by L.C. Barlow
Chapter 27
MARGARET
Disoriented and numb, I left Cyrus's mansion that night. He let me, did not hold me near, and somehow I knew that whatever power he had would be used to make sure I didn't kill myself, would watch me even while he didn't watch me. But that wasn't on my mind. Nothing was. I was... blank, but running.
As I drove through the town, it was like I had never been there before. The street signs all looked unfamiliar, the buildings were alien, and there was no sound anymore. I remember it was like I was wandering through water or glass.
I remember I drove close to home, but I only did so to retrieve my stash of heroin and needles from an old railroad tie.
I retrieved the heroin, and I put it in my inner jacket pocket, and then I drove away.
The graveyard was far from the rest of the town, as was the church that it sat beside. It had hundreds of trees and thousands of graves. I had visited this place many times, but this time, I felt like I belonged. I remember the smell of the cherry blossoms. I remember the Cottonwood trees like snow in the night. And I remember the tomb. The stone angel it sat in front of.
I got out the syringe. I retrieved the vial. I boiled the contents, slurped them up into the needle and blew them into the body, and went down down down. Downhill. Downhell. Far away from the alien town and Cyrus and Roland and Alex and Sloan. I did not think of them at all. I said goodbyes to murder and meaning. In doing so, I must have used more heroin than usual. I remember the syringe slipping. It fell down into the tomb with me. I don't know why it didn't break. I frankly don't know why I didn't break. I stretched myself out, against the blanket I had placed within, amongst the cottonwood seeds that were caught in the maw that held me on its concrete tongue.
I looked up into the night at the moon. And, in this dark little corner of the world, I saw the stone angel's face appear, faintly luminescent at the ledge. I thought I saw her bend down, clasp the stone with her hands, with hair turned from stone to silver threads, and eyes a bejeweled green instead of the sparkling white of sand. Her pinky raised, then the rest of her right hand, and she turned it and held it out to me inquisitively. "What are you?" she asked. I went to apologize, but passed out instead, dreaming that I was in a catacomb, not a tomb, and there were hundreds of me in the vaults.
I did not wake for a long, long while. Days passed.
