Too Late to Love Me
I died on the day I won the Global Medical Doctorate Award.
Fresh from celebrating the sixteenth birthday of my younger sister, my parents, brother, and my fiancé finally returned home, but it was three hours after my death.
My family photos were beaming with happiness on social media, while I laid in the suffocating basement drenched in blood.
Before I died, I had struggled to slide my tongue across my phone screen in a desperate attempt to call for help.
My parents and brother had blocked my number. Only my fiancé answered my call.
The moment his voice came through, he snapped, "Winona, Winnie's sixteenth birthday is important. Stop trying to hijack attention with your pathetic excuses. Enough with the theatrics!"
It murdered my last spark of survival. In that electronic death rattle, my heart flatlined.
The 100th time they chose her. The 100th time they abandoned me for her. But it was also the last time.
They thought I had ran way to get their attention again, and that if they taught me a harsh lesson, I would come crawling back pathetically.
But not this time.
Because I didn't leave home. I had been lying in the basement of my house.