She glanced down at the shattered mirror, shaking her head softly at the irony of it. Her life now resembled this mirror, shattered into tiny pieces, unrecognizable, irreparable.
“Why?”
The question circled around in her head. Taunting her, eating at her. Numerous answers came to mind, each a knife sharper than the rest which sent stabbing pains through her torn heart. 
The questions and answered circled in her head, chasing each other, laughing at her predicament. The beat at her thoughts until her vision swam with images of blood accompanied by hysterical screams of pain. She sank to the bedroom floor, sobbing, wailing begging the images and thoughts to vanish. Still they circled her, images of suicide and murder swimming together into an orgy of blood and howls. 
“ So simple…” a voice ghosted through her head. “ Just pick up the knife and do it, you know it is the only way out.”
She banged her fists against head. 
“ No, no, no!” the words were chanted like a mantra as she rocked on the hard wooden floor. 
“ First them, then you, it’s so easy, the end of all your pain!” the voice wouldn’t leave her.
She continued rocking as her imagination sent her wave after wave of brutal images. They scared her, but what terrified her even more was the feeling of intense satisfaction as she watched them cry and beg at her feet.
“ I’m not like that, I can’t do that!” she wrapped her arms around her knees tightly.
“ You know you are, you know it is your salvation.” 
“ Leave me alone! Just leave me in peace!” her voice echoed along the bare walls of the room. The images increased, interlaced with the soft chant.
“ Do it, do it, do it!”
She raised her pale face aghast, the soft chanting came from her own mouth, she had become the voice.
She struggled to her feet and staggered to the kitchen. She grabbed the knife off the chopping board and sank to the tiled floor, sobbing harder.
“ Don’t end it now! You’re letting them get away with it!” the voice was back, it sounded disappointed.
“ They didn’t mean it, surely they didn’t mean to!”
“They meant to, they betrayed you, they left you to die inside that house!” the voice became malicious, deliberately zooming in on the pictures of charred flesh.
“ The house was burning, they couldn’t come back!” she pleaded with herself, running her hands across the scars on her arms again and again.
“ Only the back was burning, they could’ve come round the front!” again the horrific paintings of pain and hopelessness.
Howling in pain and regret she picked up the butcher’s knife and began to run. To her utmost despair, her feet carried her towards her parents’ newly built house.
She collapsed inside the doorway to the living room, beyond thought, fighting inside herself.
“ Janna? Janna?” her mother bending over her.
“Go, please just go!” she was begging now.
“ Janna, tell me what’s wrong deary, I’m your mother!”
“ Yes you’re my mother,” Janna stood, eyes wild and unreadable. “ Where were you when I was trapped in the house? Where was my mother then?”
Her mother threw both hands over her face and sank to the floor, crying softly.
“ Where? Where were you then?” With an anguished cry Janna raised the knife and plunged it deep. 
She fell to the floor, a pool of blood collecting and running towards her mother’s shaking form.
“ Janna, oh god Janna!” 
Janna smiled weakly at these last words, her family had paid for their betrayal, and she was at peace.