How to Save a Cowgirl’s Life

“Introducing the brand new star criminal of our county, Delilah Troy!  The one and only woman who has wrecked the most havoc since 2078!  Ms Troy can be seen wearing a white bodysuit with a long gray coat, red knee-high boots, and a beige hat with a pink star on it. She has long brown hair, gray eyes with too much light in them, and has skin as light as the sand beneath our feet. Be on the lookout as rumors continue to spread about her unpredictable journey across the planet. You could win a prize of $30 million if you catch her alive! She seems to show up at the scene of a crime at the perfect time, but will leave when given the chance to explain herself. LOOK OUT FOR TROY! Do we need it spelled out for you at this point?” 

“Can you believe this is what they’re writing about now?” Genevieve asked Delilah, tossing the newspaper onto her lap. They were lounging on the beach in the middle of a hot Monday afternoon. There was a light breeze, and the sun was high in the sky. August had just begun, and the skies were blue with no clouds. 

Delilah sighed as she read the front page of the paper.

“I haven’t even touched my blaster since July.”

“Are you aware that it’s August 1st?” 

“...Maybe.”

“Still, they act like you’re the cause of all these crimes. You should explain that you’re a hero! You stop the worst of the worst!” 

“I don’t know,” Delilah said. “I can get pretty bad when it comes to stopping the crime.”

 “Please, you need to give yourself more credit than that. Remember that guy, what’s his face, Freddy? Frederick? You really broke a record with him,” Genevieve said. “Knocked it out of the park for real.”

 Delilah rolled onto her front, deciding now it was time to tan her back. She closed her eyes, wishing there was some breeze with all this hot air. She still needed this, though. Alone time with her best friend in the only environment she considered to be a peaceful one. 

“Yeah, I guess so,” she replied after a brief moment of silence. “I guess I shouldn’t be running away so much, huh?” 

Genevieve laughed, standing up from her towel. “Now that would be out of character for you, wouldn’t it? People wouldn’t trust you if you started that now. I’m going to go for a swim, want to join?” 

Delilah shook her head. “I’m good right here, but thanks. Tell me how the water is.”

 “Will do. Enjoy your nap!” 

“Ha, thanks. Enjoy your swim.” 

For the first time in her life, Delilah wondered how she was going to gain the people’s trust back. She wondered where the mistrust even began. Not before long, she realized that Frederick was where it all began. 

***

It was a Friday night. Delilah and Genevieve were traveling to find their banks so they could retrieve their accounts that they hadn’t touched in who knows how long. The company’s location changed so much because of the galactic war. They were passing through Buckfield City, a city deep in the south of the country of Canton. It wasn’t Delilah’s favorite scene, but she had to do the necessary travels to make sure she still had a bank account.

At around 8:00 PM, they came across a bar on a cornerstone. It was combined with some sort of smoke shop that also sold stuffed animals. Genevieve begged Delilah to go inside, but she refused.

“Please. We are never going to see a shop like this again,” Genevieve pleaded. 

“Look at how unsanitary it is inside! I don’t need you getting sick right now. Then we would have come all this way for nothing.” 

Delilah was partially true. The shop was not the cleanest, and that was because they let the front door open all day long. Not the smartest of choices seeing as this city had high wind speeds and too much sand and dirt on the ground. The store did have three cleaning hours throughout the day, and this information was posted on a sign on the front door. Unfortunately the last cleaning hour was at 5:00. 

Definitely not enough hours, Delilah thought. 

“Could we at least make it our reward after we deal with whatever is going on inside the bar?” Genevieve asked. 

“How do you know we’re already going to run into trouble?” Delilah asked, confused by what Genevieve had said. 

“Because I could smell the poison when we walked past the front door,” Genevieve explained. “Why the fuck are you mentioning this now?!” 

“Because I got distracted by the shop in front of us. Duh.” 

Delilah sighed, smacking Genevieve’s forehead simultaneously.

“Alright. Let’s deal with this first.” “Great!” 

Walking inside the bar, Delilah could smell the poison too. She was confused as to why she couldn’t smell it before, because now the smell invaded her nose and she considered putting on a mask. She quickly counted the number of people in the bar. Eighteen. Six people sitting on the left side of the room, six people on the right, and another six sitting at the bar counter. 

“Don’t forget the bartender. You usually forget them,” Genevieve whispered in her ear. Delilah couldn’t help but let out a laugh. Her best friend had been doing this with her for so long that she could tell when she was counting a room’s population. 

“Bartender!” she shouted, drawing everyone’s attention. “Are you in here!” 

“Yes!” An old man squeaked from underneath the counter on the other side of the bar.

“Thanks,” Delilah said. She looked at the group of men sitting at the bar, all wearing fancy outfits with hats too tall for them. They looked at her with disgusted looks on their faces. “Now I believe that someone is spreading something absolutely dangerous and vile in here, correct?” 

One of the men stood up from his stool. He was as tall as Delilah, wearing a black vest over a white shirt, and black dress pants with dress shoes and a top hat. “If somebody was, what’s it to you?” He was clearly angry with her already. 

“Thank you for giving yourself away so quickly, sir. Could I have your name so I could write you in my list of awful people that I saved the world from? Delilah asked, a smirk on her face. “I like to keep track of those kinds of things. I hope you understand.” 

“No, I don’t understand. For your information, my name is Sir Frederick. I work for the Royal Guard, and we are only doing what’s good for this planet.” 

