It started with her hands in a cookie jar.

Emma knew it was wrong. It was wrong to steal the cookies she knew her mother wouldn’t allow her to have, and it was wrong to lie about it afterward.

She was only six at the time. Her understanding of the world around her was limited to Barbie dolls and Disney princesses.

It was just a harmless white lie, and yet, the pain that tore through her veins in that moment was unlike anything she ever felt before. The unbearable sensation only stayed for a minute or so, but it was enough to scare her into honesty.

She promised she would never lie again.

Her fear gradually decreased over the years—until high school when a woefully average boy asked her to a dance. He was nice enough, but he didn’t wear designer brands or keep up with the trendy shows. So, Emma lied.

The pain boiled in her blood, a steady simmer that lingered in her body for hours after she told the boy she wasn’t attending the dance. It was stronger than she remembered, enough to burn the feeling into her memory.

At that time, a rumor had spread through the school—an urban legend that only three lies were permitted per life. Were someone to exceed the limit, death would come find them. There were many anecdotes and fairy tales; and, had Emma not experienced the excruciating agony that came with her lies first hand, she wouldn’t have believed them. She now saw the three lie limit as a certainty of the universe—a cruelty that some higher being enforced, even if only on her.

So, Emma swore to herself she would never tell another lie.

She lived for years in constant fear, always tiptoeing her way around difficult situations. She searched for new methods of avoiding both truths and lies every day of her life. Her strange obsession pushed many people she once considered close away, but she didn’t care so long as the pain never returned.

Then, on her wedding day, came her third lie. Despite her insistence that she was content in growing old with only her cats, Emma’s parents pushed her to marry before she turned thirty. No method she learned over the years allowed her to slip out of the sticky situation.

She pondered the lie before she even said it, but the crowd of judgmental onlookers cornered her with their silent gazes. So, a hesitant “I do” escaped her lips, a promise to love each other through sickness and in health directed at a man she barely knew.

The pain scorched through every inch of Emma’s body, intensifying even further when she sealed the inevitable divorce with an insincere kiss.

The torture persisted for months, the blazing agony not so much as lightening until the messy marriage was broken apart by the court.

It was then Emma vowed to never lie again as long as she lived.

Then, ten years later, the owner of some newly-opened cafe asked her if the food tasted good. The stale fruit and wilted lettuce in her salad made it unpleasant to eat. Compared to her past experiences, though, the dish was little more than an inconvenience. She barely managed to choke down a bite just moments before the owner approached, and she fully intended to leave the rest on the plate, but now she had to be sensitive.

Emma knew she should tell the truth, but the owner stared down at her with fearful eyes—eyes just like her own. Her stomach sank and panic filled her mind. Not wanting to disappoint the owner, she nodded in affirmation. The owner walked away, and, for a peaceful moment, Emma wondered if she lived her life in fear of a fictional story.

Hell itself opened in Emma’s chest, scratching and clawing to escape from inside her. A stabbing, searing pain rippled through her body. She stumbled almost all the way to the bathroom before she collapsed to the floor with a dull thud.

Panicked patrons surrounded Emma, watching her writhe uncontrollably until the paramedics arrived. They strapped her to a gurney and wheeled her into an ambulance where she writhed all the way to the hospital.

Images of the cookie jar and the school dance, her marriage and her salad, flashed before her eyes like an endless movie.

She suffered for days, tied to a foreign bed in the emergency room. Doctors checked on her routinely, but none could help reverse fate. Tears spilled down and dried on her cheeks over and over until life finally peeled itself away from Emma’s body.

As she was lifted from the bed and her burdens, the pain and suffering afflicting her evaporated into the thinning air. The hospital room, her body, and the replaying memories blurred and faded, leaving Emma alone in the suffocating darkness with only her regrets.