Part 3 : The Other
(For Meri and all the Others out there.
-Casey)
Blaring rock music blasted off the cement floors and
walls of the garage. Kris adjusted his reverb before
diving into a long E chord. The drums, real skin
ones, pounded their heartbeats into a frenzy. Sera at
the keyboard hammered out the melody, letting it pour.
At the head, the singer occasionally known as Mary
Death thrashed in time to the music. Words fell in a
long stream from her mouth, every now and then hitting
the right note. Mary couldn't really sing, but that
didn't matter. Singing was not what the Random Pagans
was about anyway. What Mary had that made her lead
was the ferocity of emotion that she could slam into
each word she screamed. Anger, pain, love, joy, name
it and she could sing it. Right now, though, she was
in bitter-pissed off mode and the Random Pagans were
doing "Make You See."
"You killed me everyday,
All the painful things you say
But today I'll make you pay."
Despite the name, RP was not really a religious-New
Agey type band. True, they had thrown in a few songs
for their namesake, Mary's "Ritual" and their own
rendition of "Goddess" among them, but mainly they did
life. Singing America and the body electric and
things like that, as Sera had once put it. Most of
the songs ranged from basic adolescent angst to
sarcasm to rage.
Tonight, it was rage.
"Today, baby, I'll draw the line
Cuz no, I'M NOT FUCKING FINE!
Now vengeance will be mine,
When I make you see!
When I make you just like me..."
Mary drew out the end, voice deep and dark, trailing
the last words out like fine thread. *snap* Burning
green eyes blazed a swath through the imaginary
audience before she blinked them shut. "Call it for
tonight, guys? I'm dead." Her speaking voice was low
and soft, crushed velvet. The various members set
their instruments back into their places and trickled
into the house. Soda cans popped, caffeine and sugar
cocktails soaked into their blood streams. Cakes and
ale, chips and cokes, the simple feast was quickly
consumed. Grounded, Mary collapsed, boneless, in a
beaten up recliner and nursed at her coke.
This is Mary Death. Mary Death is a seventeen year
old poet, a wiccan wannabe writer of songs and short
stories, a demi-goth caffeine junkie. She is dark and
edgy and borderline suicidal, but if she thinks no one
is watching, she's more hyperactive than a four year
old. Everybody has an image to uphold. Mary Death's
image is a 5'7" high schooler with a shock of spiky
black hair and dark brown eyebrows. Her green eyes
are almond shaped and constantly moving. Her skin is
overly pale, washed out by the dark clothes she
normally wears. Tonight, she wears black jeans tight
enough to be a second skin, a deep blue tank top and a
black leather vest. Black docs encase her feet and
tiny jingle bells on her socks chime with every step.
The clock struck six and the Random Pagans were
hustled out the door to their own respective abodes.
Mary Death slipped out of her tight blacks and into
loose jeans, smoothed the spikes out of her hair,
covered the smoke with vanilla candles, slipped her
pentacle under her shirt. When her mom walked in the
door, Merideth was there, looking ordinary and
innocent as a Sunday school student.
Inside, she hates it. But she puts up with it.
Because Merideth knows that if she lets her true self
out in front of either of her parents, she's back in
the psychiatrist's office twice a week. That will not
happen again. So in front of her parents, Merideth is
sweet and cooperative and chipper. But once she gets
back upstairs, with the door shut and locked, Mary
Death is free to play the Other.
Upstairs, after dinner was long forgotten, Merideth
let the Other take out the Ludwig Van cd and put on
Mechanical Animals. To the thrashings of Rock is Dead
and the cold feelings of White World, the Other
started to write.
"I fill it
And I spill it
Out into the world.
This time I will be heard."
The Other was Mary Death, everything she is outside
her parent's watchful eyes. Loud, rebellious,
intelligent enough to talk back, dressed in black,
pagan child, about as virginal as the man on the CD
player, and liking every second of it just fine, thank
you much. Most of the time, anyway. When she was
with her friends, at least. Not at home, but what kid
ever really was happy at home? Home was a prison.
~Homes, prisons…~ Mary Death started to jot that down
but put it aside. What would it matter anyway? In
just a little while… ~Hell with it.~ She would at
least finish this one song for Sam. It would work
well for him, with his brass baritone and all his talk
about being Void.
Humming half-formed melodies, Mary Death shaped out a
new song. Slow and mournful, vaguely reminiscent of
Radiohead's "Creep." Off in the margins, she wrote in
notes and scales. Let Sera take some piano liberties
with this one, play whatever she felt right with.
Have Sam drive home the words into their non-existent
audience.
"The emptiness I feel
I can't just let it heal
Or else I'll be like them...
And yet I keep
Filling it
And spilling it
Onto the world.
This time I will be heard."