Delilah rolled her eyes and pulled out her blaster. It was a dark blue gadget in the shape of a pistol, only a lot thicker and more decorated with a layer of glitter. “I’m sure we both know that excuse gets you nowhere, Sir Frederick. Would you like to give me your real name before I kill you?” 

A collective gasp could be heard throughout the bar. All six men in front of her looked at her with fear in their eyes. She didn’t need to guess what everyone else’s expression was. 

Sir Frederick pulled out something from his front left pocket. It was a regular pistol, one that got no reaction from Delilah nor Genevieve. “Don’t think about taking another step closer. Let us do our jobs, and nobody else in this bar will be harmed.” 

“Are you seriously going to put the other lives in this bar on the line just because you want to do your job that is going to corrupt them anyway? How pathetic,” Delilah scoffed. “I hate worms like you. You follow your leaders so blindly and have no care for the people that walk alongside you in society. You act as if you care about all of these people,” she gestured to everyone else in the bar with her gun, “but you want to ruin their lives just as much as you ruined yours, if not more and worse.” 

“You don’t even know who you’re speaking to! You just-”

Delilah interrupted Sir Frederick by firing off her blaster, the blue laser bouncing off the wall behind him, which then bounced off the window behind her, which then bounced off the ceiling, which then landed on the floor just in front of Sir Frederick’s feet. He looked at her, his mouth agape, his right hand over his heart. The bar fell silent, all eyes on Delilah again. 

“I will be generous, and give you one last chance to stop what you are doing before I kill you,” she warned. She aimed her blaster at Frederick, who she now no longer aligned with royalty. He didn’t deserve it. “You have left me no choice-” 

Delilah cut him off again, shooting him right in the face. “It’s been a pleasure to work with you! Thank you for your cooperation.” 

Blood spilled out from Frederick’s head. His eyes were no longer in their sockets, and blood was coming out of his ears, mouth, and nose. His body was slow to collapse to the ground. 

Somebody from the left screamed, and another man from the bar stood up. “It’s Delilah Troy! She’s actually-” 

Genevieve cut in with her own gun. She held a double barrel shotgun that she seemed to have pulled out from thin air. She shot the man right in the face. “It was a pleasure doing business with you all! Have a nice evening folks!” She cheered, shooting the remaining four royal guards at the bar with a smile on her face. 

Delilah could hear the bartender call authorities from beneath the counter. She decided to not stop him. After all, he was a poor old man who was just doing his job. The death of him would haunt her forever. “Ready to go?” She asked Genevieve after a moment.

“Yup,” her best friend replied, a proud grin on her face. “Let’s get that promised reward!” 

*** 

Both Delilah and Genevieve knew they had to be quick in the smoke shop. They also decided to give up on finding the bank account since they needed to leave Buckfield immediately. Genevieve got herself a stuffed animal with some cotton candy ice cream on a cone. Delilah only got chocolate ice cream in a cup. They were walking down an empty dark street, far away from the cornerstone. Delilah didn’t really know where they were going or where they were going to stay for the night, and she was okay with that. “You really showed 'em’ back there,” Geneieve said as she licked her ice cream. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so angry.” 

“I think that was our first time dealing with workers for the government,” Delilah spoke quietly. She was halfway done with her ice cream, and a feeling of uncertainty suddenly took over her. “Definitely,” Genevieve agreed. “Say, do you think any of those guys looked like your dad?” Oh. That’s it. Her dad. That was why she was starting to feel unsure about the whole situation. It was because killing Frederick so brutally reminded Delilah of her father. 

In her teens, Delilah believed her dad to be some sort of peacemaker for the planet. He wanted to solve so many of the world’s problems, and she admired him for his commitment to his goals. By the end of her teens, her dad became unethical. She, very quickly, found out that he was killing people to get his job done. Including her own mom. Unnecessary killing and scamming and so many other terrible things she can’t repeat to herself.

So, Delilah left home shortly after his arrest. She didn’t even know where her dad was sent to at eighteen, and she didn’t know at twenty-three either. She needed to create a name for herself, and the small part of her that still looked up to her dad for all of his accomplishments wanted to solve problems too. Although, that was also done unethically since she was also killing people, scamming them, and other terrible things that only her best friend truly knows about. 

Delilah would hate to say it out loud, but she was who she was because of her dad. The same man she refused to be tied to when she fled home. She had no home to return to after that, and overtime Delilah had accepted that fact. 

The only piece of home she had kept with her was half of a locket around her neck. It kept a fragment of a photo of her dad. The small, soft side of Delilah couldn’t leave behind everything from home, so she decided that this was what she was going to keep with her.

Luckily for her, this was the one thing on her person that newspapers always left out. It was a small part of her that she got to keep to herself, and Delilah appreciated the sense of privacy she got from the readings that described her looks. 

*** 

It had been an hour since Delilah fell asleep on the beach. She was awoken by the sound of Genevieve wincing. She was on her back again, and she looked up to see that her friend had stepped on a sharp shell. She shook her head to herself and lay her head back down. 

Geneieve smiled at her, wrapping her towel around herself before sitting down. “So, have you come to any revelations yet? Any new goals?” 

Delilah paused. What was I just thinking about? She then remembered. “We should start heading towards the West.” 

“The West, huh?” Genevieve looked out toward the ocean. “We’ll really save ourselves out there this time. I just know it!” 

“Me too,” Delilah replied, mumbling to herself, “me too.” 

There’s always something out there more interesting in the West, right?