A dense fog had settled in the air.

They had only taken but a few steps forward, directly following after each other’s dwindling forms. Their laced boots marched against the gravel in harmony. I could not explain the sudden, gut wrenching cry that had left my mouth, that echoed through the warped, rotten street and the molding buildings. My throat was raw and sore.

In the glowing blue light that seeped from my hands and spilled below, ice shards rose from the air, shattering and crunching upon the ground. All I could feel was the wind in my hair, the blood pouring down the back of my throat as I directed my water tendrils forward towards their crooked shadows.

Svetty slowly turned around at the sound of my voice, wisps of her white hair blowing in the wind. She cradled my sleeping son in her arms, remaining frozen, almost as if caught up in dream. For the first time in several months, we both made eye contact. Her expression was full of complete shock, her lips slightly open, almost like she was trying to remember my face. And when she suddenly took off running, my gaze never left her as a row of soldiers suddenly closed in. As she disappeared behind the group of armed men appearing in my way, down through a haze of thick white fog, I noticed that her shadow crept down an alleyway, near a few parked army trucks, their gray and green camouflage patterns barely visible in the dull morning light.

The sound of bullets being fired filled the air, along with inaudible shouts and orders. Generating a sturdy ice wall with my right arm, I dove behind it on my stomach fro cover, watching the thousands of golden shells litter the ground around me. Bits of frost broke off around its edges as orange and yellow spots glowed outwards.

Crouched down on my knees, I released heavy, shaky breaths, letting more frost spread from my hands. There was more distinct shouts, a loud alarm blaring in the atmosphere. A wet sensation suddenly came up my abdomen; when I glanced down at my shirt, I saw that the lower half of it was coated in blood. But I hardly sensed a thing. Nothing but fire and heat. My fingers curled around a rock as I slowly turned around.

A soldier was staring at me, frozen, his shaking hands still on his gun. Without hesitating, I bashed it deep into his skull, before launching his body into the air with my water tendril, where the man plummeted onto a nearby parked car, denting the hood and causing the alarm to go off.

Clenching my jaw, slowly, I began to concentrate, placing my hands on the ground. Listening to its heartbeat, its rhythm. Looking for a pulse. There were too many men. Too many sacks of wretched fluids that were moving all at once like ants. As several cracks ruptured on the ground, it began to sink, causing some people to collapse into the gaping holes. I leaped upwards, allowing an abrupt wave of energy to send through my pulsing veins as thick streams of snow and ice shot through my shaking palms.

Amongst some of the frozen corpses that were around me, more men were now taking cover, shouting. More trucks were coming in on both sides, their headlights glowing in the darkness. Bullets ricocheted off every surface around me, following my path. I tried to distinguish between their melting, soggy faces that sank down to the ground like a sticky puddle of wax.

I leaped over a broken pile of metal and rubble from the shadows, lodging my ice blade deep into the skull of the soldier in front of me. His blood spurted outwards, mouth trapped into a silent howl. As his comrade began to aim his weapon at me, I heaved the body against him, causing him to fall the ground. Using the edge of his knife, I drove it deep into his stomach, his pink intestines slipping out of his blood soaked uniform. A deep, unrecognizable, curdling scream erupted from my mouth as I stared deep into his terrified face, my bulging eyes the only thing he saw before he drew his final breath.

My heart was thumping. Rattling.

An avalanche of bullets nearly ripped apart the ice wall that shot up from the ground I attempted to shield myself from. Using the ice slopes that were forming under my bare feet, I slid downwards to avoid the holes in the ground, where the crushed remains of soldiers were crumpled below like paper. With my left hand, I broke off a piece of a rifle from a frozen, mangled body, and jammed the broken piece deep into the side of a soldier near me who was desperately trying to reload his gun, which was jammed. Directing an ice shard directly at the head of a general who was getting ready to call for backup, I watched with satisfaction as he slumped backwards, his radio dangling by his side on a tangled, rusted cord.

My left tendril sliced through the brick pavement on the main road, causing the alarms of cars parked near the sidewalk to go off, their yellow and orange lights flashing. When they flipped over and collided with each other, flames rushed to the sky, illuminating the silhouettes of fleeing people attempting to get away from the wreckage. As snow began to fall from above, the taste of gasoline and metal burned in my mouth and nose. I made my way forward through the direction where I had seen Svetty take off, my breaths heavy. I found myself burning hot within, hotter than the flames, hotter than the brightest furnace.

