A little girl's sobbing cries, coming from outside, alarms everyone inside the house. The house's occupants, all adults and mostly women, threw away their Uno cards along with Lily's mother who, upon recognizing her daughter as the source of the loud crying, ran towards the door in a rush, fellow adults right behind her, and proceeded outside.

Lily's father had just mowed the lawn yesterday, but that didn't matter. Her mother stepped on the grass without one bit of hesitation, her mind filled with nothing but worry for her child. And there, by the sidewalk just across the whole lawn, Lily, a little girl of seven years, was standing still but crying, her tears falling down from her eyes, her heart almost coming out of her throat.

"Lily? Baby?" her mother cried out. The slender, tall blonde in a white sweater ran to her dear daughter, hugging her in place, saving her from the heartbreak of whatever it was that caused it.

Two small boys, one of them smaller than the other, was walking away in delight, some meters away from Lily. They were smiling, as if celebrating some rude thing they did, but by the time they looked back to mock Lily again, who they left in this sad, broken state, their eyes went wide, seeing as her mother was looking at them with despair, and a rage they couldn't help but feel from a mile away. With this, the boys ran away, their steps almost stumbling as if their lives hung in the balance.

Dozing away from the trance of looking the kids' eyes in threat, Lily's mother turned to her, wiping away her tears, the sobs not stopping just yet. Lily wiped her own face in turn, interchangeably using the palm of her hands and her chubby forearms under her mom's soft hands that lay on her face, cupping it in its warmth. Lily calmed down after a few seconds had passed, and she went back inside the house with her mother walking right behind her.

All the other adults had gone home, probably because Lily's mother had told them to.

Lily had been staying in the bedroom for the whole time her mother was downstairs. She sat on the bedside, her face blank, and her eyes staring through the wall.

There was nothing there, but she saw herself, again, as she always had in all the times that she would look into nothing.

Her dream was to become a cool, strong witch. And so when she daydreams, she sees herself a witch.

She would see herself wearing witch clothes, like a hat and a small hood, while she rides away on a broomstick and uses magic to defeat bad people. They would run and she would go after them, immobilizing them and punishing them in fun ways she thinks they deserve to be punished with. Of those bad people, the two kids that made her cry just earlier are her witch self's primary target.

They must never escape, she thought, in all the scrambles of the simplest forms of thought a kid her age was capable of.

She was pulled away from her daydream as the door gently creaked, revealing her mother's maidenly composure, with a face that is as concerned as is reassuring, when the door swung full open, letting in a placid gray light of the afternoon shine against the bedroom floor. Her mother walked up to her, sat on the bedside, and then hugged Lily, her one and only child.

The child hugged back, her eyes a well of tears, and of relief and comfort. She rested nicely in her mother's arms, taking in the lingering feeling there,

of safety and of peace.

As the child sobbed again in her solemn state of openness and vulnerability, her mom hugged her even tightly, then let go of her to wipe her tears again. How she cried earlier outside was somehow of the more hysterical kind; this, however, was more peaceful and sweet and intimate, despite her still loud cries that echoed to and fro the bedroom's corners. Her mother hugged her even tighter, and the warmth almost burned her.

She wanted to burn in that warmth forever. It didn't matter, for the cruelty and the coldness of the world that she felt and experienced had been thawed away, in this very moment.

Everything had disappeared, or at least, she was trying to forget.

And she did.

As years passed, she forgot about the two kids, the insults they've thrown at her that day, and even days before. How she cried and stared at nothing in the bedroom and saw herself as the witch.

Even the warmth of her mother's embrace. All was lost in memory, and Lily was now as happy as she could ever be.

She did not cry, or laugh, but she was smiling all the same and was living an easy life. No one dared wonder what she did, what she does, what she was about to do the next day, or by the next second. Everyone just greeted her with trepidation, and she greeted them back with nothing but responsibility to appear polite. Proper.

And human.

She'd come across nothing but dull routines and the things that exist only in her day-to-day living. Work life was all about accomplishing tasks. Her meals were a fixed list of the same menus, every meal of every day. Her going home routine was the same route she travels when going to work. She'd see the skies as they are, the kids and the people as they are.

As the phony projections of things from the life she used to live. From the world she used to be.

She saw each thing in her present world what she thinks they objectively, really are. Without the aid of the imaginative kid that she was, and the other people she was living with in this world are.

The fascination and the awe in the mundane. She was devoid of those now.

And there she lives under the confines of simplicity, schedules, deadlines, linear paths. Status quos. Not changing a thing with the way she was living each day, was, to her, the perfect kind of life.

Nothing intangible to grasp on, nothing of the past to reminisce about, nothing to make time doing nonsensical things. All she cared about was the fact that she could live a life without change. Life that is safe.

She did not know it, but all these preconceived thoughts and feelings were now lost into her habits and the way she thinks about the world.

The thought of it all was lost; all that's left of her now was the effect in all of this.

She'd meet the same people, the same circumstances (not that there was much to encounter at all) and the same dilemmas, only those that were of the most trivial kind. She ensured a life of nothing but the expected for herself. And she didn't know this any longer. It was becoming, to her, the natural thing to do. It was the safest thing to do.

And she was right. She did not have to worry about anything again.

Her life was complete. Safe from heartbreak. And any danger.

She walked home with a smile that never fazed. How things have changed.

Her hair danced gracefully with the wind, as it always did, and then, her heart sank right there

in the middle of the street.

She didn't know what it was, but for the first time ever, her routine was about to break.

