The faces in the crowds seemed, whether truly or by fret of mind, to know what she had done. To them, the red girl hurried down the street, winding in between pedestrians, keeping her head down. Making eye contact with people was not something she did at the best of times.
Great clouds rumbled overhead, smoke stacks towering above, chugging out their waste. It was late afternoon when Maris reached home, the warm lights humming out from the windows. She did not want to enter, despite the yearn for comfort. She couldn't bare to face Clyde or Wilhelm, try to hide what happened, or have it bleed out of her in confession. She closed her eyes, and for a brief moment, she felt something. Once more. The sudden shift of wind lifted her eyes open, and she was faced with the bland off-white walls of her bedroom, covered in large maps and artworks of a mysterious kind.
Her eyes were wide as she turned and looked at her expression in the mirror. Terror on her face, Maris turned around, looked at her hands, looked at the wooden floorboards, the flaking ceiling, back to the mirror, her face. Her hair. Things she had heard that day, and many before, flashed in and out of her mind. She fought to remember. "What is happening to me?" She thought in anticipation. "Who am I?"
A very traumatised, exhausted, and unprocessed mess she was, she laid down in her bed and just tried her best to sleep instead of cry.
On her floor, her bag laid guilt ridden, the blood on her skirt drying to a deep brown.
***
Maris slept soundly. A lavender and sage quilt was draped across her bed, flattened neatly underneath her, untouched, the way it was when she made it the last morning.
The light slowly crept in through the curtains as night interlaced with dawn. Shadows of hanging flowers lingered from the windows, and reflections of glistering stones came alive when hit with the sunrays. She had quite the collection, Clyde brought her home a new crystal whenever there was one dazzling enough to wow her.
Inside the deepest parts of her brain, Maris began to dream. She dreamt of people flowing mindlessly forward. In other moments, she was entirely alone, in a void of sorts. Not a blank slate of white, but the impossibly deep black of space, only there were no stars. There was no floating matter, no light emitted from anywhere. At first, she couldn't see her body when she looked down. Her eyes felt they were open, but she had none. She was one with the nothing. Then she had hands, horribly bloody and bruised hands. The pain came as sudden as the sight of them.
"Maris!"
The only thing to wipe her hand on was on the other hand. Maris watched from non existent eyes with horror as the murderous hands became entirely encapsulated in what looked like black paint. Almost blending in with the void, but not quite.
In the corner of her peripheral vision, Wilhelm appeared, and boomed; "Maris! What have you done?"
She was pulled rapidly from her sleep. Wilhelm had her grabbed by the shoulder, his expression looked like he had just been in a nightmare. She felt cold sweat gathered on her forehead, and her entire body coated thickly in it.
"Maris, you had me in a whirl." He said with full seriousness, a kind that made her feel unsettled. She never had reason to be in trouble with Wilhelm, but when it came to it, he really was a wearisome man to have upset with you. "I never thought to look in 'ere for you! I knew you'd come home, or some fin was the matter..." He softened a little, and then gave her an uncomfortably tight squeeze. His chest was rising and falling fast, gradually returning to a relaxed pace. He held her for a moment, mighty glad his endless imagined possibilities hadn't come to fruition. "Just glad you're a'right, poppet." Her hair received a gentle pat. His enormous hands fit her whole head.
