The next morning was sobering, Crystal was still jobless and had bills to pay.
The Wilburs arrived home at dawn looking exhausted and thanked her, offering a far more than generous payment.
Crystal immediately tried to refuse it but they weren't having it. Eventually she gave in, embarrassed at the fact that she desperately needed it.
She thanked them profusely before leaving.
Not eager to go back home and face Mabel's relentless grilling, Crystal headed for Mr Hank's flower shop.
She ignored his unfriendly expression, quickly purchasing some black dahlias and purple tulips.
Smiling down at the bouquet in her hands, Crystal walked off to the graveyard, grateful that no one else was there.
Live.
Normally Crystal was able to blend that voice into the background yet it sounded even louder when she came here. Perhaps it was her imagination.
Finally arriving at her parents' graves, she placed the bouquet between their gravestones and flopping onto the grass.
She stayed like that for at least an hour, silently staring ahead before the back of her neck pricked with awareness.
This happened a few times. So often that Crystal grew uneasy and bought some pepper spray.
She would have bought a taser, but with how often the local police pulled her over because she was 'suspicious', she worried they'd claim she was planning to attack someone.
Uneasy, Crystal whispered a quiet goodbye to her parents.
She got up and dusted off her skirt, walking away.
Grateful for him regularly cleaning her parents' gravestones, Crystal gave Mr Charles some cash.
She knew he was just Mabel's staff but it was still relieving to no longer see graffiti or dirt when she came.
Deciding to just stall for time with the hope of missing Mabel, Crystal took the long route home.
Perhaps it was because of her time away, she had forgotten how busy the roads here were.
And how few people here liked her.
As those she passed either glared or looked at her with disgust, Crystal's grip on her bag strap tightened.
The uneasy feeling only grew, even the air became ominous as if warning her of impending danger.
Now desperate to escape all these, her fear and anxiety overpowering any anger she felt at the injustice, Crystal's pace quickened.
Maybe that was why she roughly knocked into someone.
She turned, ready to apologize but found herself falling instead.
That was confusing but what was even more baffling was the unbearable pain radiating from her stomach.
Shocked, Crystal weakly craned her neck to look at her stomach only to see something protruding from it.
Crystal stared, dumbfounded as a strange warmth spread through her stomach—had she...just been stabbed?
The realization only amplified the pain.
Why?
Why?
Why—
She barely registered someone laughing.
Without expecting it, Crystal coughed out, blood splattering to the ground. Her throat burned as she stared at the blood.
That had just come out of her?
She slowly reached toward her stomach to feel the knife, not daring to remove it.
Crystal didn't need to look to know she was bleeding out as warmth soaked through her clothes.
The pain so great that everything around her began to fade.
Was this what her parents had felt before they died.
What they had experienced?
Voices around her blurred into muffled noise.
As her vision blurred slowly, the last thing she saw was someone's grinning expression.
The last thing she heard—
Her mother's voice ringing for the last time.
Live, Crystal.