The household was quiet and dark, though the sun rose as it did every morning. Jayce awoke with little Annaliese cuddled up to him, with her worn teddy smushed between them. He kissed her forehead and her eyes opened.

“Good morning, princess.”

“Good morning, daddy.”

Annaliese jumped up into his arms, but not before scooping up the bear. She nestled into his neck. “What are we going to do about Mommy? When is she coming home?”

Tears filled Jayce’s eyes. “I don’t know yet, baby. We’ll figure it all out. Don’t worry.”

They stopped at Dawson’s bedroom door and knocked. “Daws? I’m making breakfast and I’d like you to join us.”

No response. Jayce opened the door.

“Dad! What the hell! Get outta here!” Dawson yelled from his bed.

“Dawson, breakfast in ten.”

Jayce left the door open and as he walked away, still holding Annaliese, he heard Dawson mutter, “I hate you.”

Eventually, the family, minus one, ate quietly at the table. When Annaliese finished, she gave her daddy a kiss and asked if she could go play. Jayce hugged her and chose to take the opportunity to try and communicate with his son.

“So that was quite the news yesterday. What’s going through your head?”

Dawson, staring at the table, spoke with a scowl, “You did this. You did this to her, and you did this to us. You belong in there, rotting.”

Jayce was more than startled. He hadn’t realized the full extent of his sons contempt. “All of us make choices, whether good or bad. I was stuck in stupidity for a long stretch there, son. I’ll be the first to admit it. But please, please understand that I’ve left that behind now. I’ve walked away! I’m one hundred percent here for you and Anna now, and will always be.”

Dawson chuckled then said, “I’m one hundred percent sure that’s total crap. Look…you want to play the dad role? I guess now even the single dad role considering where you’ve put my mother! Do it. I don’t care. It’s too late for me. Don’t screw up Anna like you screwed up me and mom.”

With that, he got up and walked the hall to his room. After the slam of the door, the house was silent. Except for the sound of Annalieses music box and her humming in the distance.

Jayce sat there and with his head in his hands, he wept. His entire married life flashed before him, the good times and bad. How did every single aspect get uprooted and how could all these broken pieces and people be mended?

Jayce managed to compose himself, but for a moment. In what felt like extreme slow motion, Jayce looked to his right to see Dawson storm out of his room, and in his hand he carried a sawed off shotgun.

As he walked, he readied the weapon and aimed it at his father’s chest. Jayce’s hands shot up in the air. The only sound audible were Dawson’s loud foot steps. His finger found the trigger and curled around it, ready to pull.

And then, in the blink of an eye, with her bear in hand, danced little Annaliese out into the hallway, right between her brother and her father. With a second to smile at her daddy, the gun went off.

The round went through the back of her head and her face popped like a ripe, red tomato. Bits of flesh and skull and blood soaked the table, as well as Jayce. Her body fell to the floor and besides that thump, the only sound in both Jayce’s and Dawson’s ears was a high pitch ringing.

Jayce bolted up and began screaming. He looked at his crying son, looking at his dead sister. In the time Jayce had to take a step toward his son, the barrel released again, this time finding it’s original mark in Jayce’s chest.

With his heart and a lung blown completely out of his torso, Jayce felt no pain. He collapsed on the floor as his spirit exited his body. Blood pooled from both daddy and daughter, and they intermingled, just as they would in the afterlife.

Dawson stood with them at his feet. As the adrenaline faded, the shock increased, and the regret and horror that overtook him was too much for anyone….

Sitting in traffic, she heard them. In her cubicle at work, they spoke. On her lunch break with Sierra, their words were louder than her best friends.

All day long, Kendra re-lived the murder and a sense of excitement, almost sexual arousal but nothing like that at the same time. Quiet voices in her head began overtaking her every waking moment, reassuring her that everything will be okay. Sometimes these voices reminded her of how fun it was and they instructed her to find more ‘participants’ and to ‘get creative’. She was consumed.

Unbeknownst to her, Jayce, in the face of her vanishing the past 36 hours, woke up as well, but to a positive reality. He knew inside his path had taken him far from who he knew he was as man, a husband and a father.

Jayce had stared himself down, the one person he hated the most, and he decided that it was time to reinvent himself. He yearned to see in his reflection the person he needed to be, and he ran with it.

An appointment with a psychiatrist scared him senseless but he set it up for that evening. He even reached out to his son, whom he knew despised his past choices and they began sitting down and reconnecting.

Jayce began surrounding himself with self-help books and he even called his mother, the first time in over a year. The local pastor from his childhood church had randomly called him, in the most divinely appointed time in his life.

He called his wife what seemed like almost on the hour, every hour. He texted her many, many times, begging her forgiveness and asking her to come home. He was ready to confess all and let the chips fall where they may, though he hoped and literally prayed thar she would stay his wife and forgive him and they could move on together. Oh, how he desired this.

With time off work, Jayce was all ears and eyes to anything to do with his Kendra, his sweet wife that he had disrespected and walked all over. He desperately wanted to hear from her. Each hour passed and he felt more and more saddened and alone.

Until finally, a text message came to him. He couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw it was from her. His heart soared and also ached as he opened the message.

What he saw read like this: I’ve been busy and will be busier. I am not alone…

Kendra sat nervously in her car, parked outside of a dimly lit, hole-in-the-wall restaurant. She watched a thin man enter, carrying what could only be a bundle of flowers. With eyes rolling, she stepped foot onto the wet pavement and holding a book as a makeshift umbrella, she darted inside the establishment.

Kendra approached the man she assumed was her blind date from the Internet.  “Um hi, are you Stuart?”

He got up and offered a hug. “So nice to meet you, Kendra”. She hesitated, then let him touch her. Her hands remained at her sides. “Please, sit.”

The chit chat was mindless banter that bored her to death before she could even process it’s mundanity. At one point in the conversation, going back to his place (in an apartment above the diner, no less..) became a reality and she accepted. Complete revenge was around the corner.

When she stepped into his cramped apartment, you could smell the mildew, almost as if death was in the air.

His hands were on her body, his mouth on hers. She was pushed onto the single bed and his body enveloped hers.

Kendra’s skin crawled. She couldn’t go through with this. This skinny animal was overtaking her and he needed to be stopped. Jayce, or any man, made her sick to the deepest part of her gut, and cheating was now clearly not her answer.

She squirmed and pushed his body off hers. He latched back onto her like the bottom feeding leech of a man he was, or in her eyes anyway.

“No, no, NO!!” shouted Kendra to her insatiable attacker. As he began tearing open her blouse, her right hand fumbled with the night stand and it’s contents. She palmed the heavy glass lamp and in one fluid motion, cranked him across his sweaty forehead. He collapsed to the floor beside the bed and yelled out in pain.

As quickly as she could, Kendra grabbed her keys and her purse. With one heel on, she stumbled toward the door attempting to put the other one on her hopping foot.

She heard a commotion behind her and as she turned, the enraged man launched himself across the room and tackled her, sending her headlong into the front closet, right beside the exit.

Wire coat hangers flew everywhere as she hit her head in the back wall. She felt warm blood trickling down her face, standing there as she collected her thoughts.

She felt his clammy hand on the back of her neck, pulling her towards him. With a coat hanger in her grasp, she unraveled it, revealing a nice sharp metal wire.

He pulled her back harder, and Kendra spun around. As if she had been trained, she closed one hand around his throat and with the other she drove the pointy coat hanger straight up his nostril and into his brain. When it wouldn’t go any further, she twisted it, making him squirm as death came for him.

The last thing he saw was her scorned and bloodied face. Without time for a last breath, he collapsed in front of her, his face aghast and contorted…