CHAPTER 1.09 - THE STORIES WE KEEP TO OURSELVES: III

Elena’s directions were impeccable.  Not that Anuk’s ever nervous wandering around alone as a woman; more fool anyone who sees her as an easy mark.  As she approaches the Sisters of Apollo, her heart sinks and she wonders if she read Lena all wrong.  The building was obviously once a jail.  Thick stone walls, narrow windows (some of which retain their bars) and a gloomy, threatening aspect.  Sheesh.

The giant, iron-bound and -studded doors open at her push.  They open onto a lobby standing in contrast to the grim exterior.  Cheap but thick carpet covers the floor, and art covers the walls.  Nothing fancy, quite the opposite.  If Anuk had to guess these are the work of patients.

A tiny, purple-haired woman introduces herself as Sister Apollonia.  About heights with halflings, gnomes are always slightly disconcerting to Anuk.  Apollonia’s kind intonation sounds bizarre with her helium voice. As she asks how she can help, the gnome’s eyes are fixed on the package in Anuk’s hands.

“I’m here to visit Mirry if I could.”  Apollonia smiles sadly “I’m afraid Mirian Fletcher is having a bit of a bad...week.”  Anuk grasps that the nun could have chosen “month” just as easily.  “Please, this is my only chance to visit...” she starts, but Apollonia raises a gentle hand in pause.  “Of course, you have Mrs. Wiltonsey’s blessing.”  The tiny woman rubs the bridge of her nose, and Anuk notices reddened indentations implying that she wears eyeglasses.  “I can’t promise anything, but we can try.”  She shakes her head sadly as she begins to lead Anuk through a warren of stone-flagged and -walled corridors. “It's such a shame, really.  Elena tried to visit a few times, but it sent Mirry into quite a state.  Poor thing doesn’t even realise her friend is also her benefactor.”  She looks Anuk dead in the eye, states “Our minds can lead us into labyrinths.”

A minute or so later, they are up one floor, standing in front of an imposing cell door.  Apollonia gives Anuk a tight smile before gently knocking.  “Mirry, dear?  It’s Apollonia, I’m just coming in.”  She pauses for a moment but opens the door without any audible response from within.

Apollonia mutters “Father’s grace!” under her breath and accelerates through the doorway.  Anuk looks in.  The small room is carpeted, the stone walls covered with plaster, but behind Mirry’s head there is an area gouged and scraped away, bloodstains evidencing that she used her fingers.  Two strings of figures, four sets of double digits above another six arranged in pairs.  These have been scraped out under a larger O.  Or a circle.  Anuk shudders. 

Mirry is a shocking sight.  She is about ages with Anuk to her guess, but distressingly – distressedly – worn and torn.  Her eyes are sunken, dark-ringed; her face carved with deep wrinkles.  Her hands, though, her hands elicit a gasp from Anuk.  Even as Apollonia bathes Mirry’s fingers in the purplish light of healing magic they look like bones.  She has no nails anymore, her fingers having been clawed, torn, bitten open over and again. 

Those eyes, so buried, so dark, stare happily as her horrific digits wave the gnome away.  Mirry’s voice is as wounded as her overall appearance as she says in a cracked singsong “It’s fine, I’m fine; look, my friend Anuk is here…”  Apollonia looks to Anuk uncertainly as Mirry’s eyes seem to focus, pierce through her “…my friend and his.  Anuk brought cakes, do you see?” 

Anuk enters the room, dumb in the face of the girl’s invitation.  Apollonia looks between them, rubs Mirry’s oblivious arm.  Anuk nods in response to the query in the gnome’s eyes, reading surprise that Mirry is so calm amidst the carnage of the room.  The nun sighs, heads for the door as she says “I’ll be right outside, ladies; we can clear up your wall later.”  Anuk hesitantly approaches the bed, hands the neat little package to the girl.  As Apollonia pulls the door closed, Mirry quietly says “It’s for her; it’s from him.  Caiphon.”

Anuk feels a shock up her spine at the name.  Holy shit. 

-x-

Stunned, Anuk studies the shrivelled girl in front of her.  The ruin of the life Mirry has lived, apparently as much inside her head as out, is written across her posture, her skin, her body. 

