Work from a collaboration with creative writer Helena Pinder 

 

She walked across the crowded dance floor with such purpose that it seemed to part before her with

ease. Each member of the crowd noticing her long frame laced with black fabric, her pursed 

crimson lips, the dark curls caressing her shoulders. They saw 'Delilah' - the dancer, the main 

attraction, but they saw an image and nothing more. She stepped with an elegance and grace that 

most women could only dream of, and when she would speak she could flick words from her tongue 

cascading into the hearts of any who would listen. But now she had no words. For the last time she 

walked through the flutter of dresses and mistimed movements of lesser mortals.

 

It was unclear to her the exact moment that she had become 'Delilah' - the show girl, the 

entertainer, the taste of perfection. Perhaps it was during her first performance, the way the crowd 

had cooed, willing her on, eyes fixed upon her without really looking at all. The way her make-up 

had sweated, concealing the bloated contours of her eyes as her lashes fluttered for the very first 

time. The way in which her body first oozed uncomfortably through the rhythm, her dress flowing to

the magnificent strings. Perhaps it had been the moment she arrived in London - the soulless 

underworld - there was no going back. It was unclear where in this time she had lost her essence. 

She couldn't recall the moment she had forgotten how it felt to greet the morning dew with bare feet.

She didn't know when it was that she had stopped remembering her mother's voice and that feeling 

of safety it assured. All of these small fragments of her being had slipped away without her 

knowing. Maybe one day she would not remember her mother at all, nor would she remember her 

best friend Rebecca or the games they played in childhood. Even as she thought of these memories 

now each particle was damaged, each missing a name of a place or the colour of a shoe. The 

conception of her transformation was cloudy, but it had been complete for some time now.

 

She arrived at the arm of her partner as the dissonant cascade of movement, noise and light had 

found its epicentre. Everything at once rippled and spiralled from this whirlwind of perfect 

symmetry in motion. He held her with an intense passion, admiring her divine features, focusing on 

her dark eyes, faintly glinting. He saw in her a future, an escape from solitude, together they could 

leave this poisonous life. He had buried his hopes within Delilah, she had become the pathway to 

something so much better than what he had become. His savings, once large enough, would finance

their travel to a quiet country province and away from the ghosts that dwell in London, away from 

the city that works by money, the men that move and breathe like living things but do not live at all. 

She was the answer. The sound of the strings seemed to be the breeze through which they fluttered 

as the music moved seamlessly from drawn bow to eager ear. One would tease the other on, content

in their own harmonic existence. 

 

They were being watched. A figure sunken into a dark corner was smoking quietly as his eyes 

occasionally glimmered to reveal an unfaltering gaze keenly following the two figures. They didn't 

know him, and they wouldn't recognise him even if they did. 

 

The dance continued, each person in the room fixated on a different one of Delilah's intoxicating 

features. Later that night, lying broken on the floor of her bedroom, Detective Miller would notice 

three things about her. Like most others he observed her immaculate form, so put together, her tiny 

pale hands and feet rested child-like on the blood sprayed ground. The second observation would 

be the emptiness, she had become a case, a shell, a sodden body that had once made a life, a 

person, a soul, little did he understand that this transition had taken place long before her death. 

The third was that she looked inconsolably frightened. It was this expression, this fear that would 

delve in and out of his dreams, it would never leave him. The idea that this hollow doll had once 

had thoughts, aspirations, hopes that had been cruelly interrupted by an unshakable fear. 

As the final note of the song rang out, the dancing and music came to what seemed a premature 

end. The dancers however were exhilarated and dispersed gradually from the concentration and 

tension they previously had created. The two lovers collected hats and coats and glided from the

club without a look at the man who had already decided their fate.

 

Three hours later the symmetry was broken. Already half way across London, a killer cried out in 

the night.