The early morning air was crisp, still carrying the last whispers of night. The town was quiet - too quiet, as if it were holding its breath. The cobblestone bridge stretched before me, its damp stones glistening under the dim glow of a streetlamp. A stream trickled below, reflecting the overcast sky like shattered glass.
I stepped forward, my pulse slow but steady. I knew this place. Though I had never seen it before in this life, it pulled me in like a thread unraveling from an old tapestry.
Ahead, a house stood on a slight slope - a large, well-kept home, not a mansion but still imposing in its own way. A STOP sign at the front corner seemed almost ironic. The house felt too still, too perfect - like a stage set moments before a tragedy.
A young man, no older than twenty-four, rode up on his bicycle. His clothes, simple and worn, clung to his frame as if they belonged to someone else. He slowed as he neared the house, parking the bike along the side, but something about the way he moved felt unnatural. Calculated.
I stayed in the shadows as he crept toward the back of the house, sliding open the glass door. My breath hitched as I followed, though my footsteps made no sound. It was like watching a memory unfold - not mine, yet somehow deeply mine.
Inside, the air was warm, the scent of old wood and sleep hanging in the silence. A man and a woman lay in bed, their breathing deep and rhythmic. The dim glow of a streetlamp cast long shadows through the curtains, slicing across their resting faces.
Then, there was the bassinet. A baby.
Something inside me clenched, a feeling of dread, too raw to be simple fear.
The man, stood at the edge of the bed, a knife glinting in his hand. His eyes, hollow and dark, flickered with something unreadable. Regret? Rage? Grief? I couldn't tell.
And then he moved.
The first blow was swift, a whisper of metal against flesh. The man in the bed never even gasped before his body jerked once, twice, and then stilled. The woman stirred, a breath catching in her throat before she saw him.
Her scream never fully formed. The knife found her again and again, and each strike sent a phantom pain through me - real, visceral, as if her pain were mine. I felt the blade, not against my body, but inside my very soul.
Then, the baby whimpered.
A sharp silence fell over the room. The man turned. His chest rose and fell with uneven breaths as he stared at the tiny bundle, innocent and untouched.
For a moment, I thought he might stop. That something inside him would break, that the thing compelling him would snap and he would collapse under the weight of it all.
But he didn't.
The knife flashed once more.
The house remained still.
And then, the door opened again, an older couple appears.
The woman's strangled gasp shattered the silence, and the man beside her clutched the doorway as if his body could no longer hold him upright. Their eyes fell upon the scene upon the scene ahead, three lifeless bodies. One being their daughter.
Their grief flooded the room, thick and suffocating, as they moved toward the bed, hands trembling. The mother cradled the lifeless infant, her sobs echoing off the walls. The father, his face carved from something too deep for words, looked toward the open door.
But the man was gone.
The bicycle's tires whispered against the pavement as he disappeared into the morning fog.