Short stories

3 AM Thoughts

The sound of a car breaks through the silent dead of the night. No one but the stars and moon to greets Mary as she speeds through the small city. She goes faster and faster until the city is only a spot in the distance and as the stars shine brighter. Space, she needed some space from it all.

It was only 3 AM and Mary only expects to meet the dead. Armed with black coffee and veins filled with caffeine, sleep will not visit her today nor does she want it to. She wonders if she was a failure. A failure of a daughter. A failure of a student. Maybe that's why her dad left. Maybe that's why she can't seem to get things right, even when she tried to do better in university. Maybe, maybe, maybe she mutters to herself. Maybes filling her head and sinking her very self with doubt and a growing dislike towards herself. Venturing out the care, she takes off her leather jacket and lays on the soft grass as yellow eyes stare at the sky, constellations coming to her mind. The bits and pieces of the stories she read and heard from her mom replay in her head as she pictures simpler days. Blinking blearily, she contemplates texting Skyla or Thaddeus, but they'd probably be asleep. As much as she'd like to talk to them, Thaddeus had class the next day and Skyla had some projects to do as an intelligence researcher. Projects that Mary herself had as well. Staring at her phone, lost in her thoughts, her imagination began to swim about possibilities and maybes. Sitting up, she grabs her headphones from her leather bag and connects them to her phone. Music fills her ears as she lies down again and feels the prickling feeling of grass on her arms again.

Some days she feels like Icarus. Flying too close to the Sun and yet laughing as she falls. Welcoming the fire burning itself into her flesh and branding itself onto her soul as she drops into the ocean's open arms. Wanting to reach the Sun, wanting to reach the impossible, the dream but failing. Falling. Fracturing. Her pieces swept across the waves as the ocean tries to piece her back together like she's some sort of puzzle. But maybe there's a piece missing. Maybe she was never whole to begin with. Maybe she's just a broken, used up, useless. Maybe all that semblance of content in her life was a façade that she tried so hard to keep up and only now, as the ocean cradles her, does it break away.

Some days she feels like a tool. Used only when people need her and tossed away from deemed useless. Only useful for projects. Only useful for the knowledge stored in her head. Only useful for skills. But not for anything else. Not for going out for lunch. Not for hanging out watching the stars as the clock chimes 3 AM. Not for arcade trips and fun times. It leaves her feeling cold and mechanical and whenever she tries to voice these thoughts to Skyla or Thaddeus because it starts to feel like something is choking her whenever she finds the words. The what-ifs drowning out her rationality and drowning her mentality. Some days she just lets herself drown into the static and hope that tomorrow would be better. Let's herself sink deep as the static sinks into her bones and makes a home in her very being.

Part of her is screaming to get back home, that tomorrow is another workday, that she has projects to do, that her friends are going to be worried for her if she goes radio silent on them again. That she needs to pay back her debt to society in any way possible and laying on a hill filling sorry for herself isn't doing anyone favours. Yet another part, a part that is slowly growing larger, can't be bothered with everything. It makes her limbs feel like they're filled with lead that's dragging her down to the ground as her head and throat fills with cotton. The lead feels like shackles and one day she feels like she's going to wake up in the underworld. But not today, she begs as she closes her eyes.

Her playlists sound across the emptiness that surrounds her, the vague sound of her heartbeat the only other accompaniment.