Statues of frozen corpses looked at me, limbs trapped under a blanket of icicles.

The shattered ground was covered in frost, filled with the footsteps of screaming and panicked civilians who were running for cover. Pointing at me, at my levitating form, the fire within my eyes. I wanted to rip them to shreds as well. Something struck me against my shoulder. Grunting, and abiding with the sensations that were overwhelming my body, I held my hands out, gasping, blood dripping down my nose and mouth as a large crust of the earth and what remained of the street, playground, and buildings lifted up. Glass shattered from the shaking windows and the twisted lampposts.

A loud rumbling sound echoed through the crooked streets; I watched them drown beneath its weight. The asbestos, roof shingles, the concrete, the asphalt, their hands reached out to the sky one last time before they suffocated beneath the dense layer of snow.

In the midst of all the shouting and crying out, my ears were filled with deep ringing. My slow, heavy breaths filled the air as I stared at the direction Svetty had gone. I extended three of my tendrils outwards, lifting a vehicle up in the air and allowing it to smash on the ground, near a group of soldiers ducked behind a burning building.

The warm glow on the aftermath of the explosion lead to some figures screaming, shouting, in a dance to extinguish the flames that had begun to consume their body, hair, and clothes. I heard the sound of more trucks and tanks rumbling, their tires squeaking shaking the ground. The sound of machine gun fire echoed down the street, following me in the dirt. Guiding my feet along the ice trail I slid upon, I struggled to see in the smoke and coughed heavily. In the corner of my eye, the red and white flag of the Red Mamba flew in the air.

The decaying corpse of a Red Mamba soldier caught my attention, under a bush. A group of flies had gathered around its shrunken, leather head. His teeth were yellow and broken like chair legs, and his wide eyes stared at the now bright blue sky. He couldn’t have been dead for more than a couple of days at this point, given the mostly fresh bullet hole wound at the back of his head. His straw colored hair was covered in ants and other insects that munched on what remained of his scalp.

The scent of decomposing flesh barely fazed me, at the sight which most men would lose their lunch. Maggots crawled on his outstretched hands and fingernails, as if he were praying to the heavens. My fingers were steady, slow, as I knelt down next to his shriveled form and began to unbutton his uniform jacket and pants, bundling them under my arm. In his pocket, I found a compass, a faded map, half a pack of cigarettes, and a torn picture of a young, pale woman with a pink flower in her curly hair. I wondered what she was doing at this moment—if she were waiting for a letter of some sort. And as I tore off my blood soaked clothing, I tried to not look at my hands. I tried to not think about Rufus.

I slipped on the uniform, starting with the pants. My shaking fingers fumbled with the slippery buttons on the gray jacket. The material was rough against my naked chest. With my other hand, I picked up his dented rifle from a puddle of mud, my hand causing ripples to shoot out across its surface.

After staring at the man for a long time, I took all these items, except for the wrinkled photograph, and began to rip it up into shreds. The pieces became discarded in the wind and fled into the dirt. I found that the compass was broken and the glass was cracked in the middle. I realized I was in the middle of a shattered highway road.

The sound of rumbling tanks against the broken street grew louder, only half a few hundred yards away, their shadows creeping ahead. My arms burned. The sharp pieces of concrete dug into my bare feet.

"Sispann!"

Dipping two fingers into the soft mud, I coated my face in a layer of the cold stuff. I remembered the red clay that George, Covey, and Ki’luwani wore on theirs. Gradually, I scooped more of the dark earth upon my nose and cheekbones, letting it stain the edge of my sleeves, my protruding collarbones, the ends of my matted hair. I remained crouched on my knees, gasping.

One of the metal tanks had rounded near a corner of the ruins of a drug store. Two men were sitting on the top, staring at me. A general had his firearm pointed at me. Definitely a high ranking officer, due to all the small metal epaulets on his uniform. I slightly squinted my eyes in the dull light to see better. I sensed his rhythm of his heartbeat and the blood in his chest cavity, and my fingers curled at the opportunity to turn it into a fresh cube of ice and frost.

Slowly, I stood up.

"Lage zam ou," he demanded.

I tossed my newly acquired but worthless weapon to the ground and gently raised my muddy hands in the air. The general frowned and aimed the barrel right at my forehead.

"Ki kote ou soti? Kisa ki rive ploton ou a?"

"Nou t ap eksplore yon koup nan bilding epi yo te anbiskad." I made a backwards gesture with my hand. "Se sèlman kèk nan nou ki te siviv, mwen pa konnen kote lòt yo te ale."

