When Gertrude woke up the following morning and spotted a familiar-looking muffler on the floor, she jolted off from her bed without bothering to wipe off the crust from her eyes.  She picked it up with an astonishing kind of speed, and she dusted the scarf with panicky fingers. Gertrude knew it was one of Zipporah's knitted works, and to her, it seemed like the scarf would get dirty and full of floor gems if it spent another minute on the ground. She cherished Zipporah's efforts a lot.

In the process of cleaning the scarf, she noticed that it looked like a muffler that had been weaved much recently. There was no spot of dirt, blemish, or even an extended strand from the wool. Then she recalled Zipporah using purple thread to knit the finishing lines of the scarf while they were having a discussion the previous day. This was the muffler she's spent so much time weaving. It was the one that Gertrude had guessed she was knitting for her.

With a broad smile of realization, she folded the scarf neatly and placed it beneath her pillow, its original place of residence. As she'd accurately guessed, Zipporah had come while she had been asleep to torque the muffler under her cushion. She must have slept so recklessly to find the neck scarf on the ground.

Gertrude's morning was already incredible, thanks to the precious gift she'd woken up to. She could not wait to get out of her room, meet Zipporah in her usual dining table spot, and give her a bone-crushing hug for being such a cutie pie.

However, after she got dressed and stepped out of her room, the smell of eggs wafted through her nostrils, eliciting an intense eye roll and a deep sigh from her lips. To confirm her presumption, she saw Mr. David in the kitchen, an apron tied to his waist, holding a frying pan above the fire on the gas cooker making the eggs bounce hither and thither from the pan. Thankfully, as she watched him prepare breakfast, his back was turned to her. So she walked past him without uttering a good morning.

She waltzed to the dining room, hoping to see Zipporah working her fingers with a needle and a new ball of wool but was surprised when she found the seats empty. With a furrowed eyebrow, Gertrude wondered why Zipporah wasn't there. Why wasn't she awake at this time of the day? Sometimes, she woke up before everyone else to set up the tables and sweep the living room floor while Mr. David prepared breakfast.

Gertrude wondered if Zipporah was still sleeping because the knitting activity from the previous night had worn her out that much. Her chain of thoughts got disconnected when a deep, dictatorial voice sliced into them.

“Go to Zipporah's room and tell her that breakfast is ready," David said from the kitchen without mentioning her name.

Still, she knew that the instruction was for her. Also, there was an undertone of hostility in his voice, as if he was aware that she'd intentionally chosen not to greet him. With an uncomfortable squirm of her lips, she wondered why he'd acted as if he didn't know and feared what he might do to her in the future as a punishment for her mannerless behavior.

She laid the thought aside and occupied her mind with thoughts of Zipporah. She needed to see her and express her heartfelt gratitude. So she strolled off to her room to carry out Mr. David's command. She knocked at the door of Zipporah's room two times, unsure of what she would feel about being woken up at the moment. Perhaps, she was really exhausted. These thoughts caused Gertrude to stop knocking and to use gentle words in a low tone instead. Maybe, the knocking had even snapped her out of her sleep already.

"Zipporah, um, it's time for breakfast. Mr. David wants to see you now."

Then she waited for something, a word from the other end of the room, footsteps or sounds of keys jingling.

When Gertrude didn't hear anything after five minutes of waiting, she tapped her feet on the ground in the uncertainty of what to do next. Was she supposed to leave and wait for her to step out? Perhaps, Zipporah had already heard her and was getting prepared to step out. It could be that she didn't like responding to anyone immediately after waking up in the morning.

However, on the other side of her thought process, she feared that she hadn't knocked loudly enough, so Zipporah was yet to wake up from her sleep. So she succumbed to the dictates of this thought because the stillness from the other end of the door brought a sickening sense of suspense. So she balled her fists and knocked harder. She paused to wait for a response, confident that she would hear something this time.

There was nothing.

Gertrude heaved an exasperated sigh and tried again. She would have loved to leave Zipporah alone since it was obvious that fatigue had gotten the best of her, but she didn't want to incur David's wrath. She knocked again and again. Still, no response.

Now, worry had settled in the fields of Gertrude's mind and was quickly beginning to breed seeds. What was going on now? Had the knitting wearied her that much? Had it earned her a headache demanding that she sleep as deeply as possible to recover? Or had she sustained an injury on her finger from the needle and didn't want to step out of her room because she didn't want Mr. David to see it? (Since Mr. David freaked out every time he got a bad report about the girls, even if it was something as little as a cut on the knee).

Gertrude was unsure, but she wished Zipporah would just open the door so she would know what was up.

Unfortunately, even if Zipporah had opened up, Gertrude wouldn't have been granted the privity of knowing what had happened because David had heard all the loud knocking and was now standing next to Gertrude, both of them staring at the patterns on Zipporah's wooden door.

"What's the problem?" He demanded as he turned the doorknob downward and frowned when he saw that it wouldn't open.

