Feeling water wash over her face as if helping to brush off any pain, little drops of H2O helped shield the viewer from the sadness that engulfed her being. Brushing her sand-colored bangs from her eyes, she looked up at the mirror and squinted through the foggy, unkempt glass. Her reflection looked horrific. The hours of crying caused her eyes to grow red and sting as if someone had stabbed them numerous times with pin needles. The area surrounding her eyes were sensitive to touch and, as it seemed, the air around her. Her joints ached as if she had been trying to fight a wild bear instead of crying in misery for several hours.

Shutting the water faucet off in the filthy, rusty sink she stood over, her shaking body somehow made its way to the wall with little disruption. Falling down to the cold tiled floor in defeat, she pulled her legs to her chest and wrapped her thin arms around her knees. Her body felt foreign to her; malnourished. Her bones could easily be seen through her thin layer of skin; the skin that looked so translucent beneath the buzzing, fading fluorescent light of the rundown bathroom. Track marks shown on her arms, both old and new, letting onlookers know instantly where all her food money went.

Several feet from where the girl sat, feebly protected from the chill and misery of that small area, lay a body. She tried not to look at it-- tried to keep her gaze locked elsewhere. But every attempt at doing so was futile. She stared motionlessly at the body, her eyes traveling to and from its back. A simple, crude kitchen knife had killed this man; his attacker long gone as the prey left soaking un his own pool of blood.

The girl's paranoid eyes stared and darted away before staring again at the knife. There was something about it that transfixed; bewitched her. She wanted it.

Daring to get up, the young girl's body shaking violently against her shift in weight. Pleading with her not to move, she ignored her body's cries and continued towards the corpse like a moth to the flame. Reaching out over the dead body, terrified of touching it, she stretched her arms as far as she could to grab a hold of the weapon. It took several tried to wrap her fingers around the hilt of the weapon, but she eventually managed to do so. Wrenching the knife from the back was another chore. The blade had been within the man for at least two to three days and in that time, it seemed to merge with the body. Ripping it from the spine, she finally got it loose. The dried blood that ate away at the rusting blade, she stared at the point with heightened intrigue. Eyes darting back to the lifeless body, she wondered vaguely what the man had done so wrong to be done in in such a cowardly manner.

As the hilt of the knife rested against her palms, she eventually became intoxicated by its dangerous aura; her pale eyes that once had held so much light and wonder of the world seemed to find those lost emotions in the knife. Placing both hands on the hilt, she paralleled the blade just above her heart. Her tears had long since stopped flowing, but she still cried in sorrow. Simply because water did not escape her eyes in rapid succession did not mean her pain had extinguished. Staring at the knife in front of her, a sudden calm eclipsed her. Stretching her thin arms out ahead of her, she thrust the blade directly into her heart. As her body fell to the floor, her crimson liquid spilling from her exposed wound, she was encompassed by a warm, white light. Wrapping itself around her, it brought it away from the miserable place she inhabited and had been staying for several hours.