Mary Falls Down

Peter sniveled and snarled and shook and groped the barn wall in feral terror. His finger nails wore shreds of rotting wood as underclothes, his bright blue eyes were yellowed and nasty and grieving and all other sorts of plain bad stuff. Now this is not to say that I blamed him; only that this was the state of affairs, and they reflected him.

Myself, I was a timeless effigy of beauty in a pair of steel-toed boots, I was lightness itself in my corduroy jacket and short-short skirt, and I was getting very bored with standing among the gleaming rusted car parts and old toys, furniture and mildewed laundry, that rested in the cold evening outside of my barn.

This simply would not do. Darkness came creeping in shadows from across the hills, and I worried about the time. So little of it! wept the shivering daisies and the chicory and the blue bonnets and the forget-me-nots as they bowed their heavenly heads to the sinking specter of the sun.

I spread my hands out to reference my junk garden, and then pointed again to the peeling barn door.

"Here lives an Enormous Pile of Terrible Things. I'm sure you have no idea what I mean, exactly, but the general ideas are clear: these things are terrible, and they live together in an enormous pile."

Peter looked confused, and no less frightened. He shied and coughed and I know he would have whinnied if he'd been a horse. I grimaced and growled and tried to start over, more scholarly-like. The daisies trembled. I continued, waving my arms for effect.

"If a definition were asked, I assure you, none would do good, but being a person, I would give one anyways. An Enormous Pile of Terrible Things is the bastard of a Horrible Idea and a Big Mistake. I'm sure you've seen these monsters yourself?"

Peter, still confused, found the good grace to nod his head. The chicory stank the bitter stink of concern.

"Excellent! You follow me, then. Horrible Ideas are a rampant problem, as you well know; and they're fond of all sorts of nasties and tortures. Their worst quality is, they are careless. Consequently, their best quality is, they didn't mean to and if they did, they probably wouldn't be horrible. Horrible Ideas are bumbling, ignorant asses, mostly to the point. Dig?"

Peter's tongue skimmed his lower lip and upper teeth as though sucking in a foolish answer before it could cause trouble. He roiled and toiled and sweated and fumbled with anxiety; his eyes darted past our floral audience and through the hill to the safe and sturdy and dependable railroad station, all glittering steel tracks and musty creaking cars, going to somewhere lighter and cleaner and prettier and better than me.

"No, Peter," I warned, I jibed, I waited, I flexed my wrist. Peter drew his eyes up, carefully avoiding my right hand.

"The Big Mistakes and the Horrible Ideas are related, mostly, by stupidity. They love each other and protect each other with the certainty of animal aloneness; they belong with nobody else but themselves, they can't stand nobody else but themselves. Reminds them of what they coulda-shoulda-woulda been. And it shows in the offspring."

Peter's fingers picked frantically at the taut air, his lips dried and cracked from over-licking. The sun was almost gone now, the last bit sat like an ecstatic orange rind, glimmering over the terrified flowers, not quite reaching the junk-garden surrounding the barn. I imagine just then I looked like an angel, my blonde hair flapping in wisps and knots and nests and my creamy skin good and clean down to my shining boots.

"Mary-" Peter began, so softly, and my ears roared and my belly shot with pain and I screamed and screamed and stamped my feet, feeling the soft dirt give beneath panicked weight, my body trying to go limp and my mind going numb, filling with tingling static, pins and needles robbing all my parts and replacing them one by one; pins and needles grabbing my arms, breaking my legs, flooding my kidneys, invading my breath.

"You don't understand!" I bellowed. "I can't explain! I can't tell you what IT is, I've failed, and now we'll be swallowed, swallowed by the Enormous Pile of Terrible Things that lives inside, inside, inside..."

I swung my arms around my waist, whining. I held my wrists, jumping with a start as my neglected knife left a glaring cut on my left arm. The forget-me-nots whimpered soft prayers of forgetfulness, the bluegrass cried for mercy. I am merciless. I would not wait to be gotten. The blood on my arm marched along to join the blood on my skirt, and Peter's eyes started to move faster. I knew that look; I could see his locomotive brain steaming with effort, coming to terms with the loss of me and just as quick clamoring on to denial. He thought himself wicked quick and manly strong: he was gonna try to be brave.

I placed a hand to my chest and beat hollowly with my red red fist.

"These terrible things," I said, wasted, numb-lipped, hopeless:

"These terrible things only grow in places like this."

Peter took a step towards me and my arm broke from the stillness of my never ending death; a death so small, so unnecessary, so irredeemably unimportant to the universe, so cruel and painful and immature that it grew until it thrust itself with grave intentions through the wellspring of my tortured body, aided by the iron will that lunacy affords.

Peter shrieked a horrible shriek and my knees gave. I dropped the knife as I fell into an Enormous Pile of Terrible Things. His burning hands grabbed for me and I shivered through the numbness; there was a moment, then, when I was afraid. His leering face contorted above me, and I could feel the living heat of his body becoming more and more at odds with my coldness. I knew, in that instant, what I needed. I knew, in that moment, how I could be saved. I moved my lips to speak.

Peter bent down to kiss me. He traced the line of cheekbone to my barely parted lips, but finding only vacant skin, the fingers became still. Too late, too late! Peter thrashed his head, livid, nails digging into the grass and ripping a dandelion from the ground, its caked roots dangling, poor thing smashed into the barn. The sobbing flowers hushed with fear as Peter held me there, in the dirt, until there was nothing.

* * *

It might later have been said of Peter that he murdered me, a foul-spirited boy, transient, sly, ignorant and feral: in essence, an unfortunate social waste product who stabbed his lover outside of an empty barn in rural Kentucky.

Rumors such as those are Horrible Ideas and often lead to Big Mistakes, so Peter, being a bright boy and ever curious, hurried up to join me. And we are happiest and we are best left alone in our junk garden: even the flowers don't visit anymore.