He didn't bother to hear Gertrude's answer after a while of wondering because a dangerous thought birthed a fear that soon overwhelmed him.  It was a consideration of the possibility that Zipporah had eloped the building. As Gertrude noticed the undeniable anger on Mr. David's face, she wanted to cower and hide. She already didn't like being close to him at all. He reeked of death, like he could pull out a syringe from his pocket and stab her neck with it at any time.

However, her immense worry for Zipporah made her remain in the same spot. She didn't mind whatever dangerous thing Mr. David had to do to get the door opened.

David was already searching for any item he could use to open the door. A fire extinguisher was standing by the left corner of the passageway, and it didn't take time for his eyes to land on it. He reached for the container and lifted it. Then he used the butt of the extinguisher to break down the knob. In a swift, fluid motion, the knob detached from the door and landed on the ground, leaving a long hole in the door.

The loud noise from the destruction caused Gertrude to cringe, but once the door opened, relief swept over her afterward. The door stood slightly ajar, enough for David and Gertrude to peep through and see that Zipporah's bed was empty. With heightened anxiety about his fear being a reality, David opened the door forcefully to give a more expansive view of the room.

And that was when they saw it.

Zipporah's dead body dangled from the ceiling with the pantyhose wrapped around her bruised neck. Her face was congested with red marks, indicating internal bleeding. The floor directly underneath her was wet with dots of urine. Gertrude had seen all of these things so quickly that she paused, took a deep breath, and decided to close her eyes.

She shut her eyes tightly because she was already feeling tears gather. Allowing tears to fall down her cheeks would mean that what she'd just seen was not a product of a gory nightmare. It would connote that the wicked sight had been real. And Gertrude knew it was not. There was no way it could be true that Zipporah was no longer alive. She still had to give her a hug and needed Zipporah to whimper under the effects of her tight embrace, commanding her to let her go. Gertrude still had to thank her.

However, after closing her eyes firmly for too long, hoping that the entirety of her being would be dispersed to a factual reality, one in which Zipporah was still sleeping, her eyes started to hurt from shutting them too tightly. So she opened them involuntarily to get rid of the pain so she could resume closing them until everything disappeared and returned to normal.

But it had been too late. Opening her eyes for that one second was enough for the brutal truth to settle in her mind because she could still see Zipporah's shadow being cast on the ground beneath her. She was still hanging from the top. Then Gertrude realized that she hadn't been dreaming at all. Zipporah was not breathing. Her fingers were not moving. They were lying limp by her sides, void of a pulse. Her head was resting on one side of her eyes, and those bright golden eyes lacked vitality. They just remained open, not seeing anything.

They were not seeing how crushed she was at the moment. They were not mirroring her soul right now. They could not tell she needed a dispelling for the horror she was beholding. They could not save her.

Zipporah was really gone.

If this were all a prank or a nasty dream of some sort, Zipporah would have stopped immediately she sensed that Gertrude was troubled. But these eyes, what did they know now?

As Gertrude clutched the left side of her chest, flashbacks from their conversations of the previous day came rushing to her mind like fragments of a kaleidoscopic image. Bits and pieces of wide grins, innuendos, and knitting fingers from the discussion began to play.

It was like torture to her soul now because Zipporah had intended for that conversation to be their last. It was why she had knitted the scarf, asked her about the kind of people her parents were, and thanked her for being a great source of hope. It was why she'd promised to pay her back. Before the previous day, Gertrude realized that Zipporah had promised to pay her back.

She could remember the morning after David had taken her into his mansion to play poker, and Zipporah rebuked her for falling into David's tricky devices. She could remember how passionate Zipporah had been about her not becoming a slave to David's manipulative whims. She'd uttered a sentence that Gertrude didn't understand at that time.

“I can even put my life on the line for you if that's what it will take for you to never become David's little puppet.”

Gertrude hadn't understood what it meant then, but now, she realized that Zipporah had had this in mind for quite a while. She'd intended to sacrifice her life. It became clear to Gertrude now. Still, this great act of love didn't make her feel grateful in any way. It only generated a flame of pain and anger that burned ferociously in her soul.

How could Zipporah have done this to her? Who authorized her to leave? Who said that they could not escape this hellhole together? Even though there was a chance that Zipporah's death could bring about her freedom, what would it profit her to return to her parents with a feeling that a significant part of her had died along with Zipporah? What was the point of going back home with an excruciating memory?

This was someone she'd suffered with, so why could they not emerge victorious together and escape this place? Why did one person have to die?

As Gertrude snapped out of her lamentations and paid attention to David, who now had Zipporah in his arms, crushed on the ground, weeping and begging her to wake up, Gertrude felt a kind of abhorrence for him that she'd never felt before. She wanted to use the stockings from the ceiling to strangle him till the veins on his forehead became vivid, and his irises rolled to the back. She desired to choke him till his spirit departed from his body and got transported to every circle of hell.