"Kite kote sa a imedyatman, ti gason. Rapòte tounen nan kan an!"

"Wi mesye," I murmured.

The general narrowed his eyes, but grunted as he lowered his weapon. He gave me a hard glare as the two men on top of the tank laughed. I saluted him, and silently watched him get back into the tank. As it slowly rolled away in the distance, I solemnly began to focus. The pressure in my head subsided and shot through my body as a large ice boulder broke through the ground, impaling the machine straight in the middle. It reared up like a horse swatted on their behind.

An orange blast filled the atmosphere as severed arms and legs rained upon the ground, followed by an expanding puddle of blood. Fire crackled in the distance. I didn't even notice that my right hand was balled up. In the smoke, I slowly began to curl up in a ball, waiting for the ringing and pain to subside in my head. Fuel leaked between the gashes in the road.

Water threatened to rise in my eyes, but I looked away and blinked quickly, trying to control my breathing. The scent of gasoline and burning flesh settled in my mouth and throat. I did not acknowledge the soldier’s lifeless eyes and continued through the split, broken streets, sensing nothing but heat inside me.

As I leaped from building to building, broken roof shingles dug into the soles of my bare feet, causing them to bleed. My eyes were stinging from the dust in the air from the collapsed structures. And soon, that was what Portia would be. Nothing but dust. We were nothing but dust. Grenade explosions went off from around me, but I kept my eyes focused on the rows of vehicles, to catch a glimpse of the white haired woman. Thousands of ice crystals coated the earth, creating a sea of sharp spikes. Dozens of other platoons had arrived---they were using flamethrowers in order to melt the frost. Generals were yelling their men to get into position, raising their barrels at me. My chest was incredibly heavy.

The pain in my head worsened every moment, but I pressed on, unwilling to submit towards my own limits. As I landed on the ground, a sesmic wave shot through the street I was upon, causing electricity lines to give out, buildings to become lopsided. I could see thousands of people fleeing, hollering, attempting to leave their homes, their shops, their smashed up cars. Some had been crushed to death over the stampede of crowds moving south from my direction. Whatever was in my way, I tore it apart until it was nothing at all. It was a blur, a mess of disorganized, meaningless colors and shapes, soon coated in an abundance of ice and snow that came from every pore in my body.

Svetty's figure rushed into a small cottage surrounded by an iron at the northern edge of the city, where the truck's red headlights filled the air. Another wave of energy coursed through me, and it suddenly became engulfed in flames, impaled halfway by a long shard of ice. As I appeared in front of the home, the fleeing guard only seemed to add more of the fire that grew and swelled within me. He had dropped his gun in the grass. Forming an ice shard in my left hand, I chased him down and brought it down over and over on his body until I was coated head to toe in his blood.

The sky was orange with the flames in the area. My chest rose up and down, and I screamed. I screamed as loud as I could, causing multiple ice shards to rise up over the ground. With one swift motion, I placed his decapitated head on a stick on the front yard, next to where the neatly planted flowers and bushes were located under the front windows. I could see my crouched reflection in the glass. My tendrils were up in the air, floating, and, with my fingers still wrapped around my ice blade, sticky with blood, I concentrated. The door broke in half with a blast, splintered by blue ice shards.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

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I entered the house.

It was dark, but the blue light glowing from my hands illuminated the space. Strange, animalistic sounds were coming from me as the sound of frost forming spread out from my bare feet upon the carpet. A small flight of stairs lead to the second floor. After freezing shut most doors and windows so that no one could leave, I limped forward and my way through each room, gasping heavily. Frost spread out on the wooden floor behind me and crept up on the walls.

There was a small kitchen, painted yellow, reflecting the color of sunshine. Water slowly dripped from the faucet. Several dirty dishes and pots were in the sink, and the countertop was covered in cereal, like someone had been preparing a snack in a hurry. The cardboard box labeled with the golden, smiling sun with dark shades under the words Happy O’s met my eyes. Magnets of colorful cartoon characters marked the fridge, which hummed in the dark. A half empty box of crayons rested on the window ledge, slowly becoming coated in ice. The tile floor was cold, but slightly dampened and smelled of lavender, as if it had been recently mopped.

The dining room table consisted of four chairs, red square mats, with a bouquet of the same flowers I had seen out in the garden in a glass vase. In the corner of the room, a high chair was perched against the wall. A basket of toys and stuffed animals leaned against a chair, next to the small box TV. Several VHS tapes were neatly stacked on the carpet, their paper movie cases torn and peeling at the edges.