She grabbed onto the nearest car parked beside the road, tried to regain her balance but failed. She tried breathing, slowly and then faster as she became more desperate, her chest a bottle of pebbles, air barely coming in and out of her system. She knelt down shaking, her hands on her chest as it all happened and her things were scattered about on the concrete street. She breathed more. But the farthest that the air can go is only within her nose, never the inside of her lungs that need it the most. Her heart thumped fast. She clawed at it through her blouse and her skin as if to make it stop. Her skin should've hurt by now, but her senses were numb. And desperation was all there was. And her difficulty breathing was all it was.

Then her vision slowly blurred.

Her tears. She met them again.

And for once, in a long time, of her unfazed, undisturbed facades, she herself was the agent that destroyed her safe, peaceful life. Lily finally felt more than just the objective texture of anything.

She felt the warmth of tears.

She felt her heartbeat racing.

She felt sadness, and fear.

She finally felt something, beyond the things that she viewed as mere elements of a world she didn't want.

The stone-like firmness of her smiling face now broke apart, turning into a sobbing Lily, which looked no different than when she was still her mother's baby girl, that day by the sidewalk and in their home's bedroom.

She saw it all happen upon herself on the car's reflective painted body. Her hair looked lifeless, her face sad. Features distorted along the uneven surfaces of the vehicle in front.

Her eyes filled to the brim with tears she didn't know she'd feel again.

Lily looked straight at herself in the reflection, mesmerized, surprised. As she reached out to the reflection, her hand touching the surface right above her face, she gestured, switching her open hand to being a bit closed, the back of her hand now facing the reflection, the back of her finger touching the car's body.

A tear flowed right down from her left eye, onto her cheek. Just like what her mother would have done,

she tried catching it.

She pushed her finger up, attempting to comfort herself through the reflection, wiping her tear up, and away.

But it didn't do anything to the tear. As the single tear she wanted to wipe away flowed right behind her finger, untouched, falling to the concrete street she knelt on, she saw a miserable likeness of herself.

As one,

two,

three more tears went flowing out from each of her eyes,

she scrubbed against the reflective surface with her palm, with her fingers and thumbs trying to wipe away her reflection's tears just as a person would another, getting annoyed as she failed each time, while also trying to calm herself despite the anxiety it caused.

Lily doesn't seem to understand. It was a mere reflection she was doing it to.

An illusion of likeness. A lifeless surface with one's own humanity on it.

Or was she ever human?

As she simultaneously saw her tears get wasted without her being able to wipe them all, her face now getting more and more like the younger Lily that she was, Lily began wiping, no – she was hitting the car surface, slapping against it, clawing and punching at it hitting the spot every way she could. She was screaming, her face now red and her neck filled with veins, every bit of her swelling from her aimless, clueless outrage.

Dents now filled up the spot, and still she hit, scratched, in quicker successions, becoming more violent in sound. Her face's reflection was neither clear nor distorted – it was gone. The dents were too many to even see anything reminiscent of a mirror.

The sun was bright, warm, lighting up the afternoon. It did well shining a glare against the car's surface, and a silhouette out of Lily's kneeling figure.

Most of her face and the red of the car were now the same color. But she was too busy about something else, she didn't have time to wonder about the comparison.

She fixated herself on the spot where her reflection formerly was. She looked closely, so closely like a kid. Revealed, right in front of her, was a layer of dull, tattered metal, contrasting the rest of the car, which was handled with care, utmost priority and love.

This was the dullness concealed by paint.

And she was the reason it was concealed no longer.

As the sun went down behind the trees and houses from afar, Lily knelt still, unfazed, observing the spot all the same, her body and face unmoving as blood dripped uncontrollably, gushing down from both her hands which were now a lively sculptures of broken fingers and displaced, long nails. It bled, shook even, but she rested comfortably still, kneeling beside the car which no one seems to drive.

As Lily stared at the dull spot on the car for as long as the night had lasted, she saw herself wearing witch clothes. She had, on her head, a hat, and on her shoulders a small hood. She flew away on a broomstick and caught people in nets that she would materialize from thin air. She'd go back to her lair, there in a wide room of gray and mossed walls, and put all her caught people in there. They would run away while she goes after them in her broomstick, punishing them in fun ways she thinks they deserve to be punished with. With magic, mostly, but also through different methods and manners. Of those bad people, the two kids were still her favorites. They, of the many in the room, were the ones that screamed the loudest cries,

had on their faces the most blood,

and had on the floor the most number of their dismembered limbs, flesh and bones.

They never got old in her daydreams, which had now become her dreams.

But she did.

Her life was a funny mix, like her dreams. It made it harder for her to distinguish one from the other, and so she did things in real life she could only do in dreams. And that changed things,

as well as her.

She was already so old inside, to be this young outside, in the world. Sprouting into adulthood, making her way mentally in a broomstick, a long nose and an old lady's laugh.

But her dreams made her feel young again. She swung people through the air like yoyos, effortlessly so, bashing them the best possible way against the gray, mossed walls in the lair she made for herself. Dull and mundane.

All with the pointing of her finger. The bodies would tear apart and their parts would fly across the room like double-dead livestock. She'd swing them there, there, and there again

until they weren't moving and swinging, and nothing was left of them to break apart.

But her dream (was it?) put her right back.

She found herself, in the bedroom, again.

Indulging in the comfort of the ever-burning warmth of her mother's embrace, Lily slept, her crying replaced by deep breaths and gleeful snores. Instinctually sucking her bleeding thumb, she slept beside the car, on concrete floor.