~Or maybe not.~ Who would ever listen to them
anyway? No one seemed to like their demo CD except
her own circle of friends. No one listened to the
band and it was getting harder to keep the Other down
around her parents. It kept wanting to jump up and
talk balk, let the condescending bastiches know that
she had her own mind when she cared to use it.
~Stop.~ She closed the notebook as reverently as if
it were a bible and stacked it on the desk. The Dark
was closing in...
Mary Death stood in front of the mirror, plucking at
her prominent ribs. Fish pale skin, dark circles
under her eyes. ~Ugly, ugly, ugly.~ Unable to come
to terms with herself; the curse of models and teen
magazines everywhere coming back to her. Trying to
see the Inner Self, the perfect being, and failing.
~But thou art goddess, right?~ White and red hands
wrapped around the spiral groove of her staff.
Beautiful, smooth wood, curving grace, leather strips
wrapped around the grip, dangling quartz and feathers.
~Gloomy Sundays, with shadows I spend it all.~ The
Spiral had always used it to draw out the physical
circle during ritual. It had been part of her Ren
faire costume for a year now. The staff had been part
of the too few good memories; it had soaked up a lot
of nice vibes. It was a minor comfort now. "Gloomy
Sunday" ran through her head. ~My heart and I have
decided…~ Feeling so tired. Red, red staining
leather, dripping down wood, into the carpet. Red
everywhere. Floating away.
"Oops." Female voice cutting through the haze.
"Okay, don't worry, it's not too late. There's still
time." Hands, cool and firm, closing over her wrists,
sealing around the skin. "Project, visualize," the
voice was slightly shaky, walking herself through
whatever she was doing. "Vascular spasms, closing the
vessels and slowing the flow. Let the thrombos
collect. Seal the wound." Her hands were buzzing,
like static off balloons. The voice started to chant,
low and soft the way she had always wanted to sound.
"We are the flow, we are the ebb. We are the weavers,
we are the web. We are the flow-" Over and over
again. Something was flowing into her, spilling into
her, filling the aching void. Love. Thrombocytes
were flocking into her arms, to her wrists, to her
gaping skin and muscle. Everything was light, bright
and glorious...
~I'm alive...
~Oh shit! I'm alive!~ That wasn't how it was
supposed to be! Panic and pain surged through her.
Mary Death opened her eyes. She was sitting cross
legged, back to the wall, her staff across her lap.
Blood had spattered her pants and shirt, soaking into
the floor. It was drying a weird red-brown hue, like
the colour of Sera's hair. The carefully cut T shaped
slashes were healing. ~What the Hel?~ Kneeling
across from her was a young chick with white hair and
huge blue eyes. There was blood on her hands and a
tentative smile on her face. "Hi."
"Um… hey."
"I'm a little new at this, but here goes nothing,
right? Okay I'm here to tell you that even though
things look bad now, they will get better. When you
go to college, you can be whoever you want. No more
hiding. And there are people who love you, even if it
doesn't feel that way. And even if it seems like
there are no other options, there usually are. You
just have to look. Trust me, life is better than a
cosmic nap any day. This is the absolute truth here,
dying is boring and not a good answer." The girl
pushed her hair out of her face. The way she moved,
oh so careful, made Mary think of a baby taking first
steps. Uncertain, new. Her hands loosened around the
staff and she stared down at her wrists. Yet another
set of scars, she thought to herself. Maybe some
other night… "That's about it, I think. Wait, there
was something else…um… oh right! Also, you have a
future coming soon and it will be great, trust me on
that one. Okay?" That perked Mary's interest. A
future? How about that. She started to say something
when the girl got up.
"Hey wait. What are you? How do you know this
stuff? How did you even get in here?"
"Just a messenger, that's all. The people Upstairs
told me. And you'd probably rather not know how. You
probably ought to sleep now. You'll need it."
"Ah." Merideth had never been so tired before. She
was ready to curl up right there on the floor with her
staff as a teddy bear, and just nap.
"I like your stick."
"Thanks…" Everything faded again, this time into
warm, dark sleep.
Nikki looked down at the sleeper and smiled. Not too
shabby for her first job. Averted suicide and all
that. Given time to heal, the girl would be better.
From there? Who knew. After this would be up to her.
The messenger stood and started towards the window,
but her eyes kept darting towards the staff. The
materialist klepto in her was itching for it. ~Don't
even think it. Wrong, bad, no.~ A staff like that
was nigh irreplaceable. It would be so wrong to take
it. But the stack of never sold CDs on the table?
Just one, maybe?
Careful, cautious with her new powers, Nikki floated
down to the gravel driveway, bending the rules of
physics as she went. In her ears, the Random Pagans
were crooning. "Singsong chant on a starry night;
Isis Astarte Diana; Incense, candles burning bright;
Hecate, Demeter, Kal-" Dancing in the moonlight,
Nikki slipped away into the night.
Return to the Notebook.
