Chapter 3
Everyone is calling her a ditz; even the social worker she went to see last week thought she was a ditz. The social worker, as always was pleasant enough to Mary but Mary saw it in her eyes, heard it in her voice, her empathy…..you are a stupid and ignorant woman but I will help you just the same.
Mary is a pretty, young lady of twenty-five, with long dark hair and green eyes that can swallow a man but it is her inner being, which seems to suck people to her, even when they think she is being a ditz. Therefore, even though Mary is the only one that believes she has a problem and even though the social worker thinks she had lost her marbles, she had recommended and set up an appointment with a doctor.
Mary had gone to see this doctor; had in fact just returned home from seeing him. She had withstood his testing but she is feeling very disappointed at that visit. The doctor had not been able to tell her any more than she knew herself; she is healthy….absolutely healthy, not a thing wrong with her, not even malnutrition which is a common factor in those whose depend on the streets for their living.
The streets, now there is another thing that does not make sense. Every day she goes out, every day she warns any that will listen about The End, everyday she watches as those living on the streets are abused and killed by other people who live on the streets, by the police, the drug users and pushers, the gangs but never her.
More than once, she had seen the look in a man’s eye as he had looked at her, seen him make his way for her, but then……it is as if she does not exist. The man’s gaze passes over her and whatever it was that was driving him to come to her suddenly vanishes. The man turns and walks away and most often than not to his death.
Just like that man today. He had come upon her as she was making her way to the doctor. Mary cannot explain it but the evil that hung around the man was palpable. The man had come to her and his intent was clear….until he caught her eyes. For a minute or more, they stood motionless and stared at each other, the man’s eyes glazed and when they came back into focus, it was as if Mary was not there. The man walked right past her and into the street where his life promptly ended as an ornament on the front of a truck grill.
Mary remembers that so clearly, so why is it she has no memory of her life past the last six months. Yesterday was no problem or the week before that or the one before that, but try to go back for more than six months and nothing.
For months, she has been on the streets searching for something. What that something is not even she can say. Something has been driving her out there but what…..what is it, what is it that she needs so badly that it forces her from her home everyday to search. For six months now, she has been warning those that will listen about “The End” and as she did so, she has been searching.
She knows that there is someone very important to her out there somewhere and that there is something very important that she is suppose to be doing but that is the extent of it, or at least the extent of what she feels. It’s like she has been walking in a daze for twenty-five years and then six months ago, everything became clear and here she is….now what?
Mary has no job and not being able to remember more than six months of her life gives her little hope of ever getting a job. The room she is calling her home is only thanks to the social worker, her food comes from the food kitchens, the clothing from charities. So for months she has been begging to make ends meet, proclaiming “The End”, and searching.
And then there is the recent development of her paranoia. Someone is watching her, she is sure of it. Thinking back hard Mary realizes that she had felt that feeling since, well since what she has come to call her awakening so feeling watched really was nothing new, what is new is the paranoia. That day six months ago everything finally became clear, that day her mind started working again and then right after that came the feeling of being watched; this as much as anything else is ready to drive her over the edge.
With almost mechanical precision, Mary eats her supper, then washes the dishes and afterwards sits in front of the television. She turns on the twelve-inch television and the television, tuned to the news channel blares to life.
This is another matter that Mary cannot explain. Since her awakening, she has had a burning desire to watch the news, to know what is going on, to be in touch with the latest. Sadly, most of the news is about murders, wars, bombings, terrorist, overthrowing of world leaders and so on and even though she knows this is not what she is looking for she cannot help but watch. Even stupider is the fact that watching the news always leaves Mary in an agitated state but just as she keeps searching on the streets, she searches the news.
Tonight as Mary watches, she becomes ever more agitated therefore, after watching the news for a couple of hours she turns it off and decides on a bath, because for some reason a bath always relaxes her. She loves to submerge herself in the water, to block out the world, to let her mind drift. Only while she is doing so does she ever feel restive or at peace.
Tonight though is not Mary’s lucky night for when she goes to use the one and only bathroom in the building she finds a line up already forming by others that have had the same thought. Sighing in resignation Mary makes her way back to her room.