Mallory's Melody

Chapter 1

2000

I have to do this.

Jane took a step nearer to the cliff, savoring the cool breeze brushing past her skin. Far below her feet, the seas churned, and more violently with every step she took nearer. Jane stepped forward still, the nudge in her heart kicking harder, faster. Perhaps it was a sign, a plea from the creator to desist from what she was about to do.  But it was no use now. She'd pondered this for three days, and alas here she was, more willing than ever to jump over this cliff and set herself loose, one affliction after the other. 

The sun's half sat below the horizon, slowly waking from its slumber. Jane better be done with it, before the full wake of dawn, as the brightness that came with dawn would illuminate the stupidity of what she was about to do, and would demand her desertion from it. But that stupidity was intelligence when she came to terms with the reality of her pain, the only salve to it.

It was amazing how the things that normally mattered less to a person had a new importance in a confrontation with life. Things like the blistering rays of the encroaching sun, the soothing dampness in the fresh morning air, the slight chirps of approaching birds; and even the mirage of crystals that formed in the blue ocean when in contact with the sun's rays. For a moment, Jane's previous agony fled, but the reality of her situation came climbing back onto the ladder of her mind. It wouldn't lose its grip so easily.

Today the earth would make a sigh of relief from the dearth of her existence, from having being relieved from the heft of her agony. They would all mark the day she, Jane, Camilla, Anderson departed the earth, they would etch her name onto a luxurious tombstone if any symbol of death possessed luxury. Today, they would at least have reverence for all her accomplishments.

Jane took a step nearer to the cliff. She didn't want her death to alight so suddenly, she would go step by step, recalling the things that mattered to her. Such things as Music. how could she forget music mattered the most—No it didn't. Yes her life might've bordered on it, it might be the only thing that sustained her existence up to this point, but the true thing that mattered the most was behind her, in the basket she'd laid on the ground.

It was her baby, the one all amidst the tumult of Jane's life. A certain mistake. Pity momentarily grazed past Jane as she met with the green eyes of the baby. Jane had considered if it best to take her, out of the darkness that upholstered the world, from the generational curse that would be transferred onto her.

"I'd be cruel to bring her along with me," Jane muttered, feeling empathetic for her child than herself. She was tied to the same fate as Jane was. Her life would be nothing but a disaster, a calamity. With time, life would steal her childlike innocence without solicitation, as even she was once a baby, without dreads, or agonizing pains, or fears, but now there she was, corrupted by life itself, battered and bereft.

"I'm done with life!" Jane concluded. Her voice reverberated through the valleys. Jane strode to the baby, with hurried steps that pronounced an urgency to leave earth, a desperation for the pain to stop. A finality.

She squatted to meet the her child's eyes and scribbled cryptic words across the paper. Mallory. She wrote. Mallory would be her name. Mallory for the unfortunate, for the ill-fated, for the disastrous, the jinxed, because in truth, that was what she was. Nothing more.

Mallory's green eyes wandered over Jane, in anticipation, in curiosity, as though she was trying to decipher what Jane wanted to do. Though Mallory's look of concern broke her heart to smithereens, Jane gave one last smile of defeat and swept her hand through the Mallory's, anthracite, black hair. Her beauty was stupefying, absolutely awe-worthy, endearing in its innocence. She possessed, skin as flawless as pearls, eyes that depicted the magnificence of nature itself and lustrous, pink lips that would instantly draw unsolicited attention.

Jane unfastened her necklace from her neck and hooked them behind Mallory's neck. Painstakingly, she pressed her lips against Mallory's forehead, heaved the last breath and stuttered backward.

Mallory cried out for her mother, making indistinct, deafening sounds that Jane couldn't quite understand. But the message Mallory was trying to convey was blatant. Don't leave me, please. Stay with me, mommy.

Jane turned away from the baby's premise, Tears streamed down her eyes like a cascade. A paroxysm of unfathomable emotions overwhelmed her body as she neared the cliff. Doom was her fate all along, doom had always been.

"Farewell Life. Farwell Mallory," Jane whispered in defeat and took a step closer to the cliff, a step closer to her doom...