BREATHE ✓ ⇢ [EDITING]

Six Months Later

Becca Hayek had never experienced so much freedom.

She began her day like any other, waking up at exactly six in the morning and showering before going to work. She was a tour guide for a small company nearly eighteen hundred miles away from home, and she hadn't regretted her decision one bit.

Becca dressed in her usual black pleated skirt and red button down shirt, rushing to tie her curly brown hair into a neat bun as she applied the slightest of blush to her cheeks and the lightest dash of soft red lipstick.

As she grabbed her lunch from the microwave and ran to the metro station, she couldn't help but breathe in the smell of her qabuli, a dish that her Afghani grandmother had made when Becca was a child. Becca's eyes welled up, but she didn't dare cry, especially not after what her family had done.

Work was normal as ever, assembling iteniaries for the trip that was scheduled for the next week with lunch at noon. Becca microwaved the qabuli again as she sat down to eat it with a few other colleagues during her break.

Becca bought a gyro on her way to getting on the three-thirty train to her neighborhood, and realized that it was already getting dark. By the time she got home, it was already nightfall, and she jumped off the bus as she walked to her small apartment.

Suddenly, as she crossed the parking lot that led to her apartment complex, she felt someone crushing her windpipe, and she sputtered as she tried to breathe.

Everything became dark.