Her sinister smile quickly disappeared off her beautifully painted face as the realization of what she had just done sank in. With her hands bloody and trembling, the crimson-stained dagger fell from its grasp between her fingers making a soft 'tink' when it hit the ground between her parted feet. Though the musty alley was dark in the night, the deep red blood draining from the still body propped against the dumpster showed clear as day as it pooled on the cold concrete. The victim was a naive little baker boy who only stepped out into the alley to toss out the burned bread from the medieval-looking bakery he worked at. 

The ill-omened woman was taking her regular night walk around Gamla Stan, Stockholm, an older district in Sweden, when she and the boy made eye contact through the dark night. Why a woman was walking alone late at night struck confusion in the boy's mind, he still decided to think nothing of it and turned to go back into the shop after tossing the bag of ruined bread into the nearby dumpster. The woman, however, was frightened. The voice of her late father filled her mind guiding her. 'Kill him,' he spoke. 'Kill him before he kills you.' She had no idea why she was to hurt this boy, nothing was threatening about him at all. The boy was a rounder kid than those around his age, but he was very charitable. Always giving messed up (but still edible) pieces of bread to the homeless veteran and his small gery vallhund that sat outside the dress shop opposite the bakery. He was only a young teen, maybe 14 years old, spending his nights working at his mother's bakery as it was hard for him to make friends. But this woman always trusted and loved her father, even after he passed. His voice always spoke to her when she was in danger, so she dug around her cluttered purse and pulled out the small dagger she carried around for self-defense, though it had gone unused until this night. The sharp blade caught a moon ray that reflected on the women's frightened face lighting it up. 

The poor baker boy never made it back inside to close the shop. Instead, death awaited him far too early than it should have. She was lucid the first time the knife penetrated his pale pudgy skin near his left lung, but her mind soon became foggy and the other many times the knife came down and pierced that now bleeding skin was unbeknownst to her. The only thing that brought her back was the voice. 'Älskling, he's gone now you can stop,' he spoke softly, calling her darling as he used to as if only seconds ago he wasn't telling her to murder a child. 

Sirens blared and echoed through the near pitch-black alley only minutes later as the women stood still, the blue and white flashing lights getting closer and closer as the blood-stained knife sat idly at her feet. The frightened boy's screams must have been heard by someone nearby, or maybe those sirens weren't even coming for her, but she still panicked; she didn't know what to do. She had just killed someone, a child no less, but only because she was told to do so or she was to be the one propped against the dumpster dead right now.  

'Kör. Run as far away as you can so they can't catch you.' She relaxed a bit when she heard the voice again. She hesitated to do as he said. Running from the law was wrong, though what she had just committed was much worse. His voice sounded again, louder than the sirens rapidly approaching. 'They'll think you're crazy! They will take me from your mind. You have to run or you'll never hear me again. Nu!' That thought frightened her. Her father's voice was all she had left. He has always protected her since he had passed. She was 16 the first time she heard his voice, only 2 years after he passed. He appeared as she was walking out of school with her friends. She was supposed to get in her boyfriend, David,-'s car so he could drive her home. His voice appeared in her head, though, and told her to walk home or she would never make it out of that car alive. She was skeptical at first but listened, it was her father after all and she deeply missed him. She walked home in the pouring rain instead and was shocked when she watched the news the next day. It turned out that David had ended up hitting another car, his vision was impaired by the heavy raindrops falling from the clouds, and never made it out alive. 

Since that incident, she always listened to that voice, no matter what he told her to do. So she turned towards the opposite direction the sirens were approaching from, her hands still dripping blood on her once clean white nightgown, and ran leaving the bloody dagger behind. She ran and ran, not stopping at anything, her father's voice praising her was all the adrenaline she needed to keep going. "I'm not crazy," she thought. 

The woman eventually ran out of energy, her fathers voice no longer filling her mind to keep her going. She didn't know where she was. She always stayed within the city, even when a little girl. She even still lived in the home she grew up in with her father and elder brother. It was just her living there now, though. Her father was dead and her brother never talks to her anymore after he married his second wife and moved to America for an escape. But she wasn't in Gamla Stan anymore. She was lucky it was still night and most people were in bed asleep or she would have gotten caught already. Anyone can tell she had done something bad. Her hands and gown were forever stained red and her face was wide and frightened, tears streaming down her cheeks creating a mess of the once beautiful make-up on her face. She was in that spot the rest of the night. 

An early patrol officer found her hunched over on the street, shaking and crying. He was alarmed when he got closer and saw the stains of blood littering her body. He thought she was hurt. Anyone would if they didn't know what truly happened. The footsteps alerted the woman of the officers presence and she jolted up, scrambling to get to her feet. She nearly cried harder when she saw the pale blue shirt and "tool" belt of the officer. 

"I didn't want to do it I swear! I had to kill him or I'd die, my father told me so." She rushed out the words, just wanting to prove to the officer she was innocent. The officer, however, was previously oblivious to what she had done until she admitted to it. 

"Ma'am slow down. What do you mean you killed someone?" His hand hovering over his pistol as this women continued to look like she was going even crazier by the minute, which she was. 

"I didn't mean to!" she yelled, desperate for him to understand. "My father told me to kill him. He told me to run or people would call me crazy and take him from me. You can't! You can't take my father from me, he's all I have left." You would have thought her tear ducts were run dry with how much she had already cried, but a new stream seemingly appeared out of nowhere and dripped down her make-up streaked cheeks. 

"Ok. Calm down please." He tried his beast to calm the woman, but she still seemed shaken. "Where's your father now? Where did you kill this person." He didn't recieve a verbal answer. Instead, the woman frantically shook her head and grabbed her hair at the roots, aggressively pulling on the strands. Without the knowledge of the woman, the officer quickly called for backup on his shoulder messenger. Before he could speak to the woman again she collapsed, most likely from exhaustion and dehydration from crying so much. In addition to the back up, the officer now called for medics; no matter the crime, he didn't want someone to die. 

It's true the first round of sirens were never for the insane woman, but as the mother of the boy stepped out to see what had taken so long, the screech she let out was much louder than the boy's had been. She screamed for the life of her newly deceased son as she pulled his cold, blood drained body into her bare arms, her tears soaking into the flour covered apron that wrapped tightly around the sons round body.