My head was pounding. Strands of my filthy hair spilled over my face as I slowly placed my bloody hand against the wallpaper while listening for any creaking upstairs. The silence inside made my skin tingle and burn, like something was clawing to get out of it. Tightening my grip on my knife, I held my breath for a moment. I waited to let my eyes adjust to the darkness that swelled and expanded around me.

A muffled thump occurred, followed by quick, rapid footsteps rushing up the stairs and the sound of a door slamming shut. The cry of an infant crying echoed in the house. I wanted to call out the boy’s name—-if I only knew it, I would’ve screamed it at the moment. It killed me inside that I did not—that Janice had never mentioned it in her letter to me. My heart skipped a beat as I began to follow the noise on the first floor.

I rushed to my feet, before being roughly pushed to the side. A pair of hands suddenly reached from behind me and wrapped around my throat. The solid ice pick slipped from my palm and crashed into a thousand pieces upon the floor as the person dragged me backwards into the kitchen. Their sudden strength overpowered me, and I heard the sound of a drawer being yanked open, followed by the clanging racket of a tray of silverware falling on the cold floor. Suddenly, my skull bashed into a wooden cabinet door, causing it to split in the middle and dangle by its hinges. The tile floor was too slippery. I lurched forward—the shattering sound of glass echoed in my ears when they shoved me into a drying rack filled with freshly washed cups. My knees gave out.

The moment my hip made contact with the edge of the counter, a burning sensation coursed through my body. The man’s fist went flying, straight between my eyes, causing everything to spin in the room.

I landed heavily on the floor, and something sharp slashed deep into my skin. I could make out the black boots they wore on their feet. The heel of his shoe struck the side of my ribs. Crawling on my hands and knees, I attempted to keep moving, trying to make it through the living room. The blade went into my back several times until my gray uniform jacket was completely soaked with blood and it clung to my skin. I didn’t know if a noise had escaped from my mouth or not. I only knew I needed to get upstairs as soon as possible.

As a result, the momentum of both of our struggled movements caused the dining table to shake. With a blood soaked palm, I grabbed the vase. A loud crash ensued as I brought it down over his head, and I could hear the perpetuator's grunts as I began to rapidly swing at him in the dark, blindly punching holes in the walls. He sank the blade into me once more, but I managed to strike him in the face. When he threw a punch, I slipped backwards into the table, causing the plates and chairs to crash to the ground. White pain seeped through my vision. He delivered another blow against my head and began to pin me against the ground, hands settling around my neck like a noose. The pressure he placed from the lacerations on my back caused the pain to worsen immensely.

As I struggled to breathe, the room became more blurry. I fought to keep my eyes opened—I could barely make out his own. They were white spots in the dark. My hand desperately searched for something, flapping around like a fish without water. Relying on what I had left, I heavily kneed him in the stomach. His grip tightened. I repeated it again, but although he grimaced in pain, he remained a firm hold on me. My fingers hungrily felt around on the lumpy carpet, before slowly wrapping around a triangular shard of broken pottery. With all of my might, I jabbed it straight into his left hand, all the way through so that the bone was revealed and it poked out on the other side of his palm. The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth. My mind was in complete pieces—I couldn’t concentrate. Couldn’t focus to keep him in a frozen state.

The man released a gut wrenching scream, loosening his grip on me.

With my arms, I shoved him as hard as I could against the wall, causing a great hole to form in the broken plaster. He roughly struck me hard in the face with his other hand, but I delivered one punch after another, swinging my arms, ignoring the stinging sensations building up in my wrists. Warm blood poured down my nose and mouth, coating my chin. As he toppled against the television set and landed to the side, I shifted my focus to the stairs, staying still. Almost as if I was in a dream, I moved forward, wanting to so badly call out to my son. The crying was growing louder—washing over a woman’s hushing, desperate pleas.

I was so dizzy I struggled to remain balanced; half crawling, half tripping, half running up the steps. The carpet treading was stained with my dirty bare feet. My shaky hand wrapped around the railing as I managed to drag myself over the top step.

Something struck me hard on the back of the head; my vision started to grow blurry. The man reached out to me once more again, causing me to somersault and roll heavily down the stairs and crash at the bottom. With his right arm, he broke off a large, thick piece of the wooden railing. His shadow stretched out on the wall—as he swung it down towards me, I understood what Fritz had experienced during his final moments. I laid on my back; trying to move, but again and again, the blows grew heavier. Slowly, I held my mangled fingers out, allowing myself to connect with the fluid in the man’s body. His arm suddenly jerked, then stopped. Like a mouse dangling from a trap, he squirmed.

