Mary Mary Quite Contrary

Coming Towards The Light

Thirty to fifty years. That was all she needed to hear. The corners of her vision started to sway and go fuzzy, and she trembled and quaked against the wall. This nightmare would never end. This was her life now. She sank willingly into the blackness that threatened to take over her. Anything to escape from this searing reality. And she stayed that way.

That's how the next two weeks passed for her. She would wake up cold and hungry, and fish an energy bar out of her backpack. She would still be hungry after she ate it, but she would tell herself it was enough until she almost believed it. She would see her phone, shoved in the corner. She would see the exit of the mausoleum, the edges of the door glowing with a faint light from the outside world. But she couldn't bring herself to leave, or to hear something that would break her even more. Instead she watched the graveyard from the cracks in the wall. Most of the time it was calm. It rained for six or seven hours a day, but you never knew when it would hit so it was never safe to go outside. The most extraordinary thing that happened all week was when Peter's wife came out here looking for him, with nothing but a raincoat and an umbrella. She was kneeling next to Peter, or what was left of Peter after the rain ravaged him. She was screaming something, but Mary couldn't hear what is was, and she was scratching at her arms until they bled and she had long, jagged cuts down both forearms. Just as she was getting up to leave, it started to rain. Mary felt her stomach drop before the first drop even hit, and she turned away flinching. She still heard the scream.

That was all she needed to hear. That confirmation that this was real. This nightmare she couldn't wake up from. That feeling like your gut is trying to pin you to the floor, and the weight gets heavier and heavier until you can't bear it anymore but it still keeps shoving. She needed to get home.

She'd always suspected that her family hated her, and she'd always kinda hated her family, but just so long as they were alive and breathing she'd be okay. She had to be okay. She pushed her way out of the mausoleum, into the bright, watery sunlight. The rain had stopped, but being outside felt toxic somehow. Wrong and strange. Pulling her thin sweater tightly around her she hurried home, hunched over and gasping for breath in the warm, muggy fall air. All around her the roads were eerily empty, the humid air coating the inside of her lungs and smothering the life out of her town. She walked past familiar streets and signposts, and even thought she knew she'd been looking at the same roads since she was born she felt like she somehow didn't know them anymore. Something broke inside her when she saw Peter like that, and it changed her, chipping away at her will to live and morphing the familiar landscape into something strange and dangerous.

She used to think of death almost as this comforting thing. An easy out. An end of the road. But now? Now death was terrifying. Now death was all around her. In the too thick air she forced into her lungs. In the deserted streets that should be shimmering with the too-dense feeling of other people. In the broken piece of her that the rain tore off and refused to give back. And now death walked next to her, a hulking, omnipresent shadow that wouldn't leave. Anger bubbled up in her throat. Anger at the rain, for killing Peter and dropping that painful weight where her heart used to be. Anger at herself, for not being able to save him. Anger at her town, for not even trying. 

She stopped, and turned, furious. "Leave me alone!" She screamed, with every last bit of energy she had left. She just wanted it to leave. The horrible knowledge that each of those empty houses probably had a dead person lying bloody and broken inside. A person that felt the rain hit their skin and ran. A person who maybe thought they could save themself. But the sound just echoed in waves around the too still roads. The monster couldn't hear her.  And she finally cried. Collapsing right there in the middle of the road, she heaved broken, choking sobs, her hot tears spilling down the wet asphalt.

She just wanted that piece of her back.

She hugged her sides, trying to pull herself back together again. She felt kind of like Humpty Dumpty in a weird way. All her life she suffocated in the stiflingly serene atmosphere of her town, secretly wishing it could make it all come crashing down around her. But once she leaned too far over the wall, once she finally saw it happen, she fell and shattered. And now she was broken, and no one could put her back together again.

She was starting to get worried at the absolute stillness of her town. Every building she passed was empty, every street lamp unlit. Mary honestly wouldn't be surprised if her town left her to die. They always hated her anyway, and maybe if they all left without her that was just one less life to worry about. She was never quite sure why they hated her so much. They'd hated her ever since she was a kid, when she was that one weird kid alone in the corner, too odd to make friends, too old to be cute. But she tried so hard back then. She wanted to be loved so badly. She tried to make friends, and she tried to fit in, but no one wanted her. And over time the air in her town became too stifling, the people to serene, and she just stopped trying. Now they openly shunned her and kind of just ignored her, so she ignored them back. Christ, she was humiliated to come crawling back to them for help. But she needed to survive, so she would suck it up and take whatever they gave her.

Lost in her thoughts, she almost missed the shimmering light coming from one of the buildings in the square. It was an ugly, hulking, concrete gray monstrosity but it was the only place that seemed alive that she'd seen in the last three weeks. So, for the first time she could remember, she turned on her heel and headed towards the light.