Jessica knew what is was like to be swallowed up by lies, the familiar churning in her stomach as if she were facing a giant three-metre wave that was threatening to drag her to the deepest depths of the ocean.

Sometimes, Jessica wished that was reality.

She had been eight, a little child that watched in horror as her own mother tripped over her tiny feet and crashed onto the stairs. Jessica remembered shrieking at the top of her lungs, so loud that it shattered the glass goblets placed prettily against their dining table. She remembered her mother’s limp body rolling, once then twice until it lay still at the bottom of the stairs, lying in its own pool of deep, vermillion liquid. She remembered the sickening, metallic smell of blood and how she had chuckled uneasily.

“Mom, wake up, this isn’t funny,” she had whispered brokenly.

There was silence, deafening silence and that had been the end of her childhood. The rumours started then, a vicious chain of gossip and scandal that engulfed her entire being with darkness. Jessica spent her days alone, shrouded in her own misery. The police had already declared her innocent, the death an accident but here she was, still being relentlessly tortured. Even her father couldn’t look her straight in the eyes.

She was unappreciated and unloved.

No one trusted her, not even her own flesh and blood.

They abandoned her.

And she was consumed by darkness until her heart became pitch black.