Imposter

Mary ran the water and heard the screaming.  The dog bites didn’t bother her anymore but the persistent shriek, like fingernails on a blackboard down the right side of her soul; this bothered her.  She knew there was no one there.  The doctor told her so.  That made it all the worse.  There was no one for her to hush.  No one whose head she could, as a last resort, cave in to stop the madness.  It was her own.  Something misfiring in her brain.

The water was cold.  Cold.  Cold.  “Goddamn it,” she said.  She turned the hot water tap all the way open; cold water ran faster.  Frustrated, she turned it off.  It only made matters worse; now there was a blood-covered girl huddled howling in her bathtub.  Mary wanted to yell at her; she had no desire to clean up the blood.  Some part of her mind that was no longer fooled reminded her that she wouldn’t have to.  Turn away, it said.  Have breakfast.  Give the water time.

Still bleary-eyed, she lurched down the hall, past her living room, into her kitchen.  A bowl of blood that was really strawberries.  A bowl of brains that were really oat-ring cereal in milk.  Slipping, squeaking noises from the bathroom; the wailing, dog-bitten girl.  Mary wanted to throw a thousand darts at her, leaving her a silent, leaden pin cushion.  “Can’t I eat in peace?” she asked her cereal as she piloted its shoals with her spoon.  She slammed her hand on the table; the spoon whirled away into space, astonished, trailing Cheerios.  “Don’t you think I know?  Don’t you think I feel?  I know how you feel!  Now feel what I do!”

There was silence, for the first time in hours.  She sank into the chair.  The milk and cereal rocked in the bowl, perhaps trembling, perhaps complacent.  She watched until all motion ceased.

The water was warm, anyway.  Tepid at least, at last.  She dabbed her face, able for the first time in a long time to hear the crystal fullness of the water trickling back down into itself, delighting in the pure audio experience of it.

“Will you wash my bites?  Please, please,” the girl pleaded.  It was the first time Mary could remember her having spoken, ever.  She turned to the girl, the red-rimmed blue eyes under greasy black curls, the blood still pulsing up from the myriad punctures after all these years.

“Of course I will,” she nodded, kneeling beside the tub.  Lifting the warm washcloth, she let her eyes play over the smooth white stars in her own arms that made a mockery of the world ‘healing’.  But she knew warm water would do it.