A small girl wearing muddy jeans and a dark blue hooded sweatshirt cradles a calico, polydactyl cat purring with her eyes closed. A teenager in a golden tennis dress with long, meticulously straightened hair stands in the corner, arms folded over her stomach, staring open-mouthed at the mangled mess of a woman across the room in an open-backed hospital gown. Another woman close in age and appearance, sans injuries, stands next to her.

“Did you see him? Was he there?” she asks again and again. The wounded woman reaches up into her bloodied hair and pulls the thick, wet strands down in front of her face. She stretches her hand out and wipes the blood across the face of the talking woman. They start screaming. 

The injured woman glances over at the girl holding the cat and whispers, “I saw…absolutely nothing.”

Luciana, 37