By: Tanya Kler (photographer), Jarriah Cockhren (writer), Sakshi Agarwal (model), and Elana Keller (photographer)
Since when has life been so good?
The world is on fire. People are starving and dying and it seems as if the end is near. Pandora had closed the box and left hope inside, leaving endless torments to haunt humanity, and yet somehow she couldn’t shake the feeling that today was her day.
This is a good day, Sakshi Agarwal thought.
Happiness, contrary to a dictionary, is not something that can be described easily, but it mattered not to Sakshi, because whatever she was feeling was more than enough to get her through this excruciatingly long school day. Her legs bounced in anticipation as she stared off into the courtyard of her school, a prayer heard and answered by the gods because the clock had now struck five. Time to go.
As if possessed by the spirit of a roadrunner, Sakshi quickly jumped from her seat and raced to the metro station, boarding her designated train. Leaving not even a second for the train to set, she flew off the car and onto the platform and pranced home, singing an idle tone.
A few hours later, the sun was down and there she was, in the middle of the bathroom mirror, smearing barbie pink lipstick on her narrow lips while the overwhelming feeling of eagerness and anxiety grew stronger by the second, but like I said, it was her day. A day that could possibly change the course of her love life forever.
She met someone. A guy, a cute guy that was smart and worldly, lovely, and as gentle as a dove, just like she liked them and if you asked Sakshi, she would say it was love at first sight. Their meeting was frank but genuine. It was a girls night out and Sakshi was a little disinterested in watching her intoxicated friends terrorize those poor souls in the nightclub, but then he caught her eye and she caught his. Tall, dark, and handsome he was and one could even say sly, being that he had taken a hold of her hand, placed a gentle kiss on her knuckles, and introduced himself as Ezekiel. To make a long story short, they made plans for dinner and tonight was the night.
As Sakshi finished applying her lipstick, her phone dinged. She had received a text message that read:
I’m outside. Take your time :)
She smiled. It was from Ezekiel. See, isn’t he lovely?
She quickly grabbed her purse and phone and left her apartment, boarding the elevator to ground floor while skimming over her appearance in the lift’s mirror, straightening out the ripples in her satin, deep violet dress. She had finally reached ground floor and made her way to the exit of her complex when she noticed something, something red. It was splattered against the sleek tile floor.
Blood.
Her mother had always told her to mind her business, but Sakshi was hard-headed and tended to present symptoms of selective hearing loss at an early age so naturally she often abandons home learned lessons and rationality.
Furrowing her eyebrows in confusion and curiosity, Sakshi leaned towards the red liquid, inherently moving along the linear path of the splatter until yet another caught her attention. Shoes? Her eyes trailed up vertically as the beat of her heart escalated at an unhealthy rate and the palms of her hand covered her mouth in shock. And what she saw was something neither herself nor the heavens could ever begin to explain.
“I thought I killed you.”
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