Waking up to my sin
And then, I saw the center of the clearing.
My knees hit the ice before my mind even registered that I was falling.
The snow wasn't white anymore. It was stained a deep, sickening crimson that looked almost black under the silver moonlight. A large, frozen pool of blood sat in the middle of the lake, looking like a jagged, open wound on the earth itself. Scattered around the red site were the undeniable signs of a one-sided struggle—the deep gouges of boot heels in the ice, the shattered glass of a vehicle’s headlamp, and there, lying in the center of the crimson slush, was Malakai’s Glock 17.