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

CHAPTER 177

And then the beast walks with me until I get to the door, until I turn the knob and it knows for sure I've entered. The door opens easily into a small space, a familiar one, just packed with cobwebs. I think I've been here before. But there's no way anyone can possibly sleep here. It's even smaller than my hostel room. I brush the cobwebs away to make sure I'm not judging it wrongfully. There's a doorway to the connecting room. From where I stand, I can see that someone tore the door off and left it on the floor. Curiousity does its thing on me like always. I simply can't resist the temptation to see what comes next. So I move towards the doorway. It peers into other connecting rooms, all with their doors torn down. Now I know I've been here before. Just maybe it wasn't so dark. Look, Mary. This is the perfect moment to turn around and run back outside. This is where you give up on finding your golden key. Instead, I dismiss my inner voice. I swallow the fear and let its sugar become my motivation.

Each connecting room I enter feels like I'm heading deeper into a prison, getting lost in the maze of time, walking into one wrong room after the other and not having the courage to end the journey. I sit in one of the two chairs in the last room. What do people normally do when this happens? When they've had a bad experience? They hang the telephone up, switch the channel, leave any situation designed to chain them to the past. What have you been doing? And what have I done all these years? I've been standing with a dead phone in my hand, quarrelling with ghosts; watching a channel I've outgrown; reliving one hurt after another like I'm the queen of reruns, letting all my bad experiences place pillows over my face and cut off my air supply.

Now I just need to evict all those versions of myself, kick them out into the cold streets without mercy, pull my many weak masks off and finally become the Mary-the-Great I crave.