Lies (Gone 3)

She sagged onto the chair in the cramped office. She tried to lift her legs, rest her feet on a cardboard box, but even that required too much energy.

She rattled the pill bottle on her desk. She pried the top off and looked at what she had. She didn’t even recognize the pill, but it must be some kind of antidepressant. That’s all she ever got from Dahra.

She downed it dry.

When had she last taken a pill? She needed to keep track of them.

Two kids down with some kind of flu.

What was she supposed to…

What might have been dreams melded seamlessly with memory and Mary wandered for a while in a place filled with sick children and the smell of pee and her mother making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in giant stacks for some event at school and Mary wrapping the sandwiches in Ziploc bags, counting them into recycled

plastic Ralph’s bags.

“Did you wet yourself?” her mother asked.

“I guess so. It smells like it.” She wasn’t embarrassed, just annoyed, wishing her mother wouldn’t make an issue out of it.

And then the door was opened and a little girl came and crawled onto Mary’s lap but Mary couldn’t move her arms to hug because her arms were made out of lead.

“I’m so tired,” Mary told her mother.

“Well, we’ve made eight thousand sandwiches,” her mother explained, and Mary saw from the stacks and stacks that teetered comically like something from a Dr. Seuss book, that it was true.

“You look sickly.”

“I’m fine,” Mary said.

“I want my mommy,” the little girl said in her ear, and warm tears rolled onto Mary’s neck.

“You should come home now,” Mary’s mother said.

“I have to do the laundry first,” Mary said.

“Someone else will do it.”

Mary felt a sudden sharp sadness. She felt herself sinking into the tile floor, shrinking as her mother watched, no longer making sandwiches.

Her mother held the knife covered with peanut butter and raspberry preserves. Globules of red, red fruit dripped from the edge of the knife, which was awfully large for making sandwiches.

“It won’t hurt,” her mother said. She held the knife out for Mary.

Mary jerked awake.

The girl on her lap had fallen asleep and peed. Mary was soaked by it.

“Oh!” she cried. “Oh, get off me! Get off me!” she yelled, still half in her dream, still seeing that knife floating, handle toward her, dripping.

The girl fell to the floor and, stunned, began to cry.

“Hey!” someone yelled from the main room.

“I’m sorry,” Mary mumbled, and tried to stand up. Her legs gave way and she sat down again, too suddenly. As she fell she reached for the knife but it wasn’t real, though the little girl’s cry was, and so was the voice yelling, “Hey, you can’t come in here!”

On the next try Mary managed to stand up. She staggered out. Three kids, faces dull with terror.

Not her age group. Too old.