There was a hand in the darkness and it held a knife. The knife had a long black handle of polished black bone, and a blade finer and sharper than any razor. If it sliced you, you might not even know you had been cut, not immediately.

The knife had done almost everything it was brought to that house to do, and both the blade and the handle were wet.

The person who’s hand held the knife snuck out the door and into the darkness that had been creeping into the house while the blade was at work. While being shrouded by the darkness the person buried the knife with the thought that it would never be found. All the while with one thought roaming through their mind: It is done, and now she will suffer, just like I have.

Sylvia woke early that morning with a feeling of unease that she put out of her mind. For today she had a big day planned for her daughter. The two of them were going swimming for the very first time, well her daughter at least.

Half-awake, she stumbled out of bed. She got dressed quicker than she had thought possible and thumbled around trying to find the swimming costume that she got for her daughter.

By the time that she had gotten dressed and found her daughter’s swimming costume her mood had improved dramatically. So much so that she could have easily passed off as an over excited toddler.

She skipped the short distance to her daughter’s room. When she got there she peeked through the door and ran over to her daughter’s bed and excitedly pulled back the covers to wake her daughter up.

And at the very next moment, all anyone heard was a high-pitched scream.

It was hard for Sylvia to take it all in. She just couldn't. The scene laid out before her eyes was so abysmal that she didn't believe it could be real. All she could do was run.

Sylvia was as pale as a ghost as she ran to the phone, all the while trying not to be sick, and called the police. It seemed like an age had passed before someone picked up, but in reality it was only a few seconds. She told them about what had happened between gasps. Calmly they told her to wait where she was and that they where coming to get her as fast as they could.

In her head she thought that she would go insane before anyone came, but as they came, she had just managed to stay sane.

When the officers arrived they took her outside and started asking her questions about this and that. Wondering how or why someone would murder the toddler.

Murder…A word that Sylvia refused to accept.

Murder…A word to final and gruesome to understand.

The sound of that word did it. The tears that where building up in Sylvia’s eyes finally welled over and took hold of her as her whole body began to shake from the sobbing that had started.

The officer put his hand softly on his shoulder at an attempt to comfort her and calm her, but nothing could calm her down. Nothing could help her. All she wanted was to be set free to see her daughter laugh again.

While Sylvia and the officer where outside, the whole street came to see what was going on when the Medical Examiner’s van drew up outside of Sylvia’s house.

The crowd was large and all of them where either gasping at what they thought had happened or were looking to their other halves for support. Of which Sylvia had none. She only had her daughter. But in the throng of the crowd, totally inconspicuous was the person who committed the deed. No-one even getting the slightest of hints that it was them. Just an innocent bystander to the looks of everyone else. But they were different in one way, they only came to see how much Sylvia had suffered, and were trying to stop themselves from going giddy with joy at how badly she had taken it. Instead they just settled for a menacing half-smirk on their cold harsh face and then turned and slid away from the crowd.