The wooden block fell on the ground.

I fought for focus and control, using the last bit of energy I had. Ignoring the pain in my head, I crouched to my feet and threw his levitating form in the air backwards against the hallway wall, causing him to smash against a mirror hanging on the wall nearby. He slumped to the ground, wheezing, surrounded by shards of glass that piled on the wooden floor.

Staggering blindly on my legs, I bit back the excruciating pain in my stomach and snatched the kitchen knife he had dropped on the carpet, before slashing it in his face and getting a good chunk of his skin. He released a blood curdling cry as I began my ascent up the steps again, crawling once more, listening to his approaching footsteps.

Using all of my body weight, I slammed myself against the locked bedroom door. It barely budged. The sounds of my son crying grew louder, and I could hear that the man was climbing after me, but slowly. In the shadows, I could see how his hand was over his eyes, where blood stained the carpet of the stair treads. He tried to grab me again, but I kicked him in the head with my left foot and sent him sliding downwards.

My fists were bleeding and resembled raw stumps of flesh, but I began striking repeatedly on its surface until the wilted knob gave way and broke apart in half. When the door swung open, banging against the wall, I stumbled forward, blindly following the sound of an infant’s cries in the dark. My eyes were so swollen I was struggling to see. The green color from a nightlight bounced off the walls of the room, the crib. Blood dripped from my fingers.

The sound of the screaming little boy filled the air, and I spotted his small form in the bundled blankets; his bright red hair sticking upwards in the air. His large eyes looked directly at me from behind the wooden bars, his tiny hands grabbing on to the edge of a star printed quilt. Only a few feet away, a halfway filled suitcase and a backpack stuffed to the brim with diapers and clothing lay on the carpet.

Slowly, I turned to look at the sobbing woman, crouched next to the crib. Her arms and shoulders were slumped over. She was struggling to move, nearly tripping over an item on the floor.

I kicked the suitcase to the side.

Svetty took a few steps back, whimpering, her face soaked with tears at the sight of me. She pressed herself against the wall, fumbling with a weapon in her shaking, feeble hands. As she tried to point the gun at me, I knocked it out of her grasp as the blast went off. I allowed the heat inside of me to take control. Yanking her backwards roughly by her braid, with one swift, quick motion, I pulled her into a tight chokehold. When she began to struggle, thrashing in my arms, all I could hear was my child crying. I did not care if Baldwin knew about my whereabouts. I did not care if the Red Mamba Army in its entirety was waiting in front of this house with their weapons pointed towards me.

I just needed to hold my boy.

It didn’t take me very long to understand what the small white pieces of fabric attached to his arms were—he had mostly gotten out of a lab not too far away from here. One that I knew I would find and burn to the ground, including all who were involved.

Immediately, I placed the kitchen knife against her neck, directly on top of her throat. Her eyes were wide as saucers as the lights flickered on in the small bedroom. My eyes adjusted to the space. The blue and white striped walls that smelled like fresh paint, the polished toy chest, the rocking chair, the nightlight—I knew this prison far too well. As I prepared to crush her windpipe into dust, someone weakly shouted my name from the dark hallway.

I slowly turned my head to the side.

My son's wails grew louder—tears rolled down his cheeks. The man made his way in from the dark hallway, breathing uncontrollably.

A layer of sweat was on his face as he attempted to stand properly. His hand slowly dropped from the switch, leaving a dark red trail of blood on the newly painted wall. A gash was on his forehead—his nose appeared broken. His torn, bloody suit and rumpled tie were stained as well, and he struggled to stand upright and breathe properly, attempting to position himself on the dresser. When he pressed his hand against one of the open drawers, he applied most of his weight against it, coughing up more blood. The floor was scattered with stuffed toys, picture books, and baby clothing.

From the smiling crescent moon shaped clock, the ticking sound slowly echoed in the room.

Due to the multiple white and gray strands in his hair, I would have passed him on the street if I had not gotten him a good, long look at his face, which had many more wrinkles on it than I had expected. He slowly held both hands out towards me, before helplessly dropping the crowbar he had carried with him on the ground with a loud clatter, next to the gun. Another fit seized him, and he began to hack his lungs out, spitting out more blood from his mouth.

Svetty squeezed her eyes shut.

