Delilah drifted in and out of a medicated stupor, distantly aware of the droning voice of her psychoanalyst, vainly trying to pick apart the complexities of her brain. Delilah knew her mouth was working, formulating the nonsensical bullshit the doctors seemed to feed off of, like vampires of her inner psyche. She realized, belatedly, that she was looking down at her bare arms with the violent crosshatch carvings some knife had made there months before, self-inflicted and wonderfully far away.
          "Delilah," came a grating, disembodied voice, and she was suddenly aware of the thin, sterile smell of the asylum. Delilah looked up, face-to-face with her own sunken appearance staring straight back at her, completely devoid of any expression. She felt someone's meaty fist enclose around her arm just below the elbow and lift the frail woman to her feet. Delilah looked up, limp, unclean strands of brown hair falling in front of lifeless green eyes, almost as if confused.
          Delilah was led from the observatory, down the blinding halls of the institute back towards her own housing facility - a place, after three months of captivity she was beginning to acknowledge as home. Her feet shuffled slowly and uneasily on the cold, hard tile, her head lost somewhere in the dreamy delirium of her intoxicated mind.
          She was ushered back inside to the safe haven of her padded little room, once again isolated from the chaotic, unfeeling world on the other side. Her nurses immediately went to administer her straight jacket, taking special care with making sure each strap was securely fastened in place. Delilah stood there, slightly slumped and unfeeling, while it was wound tightly about her. When the mummification was complete, the nurses helped her settle down into the corner farthest from the door. Finally sated, they left, and the room gratifyingly slipped into all-consuming darkness.
          It was then that Delilah began to dream.

--

          "Delilah."
          She stirred at the recognition of her name, shaking away the crumbling fragments of her sleepy reverie. The world was a groggy charcoal swirl in the night as it came into focus. Delilah struggled to hoist herself into the upright position before she realized that she had completely pulled free the long, winding sleeves of her restraints. The cuffs furled about her ankles like slumbering snakes, completely disregarded.
          For a while she sat there in silence, slowly picking her thoughts out of the air as her conscious thought trickled in and drowned out drowsy imagination. She pondered just what had inspired her to open up to the waking world - a place she had often wanted to escape. Delilah turned her head, an exhausted lull across bony, aching shoulders, and caught site of the conspicuously wide-open entrance to her room, unguarded.
          Slowly Delilah got to her feet and looked about herself, but the room was absolutely stripped of visitors or workers of any kind. She surged forward awkwardly and leaned around the corner, only to be met with empty hallways that seemed to stretch on in both directions infinitely. Tentatively she put one foot out, then the other. No alarms sang out; no one came rushing toward her, needles ready. The only thing her ears met was total silence.
          There was a sharp pang in Delilah's chest, and for a moment, the woman swore she could feel again. And then she bridged the gap, crossing over into the world beyond.