Mary - a Short Story

Mary - a Short Story

It had always been the five of us. Until Mary went missing.

She never really said much, anyway.

The fact that she was gone didn’t scare us; the fact that the thing that had taken her was still out there was what did. At least, that’s what we’d been told. Personally, I don’t trust the police. They were the ones who told me that you’d definitely get caught if you even tried to shoplift.

‘Relax,’ Res had said, giving me his signature grin, ‘I’ll be fine. Look, just try and walk around outside without looking too suspicious.’

I’d started to panic like there was no tomorrow, being the little worrier I’d been. It was the first time I’d seen him actually doing it. I’d never heard of him ever getting caught, but there had just been something about that smug little smile…

‘Res, seriously—’

‘You’re such a wuss!’

I gaped. Before I’d even had a chance to reply, he’d gone in. Then come out. It seemed too quick for him to have done it. But he opened his pocket a little to reveal all the Snickers bars. He winked at me, and sauntered off, leaving me to chase after.

And everyone knew how much I loved Snickers.

And we also knew what a bad idea it was to continue letting Res “visit” the newsagents, but it wasn’t like anyone ever bothered stopping him.

And now we were about to play in the dark, and absolutely everyone knows what a bad idea that is, but no one complained when we came up with the idea. Well…I’d wanted to, because I’d always been a little afraid of the dark when I was small, you know, like I’d hear things, see shadows morph into figures, and think there was some monster under the bed. But everyone thought that when they were little, so that was normal.

At this age, if you think there’s a monster under the bed, chances are, you’ve probably got schizophrenia.

We were about to play hide and seek in the dark, around the nearest couple of roads. Ben said that one o’clock in the morning is the perfect time because people get the most annoyed if you wake them up around then. I didn’t like it because it was too close to midnight, and that was the time Mary disappeared.

She was always the quiet one. Fat one. Smart one. Dumb one. She was called a lot of things. She was bullied a lot, too. She was more of a third wheel – well, fifth wheel, if you think about it, so she couldn’t really be considered as part of the “group”, which made it rather awkward on the days she got bullied particularly badly. We’d all stand around scratching our necks, watching her sob, not really sure what to do. You’d think that with the amount of times it happened, we’d’ve gotten used to it.

‘Guys, this has got to stop happening,’ Karla muttered.

‘What? Very helpful when we don’t know who the bullies are!’ Res snorted.

‘No,’ Karla shook her head. ‘Not that, us. I mean, look at us!’

‘What, you’re saying that you want the bullying to carry on?’ Ben misunderstood.

‘What? No!’

And, somehow (this was the last time it happened), it had turned from pitifully watching one of our friends cry to a fully blown argument where Mary had been totally forgotten. It had been at one of our midnight meetings, too. Mary had slunk away to go sob somewhere else, and we never saw her again.

Although I could’ve sworn that I’d heard a distant scream. But it could’ve been a cat, who knows? Mum always complains that my ears never work properly, but that’s not true. Somehow, I always seemed to have my earphones in whenever she calls for my help with household chores. I like to think of it as coincidence.