She sits cross-legged on the narrow bed like a little girl, fully consumed with unwrapping her gift.  Mirry carefully unfolds the paper, smoothing it against her narrow thighs as the simple cupcakes are revealed.  They elicit a gasp, another girlish mannerism marred by the cracking of her voice.  Anuk shakes her head as Mirry clumsily places the cakes on her bedside cabinet, seemingly abandoned.  Watches as the girl absently shakes crumbs onto the floor, before flattening out the sheet of tissue paper.  She becomes still, head bowed.  Holds for seconds, statue-like.  Anuk shifts, feeling keenly that she is intruding, and Mirry reanimates, stringy hair shaking as the girl turns to the drawer of her cabinet.  Anuk can’t help but cringe a little as Mirry’s mummified, dead-looking fingers struggle for purchase on the little drawer knob before pulling it open.

Anuk sees two things, feeling voyeuristic as she does.  Firstly, the drawer is full of identical pieces of crepe paper.  Secondly, heartbreakingly, this new piece shows a fresh blob from a tear.  Mirry’s eyes are wet as Anuk impulsively steps forward, reaches out to help push the drawer closed.  Their eyes meet.  Then, suddenly, Mirry is sporting that spacey, blissed out smile again.  It looks even more out of place, as another tear trickles languidly down her cheek. 

“Hey, hey, it’s okay, you’re okay.  I’m really sorry to intrude…look, I can go…”  Anuk is aware of the forced gentleness in her voice, as though speaking to an animal or child.  She feels traitorous.  Watches the girl, still transfixed on her face, absently scrabble one of the cupcakes into her cupped hand.  Her claw-fingers are nipping at cake’s paper case, cascading crumbs as the paper starts to rip, delicate sponge and icing scraping away.  Anuk drops to her knees in front of the bed, cupping Mirry’s hands in her own.  Gods, they feel terrible.  Still murmuring low platitudes, Anuk scoops the cake out of trouble, easily removes the case.  The girl’s eyes have not left hers, nor has that damned, dreamy look left her face. 

She tries to give Mirry a warm smile, feels her own sadness infect the expression.  Chokes back the worry that this is her future, a wreck of a person imprisoned more inside her own mind than by a sanatorium’s walls.  She places the cupcake gently into Mirry’s cupped hands, struggles against the sting of tears, resists the urge to pat the unfortunate girl.  Mirry is still staring as she brings both hands to her mouth, takes a morsel of the iced cake between the carnage of her lips.  Finally, Anuk isn’t the focus of Mirry’s attention as her eyes roll back in pleasure.  The whites of her eyes are yellowed, bloodshot, the tiny measure of moisture from her teardrops drying into the parchment of her skin.

“Mmmmhhh.”  The dissonance of the grit behind the little-girl voice sounds filthy.  Thankfully it subsides into a moment of silence, before Mirry whispers “You’ve seen him, haven’t you?”  Anuk’s turn to stare, as one of the girl’s hands moves to indicate the circle on the wall.  “…I think so, Mirry.”  Anuk pauses, awkwardness losing the fight against curiosity.  “You know we haven’t met, don’t you?”  Mirry laughs, another broken, discordant sound. 

“Oh, I’ve met you many times.”  The girl watches the confusion on Anuk’s face in silence for an uncomfortable span, then whispers.  “In my dreams.”  Suddenly urgent: “They’re not really dreams, though.”  Anuk frowns, responds haltingly: “You…told Apollonia my name.”  Another wretched chuckle from Mirry, like an inappropriately crude grandmother after too much brandy.  “He shows me his pretty new plaything all the time.”  Again, the girl points at the blood-tinged symbols on the wall, the cupcake dropping onto the skirt of her grey shift.  “For you.  From him.” 

Anuk tears her eyes from Mirry, hand automatically dipping into her satchel for paper, a pencil.  She rethinks, freezes, but it’s too late – Mirry has already clocked what Anuk thinks of as the “Diary of a Madwoman”.  Caught, Anuk guiltily removes the book.  The shabby, cheaply bound journal was Mirry’s once.  But it seems…more now.  More hers now.  It’s inarguably thicker than when she found it (Anuk’s ignores the term “stole”), and the once-brown leather has darkened since…  (Focus!  Not the time for this!)

