My house has been built but I am alone here, the door banged behind my back. An autumn wind is knocking on the window, crying over me all over again…

Thunderstorm at night and fog in the morning, the sun has turned completely cold. Old pains are following one after another; let them all go together! This is Fate and I can't do anything!

I just know how the winds will be wailing

After I'm gone.

- Vitas Opera 2

If anyone had asked where she would be in ten years, just a week ago, she would have told them that she would have been living with Gilbert in their apartment, and then look at them like they were crazy, because why bother asking, where else would she be?

Perhaps if she had listened to all of the other's that told her to get a hold of her temper, perhaps if she had listened when they said that maybe her and Gilbert shouldn't mix, because you can't fight fire with fire and maybe she should have listened when they told her to calm down, think before she acted.

Maybe if she had listened, she'd be with him in their home instead of in this dusty jail cell and he'd still awake and alive and not in some hospital bed sleeping away his life. Perhaps if she had decided not to make breakfast with that cast iron pan that morning or maybe if she counted to ten and calmed down first…

Maybe then, Ludwig could look her in the eye, and maybe then, Feliciano wouldn't be afraid, because she's not a bad person, she's just an angry person but that's not an excuse for cracking someone's head open with a cast iron frying pan now is it?

Oops, she really screwed up this time, now didn't she?

Now she's in for manslaughter. Not her brightest moment, and she can't even remember what she was so mad about in the first place. He came home late, probably hung-over and-

Oh right, Feliks called up the stairs that he should bring better lube next time.

And everyone in the complex heard it, not that she cared, and he said he would explain, but she never gave him the chance. They've fought over his drinking habits so many times before, they've fought about him coming home drunk and bringing his friends back drunk and trying to get her drunk and expecting her to take care of him when he was hung-over and….

It was a problem. She grabbed whatever was closest at the time, and threw the burning metal right in his face. Bam. And then he was down on the floor and someone's screaming but she doesn't care because she sees red she wants to see his blood. She wants to make him pay.

Her fists pound his chest one, two, three times before something throws her off even though she's still struggling. She can hear people screaming, she can hear- Oh my god she's killing him! and Stop, you need to stop!

Someone call an ambulance!

Crazy bitch

Police

Fuck

Help

He's not breathing!

Hospital

And all she sees is blood on the floor and on her hands and Gilbert is lying there, why won't he get up? She's panting like an animal and her hands are red and shaking and Gilbert is still on the floor. She didn't hit him that hard, she didn't she didn't.

Then they take her away in handcuffs.

She confessed, she moaned and apologized until her voice was raw and cracking, there was no point in lying and a part of it still feels like a dream. A part of her wakes up and realizes, oh God that actually happened, it was real. She doesn't get visitors. She doesn't deserve them. The last time she saw someone she knew… it didn't go well.

It was her ex-husband, strangely enough. He was stuck with the unfortunate duty of telling her the results of her actions. He pulled the short straw, had to suck it up and be a man and face the demon locked inside the cell…

He tells her in a curt, business-like tone about how Gilbert's in a coma and Ludwig speaks of restraining orders if/when he wakes up. Her ex-husband's eyes are cold and unforgiving, he looks at her like she was a stranger and she thinks that maybe she is.

She doesn't recognize herself, what she's become. He shakes his head at her and sighs before getting up to leave and she's still hanging onto the receiver like if she never lets go he'll never have to leave her and they can forget, forget everything.

She's a monster. He tells her as she leaves, and she agrees. Yes, she is a monster.

Since everyone she knew is too petrified to look at her again, much less talk to her, she doesn't see anyone else. She meets some new scary people, however. There's icy Natalia who's in for life, locked inside her unhealthy obsession for her brother. She seems sane, at first glance, but then she tells you how she castrated that small Chinese man her brother was seeing… But that's the end of her interaction with her fellow prisoners.

They're all lunatics, she doesn't belong here with these criminals, she doesn't she doesn't. She's not crazy, she didn't mean to so please, oh please. They're all wild like animals and she's one of them. She's just as crazy and out of control as they all were at one point and she's one of them. They should know each other, they should relate they should say I know you, you know me, and we're both spat on by society.

She moans into her lumpy bed at night, begging for forgiveness she doesn't deserve in between pleas and apologies that no one will hear.

Gilbert dies on October 17th, and no one tells her. She stares up at her ceiling and contemplates, as she often does these days. No more self-pity. No more how did this happen to me because she knows how it could happen, she knows how and why and when and where and she wishes that she didn't.

She finds out through Francis and Antonio, who come weeks later to tell her as an excuse to remind her how low she's sunk, how she's despicable scum and she better rot in there for taking Gilbert away from them. They curse her in their respective languages and although she can't understand she knows what their trying to say and agrees wholeheartedly.

Security comes to take them away before long and she's left staring at the places they left, the only two men brave enough to tell her just how disgusting she is.

She cries that night because she knows, she knows that she's done a horribly thing, she knows he didn't deserve it, he was a great man, he was going to be great one day. And she stole that from him, she stole his future in one fit of rage and jealousy and he didn't deserve it. She took him away from so many people because she was selfish, she took and took and took until he had nothing left to give and then-

Cracked him over the head with a frying pan because violence is all you've ever known, it's what you grew up around and look where that's gotten you now. Violence solved your problems then but it sure didn't help anything now and you'd better think about how many lives you've ruined for the rest of your days.

Look at you, loveless girl, look at yourself and weep for where it all went wrong. Weep until you're old and gray, until your bones decay alone in this jail cell where you belong. Bitter and heartless it what you'll become, but no one will care because you never did, you never thought of them and if they think of you it will be associated with dirt and disgrace you soulless being.

You better pray for mercy, cruel girl, mope and sulk until your aching bones freeze upon this frigid filthy floor. Curl up with the rats, see if they accept you, and hope that the heat of hell will warm the chill in your bones, thaw the ice in your heart and grant you that shred of humanity that you lacked when you showed him none.

This seems to be the end of her story, trapped in a labyrinth of self-hate and regret, locked insider her cell like an animal at the zoo, whispered about on the streets. She's always wanted to make headlines in the newspaper. This isn't what she had imagined, however.

She doesn't want to die here...