Havoc rains outside. The noises alone are enough to push you off the edge of sanity as chatter, caterwauls, and sirens scream an off-key serenade.

The cacophony is paired with candescent lights, red and blue. Mangled and juiced, Jacob Wilson lies beside a bruised baseball bat. The word “sorry” is written slatternly in crimson red on the pale hardwood.

Once smelling of Jacob’s favorite candle, Fall Festival, the house reeks of anguish and smoke. Stronger than the rest, the aroma of iron fills the house. The scent pours from the cells that once coursed Jacob’s veins. Now, it courses the cracks of the hardwood, running from ditch to ditch, flowing in dwarvish rivers. The body, no longer Jacob’s, floats in crimson rivers; drowning in wine only hours before.

Wine. Thin, pale, and cheap. It’s putrid; similar in smell to a bitter citrus. It’s the smell Jacob’s sister never knew. She couldn’t know. Whether her innocence and incognizance saved or imperiled her is yet to be decided. Regardless, her life was censored and silenced. She only knew what he let her, saw what he wanted her to, and was precisely who he raised her to be. Who will she become now, allowed to become someone?