’d heard the same lame joke too many times to count.

My heart pounded and any words I conjured in my mind lodged unmovable in my throat. So much time and planning went into finding Delilah that I hadn’t considered what to do once I did. I drained my glass in one anxious swig and indicated to the bartender to pour me another. As she did, I noted the title of Delilah’s book: C.A.D.’s The Trespasser.

“Heavy read,” I managed to say.

“Huh?” Delilah questioned, as if emerging from a trance.

She sipped her freshly poured soft drink and made eye contact with me. My anxiety must have pierced my brain because I could have sworn she bore a look of recognition once she focused on me. I pointed at her book, and she handled it as if she’d forgotten it was there.

“That book. Kinda heavy read, no?” I enunciated, hoping my voice would carry the length of the bar.

“No, not expressly. A few scenes are…disquieting, maybe, but I wouldn’t classify it as difficult material.” She paused then added, “This my third time through.” She spoke like a high school poem, her words laced with lexiphanic zest and decorated with enough flourishes to sound almost lyrical.

“Third time, eh? So you must like the darker stuff?” I said, truly curious. I had never reread any book, ever.

“It’s not the darkness I’m attracted to,” Delilah clarified. “It’s tidy. I love a book with closure.”

Closure. A perfectly serendipitous word to use when that’s exactly what I was looking for from her. Maybe not closure, no—not in the traditional sense—but I needed the nightmares to stop. I needed this odd portal knotting us together to be swallowed back into whatever wormhole gave it life. I didn’t know what to say next. The small talk I sparked ran its course, and I didn’t want to scare her by blurting out that I’d been having non-stop dreams about her. I also didn’t know what exactly I needed to make them stop. I grabbed my second drink and scooted a few stools closer to her. The bold move couldn’t have been more out of character for me, but desperate times and all. I considered my next words carefully, then began, “I’m not from around here, and—”

“Listen,” she cut in, “my dance card is already full of people whose flaws I can barely tolerate. I’m not looking to add any new friends to the fold.”

I gulped my drink, needing the alcohol-induced courage to stay the course. “I’m only in town for a couple days. It’s not like I want to trade friendship bracelets or anything.”

A thick silence lingered between us. I finished the rest of my second whiskey and ordered a plate of chicken tenders. I needed to keep my wits about me and sop up some of the liquor.

“Have you ever seen an ostrich poop?” The words tumbled from me before I could stop them. “I can’t say it’s something I ever thought I’d see. I was just walking through the ranch and watched as its bright pink butthole opened up right in front of me. What came out looked just like regular bird poop, except it was giant. It looked like a baseball made out of Elmer’s glue.”

Somehow, this delighted Delilah. I could see an involuntary smile inch upwards across her mouth. She closed her book and turned her body toward me. “You’re funny,” she said. She studied my face in a way that made me feel uncomfortable, then she added, “You look familiar.”

“Farmers market, maybe?” I asked trying to tamp down my zeal and speed up whatever process I’d set in motion.

“Farmers market?”

“Yeah, I’m addicted to Landomunn Farms pistachios. You know Landomunn Farms? I visit the market every Sunday to stock up. Maybe we saw each other there?”

“Ah.” She recoiled slightly with a look that suggested she felt exposed. “I know Landomunn Farms,” she spewed the title like an accusation and the surname lingered in the air with thick and heavy innuendo. “I’ve been to that farmers market…once.”

“With Dane Landomunn?” I asked. Then, the liquor added, “Is he one of those people filling up your dance card?”

“Ha,” she spurted. “My business with Dane is more a case of the apple not falling far enough from the tree.”

“Oh, so you’re into farming too?”

“I’m into farmers,” she said with a sublimated smile.

“Ah. I suppose we all have our vices.” I held up my drink and added, “Since drinking doesn’t really seem to be your thing.”

“No, it’s not,” Delilah proclaimed before taking another sip of her diet cola. “Parents have a funny way of making things uncool. Alcohol made my childhood unpleasant. It also cirrhosed my mother’s liver, so yeah, it’s not really my thing.” She took a long pause then offered, “She died when I was in my twenties, so that was the only argument for abstinence I needed.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Ah, don’t be. She and I had a very complicated relationship.”

“I suppose that can happen from time to time. Not everyone is designed to be a parent.”

“What’s the saying? ‘Hurt people, hurt people?’” she offered and chuckled to herself. “Some would say she and I were a lot alike. I never really agreed with that, though…until I got older and found myself doing the same things I hated her for doing.”

“Ah, the old apple and tree again,” I remarked.

“Mothers and daughters can make for a combustible combination.”

“What is it about mother/daughter relationships?” I asked, contemplating my own strained maternal situation.

“I wish I knew,” Delilah sympathized. “The love is fierce but the hate can be fiercer. Mothers have a way of injuring that seems impossible to heal. Sometimes, it felt like Mother implanted some kind of panic button inside me. She would press it just to cheer herself up, usually after one of her breakups, and it would just destroy me.” She suddenly seemed unburdened, like she’d waited a lifetime to confess this to a complete stranger—perhaps gain absolution. “Over the years,” she continued, “I’ve learned that sometimes traumatized people have a way of locking others inside their self-made prisons with them. Misery’s love affair with company, you know? But the really good ones do it in a way that makes you feel like the prison is one of your own making.” She took a sip of her soda. “I suppose that’s what happened to me. Except I didn’t realize it until I’d added enough of my own plaster to those prison walls. Now, I can’t tell where she ends and I begin.”

“That’s a lot to unpack,” I said, not knowing how to create a soft-landing for this confessional.

“It is, actually,” she remarked. “All I can do at this point is wake up every day and strive to be a better me. That’s why I just hang out and read. Reading is my therapy.”

“Escapism?”

“Maybe, but even the best fiction weaves in authentic truth. Truth has to underlie any good story for it to resonate.”

“Like burying your head in the sand for a while?”

Delilah stared at me like a professor waiting for their students to understand. “You know, ostriches don’t do that because they’re scared,” she explained. “They do it because they’re making a nest. They’re bringing new life into this world, not fearing for their own. It’s just a misnomer that stuck. Makes the bird look stupid instead of blaming us for misinterpreting its behavior.”

“I suppose that sort of thing happens a lot,” I said. “We misinterpret things all the time. Then the thing gets buried in judgement until the truth eventually disappears.”

At that moment, I realized I was the ‘we’ misinterpreting Delilah. I wrote her off entirely because of a whiney snapshot that made me misunderstand her whole character. I looked into her eyes and could see an entire universe of purpose. If nothing else, I figured I could live with this Delilah. I could learn to integrate her the same way I’d integrated other life challenges. I ate my food, asked for the check, and settled my tab.

“Thanks for the chat,” I said. “I’m really glad I met you.”

“Likewise,” she said, standing to shake my hand.

Our hands met and my mind went blank—no visions, no images, no horror scenes, and nothing sensual. There was just…nothing. I held her grip and discovered that my mind was tidy. I looked above the bar and noticed the sunflower painting I’d seen so many times in my dreams the last several weeks.

“Sunflowers,” I said, not meaning to vocalize the observation.

“I painted that just before my mother died,” Delilah said. “I come here to look at it. Makes me feel closer to her.”

I nodded in acknowledgement and headed towards the door. I thought about calling my own mom on my drive back home and knew I was free the moment the bright sunlight hit my face.