NINE TIME MACHINES: Do you want to undo your entire life on planet earth?

CHAPTER 35

"Stop talking so loud," I whisper a plea. "You know what happened. I told you about that awful Madawaurian and the greedy manager who kept ignoring her sins."

"It's always something with you," she continues at the same pitch. "Somebody always attacks poor Mary. That's why she can't get her life together at twenty-two."

"It's twenty-one," I remind her. "You're throwing me out on my birthday, remember?"

"Don't push it, Mary," she warns, and Tessa returns. "One more word out of you and it'll happen right now. Right now I said!"

I turn away from the both of them embarrassed. This is not how I intended to spend my Friday evening. At the very least, I should be out having fun with friends instead of putting up with these lesser beings. But Mary Pethiel was demoted when Ebony fell from grace, shamed to the point where there's no more room to hide inside of herself with all the weak versions of herself lost in there. Unable to bear any more, I feel myself go limp on my bed. But Matron Caine is too far gone at this point to show any semblance of caring. She throws the three bags my way. One lands on the bed, another scatters on the floor and the third goes thump on my shoulder. Even then, I refuse to cry out in pain. Not while Tessa and a few of the girls crowd my doorway now, judgment lacing their eyes like the poison from a dying snake.

Then Matron Caine ends her inspection and they all crawl back to their dungeons. I slam the door to show them there's still some fight left in me; then grab my phone. It's on thirty percent, so I lock the door and plug it in with a vengeance. With nothing else to do, I head to Facebook to see if Pete responded. Zero! What now? I know. Post a status. That always works.

"None of them!" I read as I type. "I don't want any of those rotten bitches as my neighbours!"

Then I erase it and try again.

"I want them all dead!" I type. "More dead than a thousand year old skeleton!"

And I erase that too.

"I just want to be free of all the madness."

Afterward, I log off and reach for the pill bottle with one hand; No Name Yet with the other.