I should have woken up earlier. If I wasn’t already running late for my interview, I would have noticed sooner that the squirrel thought it had enough time to escape my tires. By the time I saw, I swerved aggressively but felt the impact and heard the high pitch of glass shattering outside of the car. 

“Shit!” I yelled as I slammed on the brakes, feeling the pressure of the seat belt against my chest. 

Turning off the car, I got out to examine what all was damaged. My mirror wasn’t in terrible condition but one glance at the car parked in the street made my stomach tighten. The glass was shattered and the paint stripped. I should have seen it. 

“Fuck.” 

I heard my feet crunch on the glass as I considered my options. I could leave a note or I could just leave. Whatever I needed to do, I needed to do it quickly, I was already late. 

Moving around the car, I looked in the passenger’s seat for a piece of trash to write a note. A flash of movement near my shoe caught my eye and I glanced down before my breath caught in my throat. 

There, on the floor, bloody but alive, was the squirrel I had tried so hard to avoid. It looked like it’s back was damaged, though the arms were flailing. 

“Fuck,” I cried. “I’m too late to deal with this.”

I moved back and pulled my arms around my body in a primeval desire to protect myself from the events unfolding around me. 

“What’s the problem?” a voice called from behind.

I turned slowly and saw someone walking down the stairs of the house. 

“Is this your car? I hit a squirrel.”

They eyed me for a moment, processing both statements as they got closer. Only feet away, they looked first to their damaged vehicle then slowly down to the little creature struggling on the pavement. 

The man whistled as he looked back to me. “Sure did a number on him.”

I had, but it struck me as an odd thing to say. He wasn’t nearly as disturbed as I was and it only disturbed me more.

“Hold on,” he said, as he walked back up the driveway and into the garage. 

I should have just left. But instead, I watched him go, a young man who seemed to have no care in the world. His arms swung freely at his side as he walked. He hadn’t pulled them close to him once. 

Turning back to the body, I felt the pit of anger and despair inside. I didn’t have time for this, but I couldn’t just leave it. I had never killed anything before. 

Kneeling over, I leaned closer to inspect the injury. It still hadn’t died.

“Get back.” I heard overhead and I had just enough time to shift backwards before a shovel severed the head of the squirrel right before my eyes.

“What the fuck?” I screamed. “What the fuck was that?”

The man looked at me with no expression on his face. “It was injured. You want it to suffer?” 

“No, I just…” I struggled to find words to express myself. “I just…”

“Someone had to do it. Don’t worry about the car. I’ll swap out the mirror, easy fix.”

I could feel the hot stream of tears on my cheek and was getting angry at myself for crying and angry that he looked at me as though crying was an overreaction to witnessing a squirrel execution. I should have told him he was a monster.

“What the fuck,” was all I could say. 

When I looked back down, I realized the head wasn’t completely detached but blood had begun pooling around the body. There was no question it was dead now. When I looked around for the man I saw him sweeping the blade of the shovel back and forth in the grass, out in the open for all to see, spreading the blood in his yard like a sign of conquest before heading back into the garage. 

I was still late for my interview. 

Getting back in the car, I tried frantically to pat at my tears rather than wiping at them since I had spent time and effort to look professional only fifteen minutes prior. When I arrived at the law firm, I checked my face in the mirror before grabbing my things. 

“Maria Siriano. I’m here for an interview.”

“Ok.” The woman said before motioning for me to sit where two other people were waiting. 

I tried to look around the lobby and get a feel for the workspace. My eyes attempted to wander to the two other people waiting to gauge their qualifications, but it didn’t make a difference. No matter where I looked, the only thing I saw was the dead body of the squirrel on the tar of the road. After a few more minutes, the door opened and an older gentleman called my name. 

“Nice to meet you, Maria. We’ll be right in here.”

He pulled me into a small conference room to the right and sat at the head of the table. “Okay, Maria, thank you for coming in.” 

The older gentleman shuffled papers as he spoke, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. There were words coming out of his mouth and judgment pouring from his eyes, but it didn’t make a difference. 

“Are you…okay?” he asked after a moment. 

I should have just told him what I had gone through. But I couldn’t tell him I was running late and got in a wreck that resulted in the brutal murder of a squirrel. There was no way to explain to him what had taken place in my world. His day was likely already a long one – asking the same questions to those who had actually bothered to show up. 

“Yeah, yes, I’m sorry, I’m fine.”

“Okay,” he said after a moment. “Well, we’re looking for someone who can really work hard and stay focused on the tasks at hand. Is that person you?”

“I’m sorry, what was that?” 

He leaned back and I knew enough to know the interview was over. 

The words hung in the air without them ever having to be manifested from his lips – unreliable, lazy, late. I should have told him it wasn’t like that and I wasn’t like that. But he had already decided who I was. 

After a few more polite questions, he stood. “It was nice to meet you. Thank you for coming in today.”

“Do you have a bathroom I can use?”

He hesitated.  

“Right through there,” he pointed.

I went in and washed my hands, scrubbing furiously at my fingers as though the decay was seeping into my pores. I hadn’t even touched the squirrel but I could feel the creep of death slowly working its way up my body. 

Fighting tears, I moved to the toilet and sat, pulling my skirt up and my underwear down as I did. The silence was too loud and I held my head in my hands to process everything that happened up to that point. I doubt I got the job. And I really needed the job. 

Standing, I ripped off some toilet paper before wiping and noticed the flash of red as I threw it in the toilet. Looking down, there were faint swirls of blood in the bowl, mixing with the sewer water. 

“Shit,” I mumbled as I reached for my purse. 

I grabbed my emergency tampon and unwrapped the plastic quickly. 

I flushed the toilet and watched the blood violently shake as it mixed with the water before disappearing. Out of habit, I rolled up the plastic pieces and wrapped them in toilet paper like my mother had taught me over two decades before. Your brothers, she had told me, as though we couldn’t let them find out we bleed. I had done this for twenty-three years, wrapping my trash every month and burying it deep down with the shame and the blood.