Page 141 of Damsel in Disguise

I’m having imposter syndrome.

I don’t tell anyone at school—not even the teachers. I just ran home. I can’t waste a single second.

For the first time in my life, I run toward something instead of running away from it—my lungs burn, my pulse uneven from something dangerously close to hope.

I want to see her face when I tell her. I want to see something different there.

Something that isn’t survival.

Something that is… worth keeping.

I want to see her proud.

The door is open.

She never leaves it open, not even when she is expecting someone.

That’s the first time something is off in a way that presses against instinct before rational thought can catch up.

The second mistake is the radio, playing too loudly, the sound distorted beyond recognition, the melody warped into a celebratory tune.

I step inside. “Ma?”

No answer.

The kitchen light spills out into the darkened hallway, pulling me forward whether I intend to follow it or not.

She’s on the floor.

There’s a moment before comprehension settles, where the world fractures into fragments instead of meaning, where your mind isolates details because it cannot yet assemble the whole.

I notice the color first. Red behaves differently depending on where it lands.

On tile, it pools, spreading outward in slow, deliberate expansion.

On fabric, it soaks, disappearing into fibers until it darkens them completely.

On skin, it glistens, making it look either beautiful or disgusting.

And there’s too much of the said red liquid.

She looks haunted with eyes wide open from terror.

Red spills out of her neck, and chest… and other parts of the body. It pools on the tile, soaked onto her clothes, and glistening on her skin.

Her body is positioned wrongly, which doesn’t align with anything natural—each limb angled at something no human anatomy would permit.

He’s still there, gripping the broken neck of a bottle, jagged edges catching the light. Red is still dripping off it.

The paper slips from my hand without any sound.

I don’t bother to pick it up, or say something, or ask him anything at all. I just go numb.

People always misunderstand moments like this. They assume this is when they feel something inside them break.

It doesn’t. They confuse clarification with sanity.

For me, there’s no confusion in this moment, no need to question what comes next.