Today was the day.

Not in the sense that it was any special kind of day, just that it was the day Esmeralda would finally do what she set out to do.

She had called off work. “They don’t need me today,” she thought to herself in bed that morning. “They never need me.” So she stayed home.

In retrospect, perhaps she should’ve gone to work. Maybe something might have caught her eye and given her a final glimmer of hope.

She spent the morning laying in her black college futon watching television. She had never been one for furniture, definitely not one to decorate.

As the rain outside drowned the city’s noise, Esmeralda lost herself binge-watching Criminal Minds. It brought some sort of comfort to her.

As she lay there, the dormant feelings of rage, hate, and numbness fleshed out within her. She had had enough. Enough was enough.

The feelings overcame her. The feelings filled her. The feelings became her and she had become them. There was nothing anyone could have done.

So…today was the day. The rain grew louder. Thunder became incessant. The darkness overpowered the day. Esmeralda had succumbed.

Esmeralda never made a decision. It just wasn’t a question. At all. It sort of…just happened.

This doesn’t happen. Things like this don’t just happen. But they did. Today they did. Today was the day.

All it took was a kitchen knife.

*Written by Francisco Hernandez. All material is copyrighted.

— Read Chapter 1 HERE