The Monster You Made: Episode 2

Years Later... The car rolled to a stop, the tires stirring a cloud of red dust behind it.Delilah stepped out, her heels pressing into the dry earth as she adjusted her sunglasses and looked ahead. The house stood in the distance, crooked and tired, just as she had left it. Time had done nothing to cleanse the filth—it only deepened the cracks, faded the paint, and stripped the place bare of whatever dignity it once had.She walked forward slowly, not because she was uncertain, but because every step felt like a quiet triumph. Her heels clicked against the concrete as she crossed the compound, and she caught herself frowning as her eyes scanned the familiar ruin—the broken basin still sitting by the corner, the porch littered with leaves and bottle caps, and the door hanging slightly off its hinges like a drunk who never sobered up.She stepped inside without knocking.The air inside was heavy. The smell was worse than she remembered—sour sweat, cheap gin, and something that had gone bad a long time ago. Her hand brushed the back of a chair as she walked in, and it came back dusty. Nothing had changed, not the sagging couch, not the crooked frame on the wall, not even the stain on the floor where he had once dropped a bottle and lashed out when she cried too loudly.She didn’t sit. She did not even hesitate.Then the sound came.Feet dragging against the floor, slow and uneven.He came into view, his body smaller than it used to be, his skin looser, eyes dull like they’d been rinsed of life. He leaned against the wall with widened eyes at the sight of her.“Delilah…?”She didn’t answer.He took a step forward. “You came back.”Still, she said nothing.“You still look like your mother,” he muttered, his voice dry.That made her smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes.“I heard you were dying,” she said finally.There was a flicker of emotion on his face, something between confusion and hope.“You came to see me?”“No,” she said, her voice calm. “I came to bury you.Her words hung in the air.His mouth moved, but no sound came at first. Then, “I’m still your father.”She looked at him like he was nothing. “Not to me.”She walked past him, her shoulder brushing lightly against his. She didn’t look back.She made her way down the hall, past the broken switch, past the dent in the wall where she had once hit her head trying to run. She stopped at the door to her old room. The wood still bore the marks—small scratches, uneven and panicked. She pushed it open.The room was still the same.The same thin mattress on the floor, the same cracked windowpane, and the same heavy silence pressing down on the walls.She stepped in and sat on the edge of the bed.She was not here to remember.She was here to make him pay.And this time, she wouldn’t be the one crying.