Mr. Karin remained slumped against the doorway, blood dripping from the corner of his busted, swollen upper lip. He struggled to reach his breath, still tugging at his tie with his uninjured hand. I could see the goosebumps growing on his skin, on the balding spot in the middle of his round head. He barely reached my left shoulder---the years had shrunken him down, given how tall I had once remembered him to be when I was small. But he kept staring at me; almost in a state of complete disbelief. It had been so long since we had seen each other that, while recognizing his face, my chest burned. Then, like a dead leaf caught into the embers of a blazing fire, his expression crumbled.

”Get away from my child,” I snarled, gritting my teeth so hard my jaw ached. My words were colder than the ice that had been emitted from my body. “Or I’ll snap her neck like a chicken.”

The creaking sound of the empty rocking chair echoed in my ears.

“P-put…” Mr. Karin stumbled over his words. “Put the k-knife d-down, won’t you? C-can’t we j-just t-talk about t-this for a m—”

“I cut.”

My fingers flexed around the knife handle.

Svetty's panicked breaths was the only sound in the room. Her heart was beating in rhythm with the clock that hung on the wall—the moon that smiled down upon us. Mr. Karin took a slow step towards us, but I tightened my grasp on her, roughly twisting her left arm backwards as she winced in pain. He appeared bewildered, staring at me, his mouth open, trying to find words, lies, anything. He kept holding on to the gaping wound in his leg with his good hand. A small puddle of blood leaked from the impaled pottery piece in his other, lodged into his flesh like a shell trapped in the sand.

Beads of sweat formed on his forehead—I only noticed then how badly he was shaking. He tried to speak, but nothing came out. It almost amused me—all throughout my childhood he had always known what to say and when. He had always seemed so sure, so confident. It didn’t matter to me how much of his breath he was trying to save, not even fifteen years later. I was going to rip him to shreds and keep him alive along enough so he could feel every bit of it. I would carve out his insides and make make a skin suit out of his flesh. I would hang it next to the other bastard whose head was balanced on a stick in the front yard. Then, once the maggots and flies began to feast on his rotting skin, I would take off one of his ears, his nose—an insignificant part of his worthless, sagging, aging body— and directly mail it to Huey Baldwin in a white paper envelope.

Svetty tried to shakily mouth a couple of silent words to Mr. Karin, but, with my left hand, I rapidly sliced the blade across her chest, leaving a deep diagonal incision. Bits of her blood and flesh sprayed on the rocking chair. She released a high pitched scream, wrenching uncontrollably from the pain, her hands flailing in an attempt to place them over her open wound. I yanked them back even tighter.

”I cut,” I shouted.

Svetty’s stifled sobs filled the room. Mr. Karin’s Adam’s apple rapidly bobbed up and down as his gaze helplessly fell on the knife in my hand.

My bloody fingers tightened around the handle as I slowly pressed the blade further into the wretch’s neck, making a fine, neat line on her pale skin. As her sweater became soaked with blood, her limbs twitched and swayed in response. Her eyelids drooped. I could see how Mr. Karin stiffened, caught into a deep panic.

In the corner of the room, I could make out where my boy was through my peripheral vision. He was huddled between the rumpled blankets in the wooden crib, sitting upright. The urge to rush over and hold him overwhelmed me, but I could not weaken my resolve and ruin the only chance I had—lest I could never see him again. His cries had gradually quieted down; mostly replaced by small, bubbly hiccups. As he stared at me, my eyes welled and burned at the edges.

I’m here, little one. I’m here.

He began to quietly gnaw on the edge of the star printed quilt that was gathered in his tiny fists with his gums, cooing, and then turning to look at the three of us, one by one, before fixing his gaze on me again. I didn’t dare look in his direction, since turning my back to Mr. Karin would not be the wisest decision. I realized the young’un was much more calm—he was noticing how silent the room was at the moment. Smart kid. It deeply surprised me how aware he was of his surroundings; how he was observing us.

Mr. Karin flinched—his eyes were darting from me to Svetty, and the gun she had dropped on the floor. Not once did I break eye contact with him—his indecisiveness only fed the fire burning inside of me. I watched him from behind the tangled mass of hair over my face, applying more pressure onto the incision on Svetty’s neck, making it bigger. She shrieked as a good amount of fresh blood spilled downwards, staining the starched collar on her sweater. As she gurgled and wheezed, threads of pink saliva spilled out from the corners of her open mouth. Some slowly dripped on the colorful rug, like a leaky pipe.

Mr. Karin's green eyes never left mine.