He'd killed her. Zipporah had only lived for eighteen years, and every moment of that life span had been miserable for her. She had no experience of what the good life was. She'd moved from being treated as a nonentity for her gender by her parents to crossing paths with his unfortunate bastard who'd pretended to love her. However, he'd only made her life a living hell.

He deprived her of the experiences she could have had as a teenage girl — night parties, boyfriends, school life, and everything in between and beyond. Zipporah had only moved from bondage to more bondage in the pursuit of freedom, and now she was dead. She'd lived a freaking tragic life.

Gertrude hoped with everything in her that Zipporah's death would inflict the greatest pain on David.  She prayed that her voice would haunt him in his dreams, that it would join the legion of demonic voices that already tormented him at every interval of his day. She prayed that the guilt would eat him up to the point where he would feel like he could not take care of her and the other girls properly for fear they would also die in his hands. She hoped this would spur him to drive her, Grace, and Kemi away from his house.

For a befitting aftermath, Gertrude hoped that he'd never be happy even after releasing them. She desired that Zipporah's death, despite how infuriating, would bring all these things to fruition. After all, that was the purpose of her demise.

***

When David saw Zipporah's corpse hanging from the ceiling, he felt queasy instantly. What was this abominable thing his eyes were beholding? How could she have committed suicide under his care? Had he not been such a good brother to her? After all the years they'd spent together as siblings, loving each other, seeing the cows at the ranch, washing each other's hair, making breakfast for her every morning, and buying her everything she requested to have.

How could she have thought life to be so difficult to end it for herself?

He was so confused and in utter disbelief. A headache began to settle on the left part of his head. Was he still this much of a terrible person? This distasteful of a sibling?

Sindara had died because he'd outrightly disobeyed his mother. He'd been careless and didn't hold much importance to his parent's instruction. However, with Zipporah, what had he not done to be careful enough? Yet, she'd still died under his care. Had she felt that miserable? Was this how he'd made her feel? Had he still failed at being a good big brother all over again? Was there an issue that grieved her heart that he'd been oblivious to?

David felt so exhausted. He felt drained of will and energy. He wanted to punch something and scream to the skies. He wanted to ask God when his punishment would end. How could he have spent many years distancing himself from his family, invested money and time to look carefully for girls that reminded him of his sister, took them under his wings, and cared for them as an atonement for his sin, and yet, one of them still died?

What was he supposed to do now?

David squeezed Zipporah's immobile shoulders and buried her head in his chest as he groaned, muttering vile words from his mouth. Small lines of blood ran through her cheeks, and it broke David's soul, knowing he could never get those bloodstains to disappear. Her ever-knitting hands were limp now. He never thought that this would happen, that life would be this vicious to him.

In the middle of his weeping and wailing, begging Zipporah to wake up to no avail, he stopped and made a resolve at that moment.

David was going to double the protection on the girls. He would remove every sharp object — knives, spoons, forks, pencils from the house. He would cook the meals from his mansion and serve them to the girls. He would seize the cutleries once they were done eating. If they needed to use instruments for writing, he'd make sure he was there while they wrote so he could retrieve it from them afterward.

He would go through their luggage one by one and confiscate any elastic clothing material. He would destroy or keep out of reach anything that had the slightest chance of being a potential harm to the girls. He would be with them throughout the day and double every restriction he'd already placed on them. No one was going outside to dispose of the trash. No more dates. If they needed to do something fun, he would do everything within his power to bring the fun to them within the walls of the house.

No one was getting out of this place. Not even the spy Celine had planted in his workplace and definitely not the event planner who had almost landed him in trouble. (David didn't kill Celine's spy. He only sent the bloodstained shirt to Celine to scare her off).

Nobody was getting away, and nobody was dying too. He was going to ensure that he had absolute control over everything and everyone. He would make sure that word did not get out about him either. Hopefully, the execution of this new resolution of his would please Sindara and now Zipporah. He had to appease two souls now. So he rose from the ground as a completely different person, an upgraded version of the monster that he already was.

Gertrude flinched, unable to look Mr. David in the eye. She wondered what was going on in his mind and why he'd risen from the ground in such a threatening manner. Then in the twinkling of an eye, Gertrude found herself in the passageway before realizing what was going on. David had pulled her out of Zipporah's room and dragged her to the living room.

Then he threw her on the couch next to Grace and Kemi. Gertrude felt her head throb in response to how he'd flung her onto the chair as though she were a piece of trash. Then he stood at the center of the living room. He looked unrecognizable. It was as if a devil had taken dominance of his body. Everyone was unsure of what was going on until he spoke, and after he did, they knew things would only get much more unbearable and hellish from there on out.

"Henceforth, no one is getting out of this house. No more outings during special holidays. No one is allowed to take the trash out except for me. I expect you to bring your luggage and stationeries before 1 pm for inspection. No questions, no suggestions. My instruction is final. Nobody is leaving this house, either dead or alive!"