Anuk unwillingly extends the journal towards Mirry.  She feels uncomfortable at her own joy when the girl shakes her head.  “It’s yours.  I think it always was.”  Mirry frowns, her eyes seeming to focus on the present, on her surroundings.  The clarity makes Anuk’s stomach squirm, but then the girl’s expression softens, dims again.  “But…but I suppose I was…am important.”  It sems as much a question as statement.  Anuk feels grief for the girl, the waste of her.  And a sickening glee that she is the one.  The one for whom this poor woman was destroyed to deliver…what, precisely?  She looks again to the wall; riffles open the slim book to the end of her notes.  There were definitely fewer blank pages before.  Less of the book, before.

Anuk pushes away her discomfort, begins sketching.

Mirry sits silently, attentive as a student in class.  When she finishes, Anuk turns the book so the girl can see, feeling as though she is showing her workings to teacher, desperate for approval.  Startles, as Mirry claps gleefully, the sound of those hands clacking together at odds with the innocence of the gesture.  “That’s perfect!  You’ve drawn it just like it is there!”  She exclaims as she points.  “It even looks wet!” 

Mirry’s expression fractures as she focuses on her twisted fingers.  A mournful, shaky sigh expels from her before a child’s sob.  “Tell Elena…tell Le*…”  And then the girl’s eyes glow with a purplish light as her voice deepens, darkens.  Her tone mannish, her narrow shoulders shuddering her frame.  “Go now, vessel.  This one…”  Mirry’s eyes, staring through Anuk, suddenly lose their glow, sharpen on her as a guttural, strangled growl emits from her. 

Her posture stiffens, twists.  Anuk senses danger, fumbles the book back into her satchel.  She drops the pencil, ignored as Mirry’s clawlike fingers flex.  All reason, intellect seems absent, replaced by animalistic – no, murderous – rage.  This pitiable figure becomes something terrible.  Not wanting to turn her back on Mirry, Anuk backs towards the door, eyes locked as the girl leaps off the bed, grabs the pencil from the floor. 

Shit!   Feeling behind her, she knows she’s missed the door.  Mirry unfolds to her feet.  Less like a human, more like something with more joints to their limbs.  Her right hand’s raised, holding the stylus like a dagger.  Thankfully, Apollonia’s heard the commotion.  Anuk wishes the doorknob was set lower, wishes the gnome was larger, less vulnerable.  Wishes the tiny nun was between her and Mirry as the girl scuttles towards her, arm already scything down towards Anuk’s face.

She raises her hands, eyes squeezed shut, waiting for the tip of the pencil to rip into her.  But Apollonia’s there, saying soothing nonsense words.  Anuk fully returns, furious that this god-botherer is ‘kind wording’ in an obvious ‘big stick’ scenario.  Her eyes fly open to see Mirry, still up against her, stabbing hand still raised, but with a slack, vacant look on her face.  “Mirian, dear?  Would you please give Anuk her pencil back?  There’s a girl.”  Anuk feels furious until Mirry gazes at the pencil with supreme disinterest, silently hands the implement to her. 

Anuk keeps her fright behind the cage of her teeth as she drops the pencil into her satchel, feels Apollonia tugging her trouser leg with more strength than she would have expected.  The door’s just to her left.

As they leave, Apollonia looks up to her with a sympathy she would normally find insulting.  “I’m sorry that happened; Mirry really is…more settled when she forgets her life before.  I was shocked that she was so placid.”  As Anuk looks back towards the door, Apollonia pats her hand.  “My calming will hold for a while; let me see you out.”  The woman looks genuinely optimistic as she assures Anuk “At least she got to spend some time with her friend, before the turn.”

-x-

The going’s so much tougher now; one blip seems barely over before the next kicks in.  Even had Anuk decided to share her story, the delivery would have been chopped up into ribbons.  They’re all struggling, unsteady on their feet.

Then she bumps up against that fucking idiot bandit.  Takes her a moment (and a curse in his direction) to realise that Rian has stopped suddenly.  Fuck, she thinks, what now?