A young woman stood outside in the star filled night. She wore a dress that used to be bright blue but now resembled more of a tabby’s coat.  The wind in the trees blew around her but she simply stood still. Her cropped hair brushed her cheek tenderly as she waited. In her eyes if one had been looking would have seen the anticipation, the relief and the apprehensiveness that clouded her heart.  She had seen enough of this place and of the Earth. She was ready to move on into the new planes of existence.

A car drove up to her and stopped abruptly. The window peeled down. A young tired face greeted her.
“What took you so long?” she asked the young lady.

“Unfinished business”, she said calmly as waved to a girl in the back seat. The girl looked up from her wrist and smiled painfully at her.
The driver kept her face stoic but deep inside she felt the same relief as the young lady.

“Ready?” the driver said with a hopeful smile.

There was only one answer for that; “Yes”

The young women walked to the other side of the car. She slowly opened the door and crawled in the seat next to the driver. As she sat down a sudden pang of pain hit her but she let out a tear and let it past. She pulled on the handle and slammed the door.
The driver stared at her with fondness before turning to push the button to start the car. She rolled up the window as she put her foot gently on the gas pedal and let the car take off.

The young girl sat emotionlessly in the backseat as she watched the adults. She thought that they would talk about how much they missed each other or how sorry they were.  Instead they remained silent although they did reach for each other’s hands.

She swayed her legs in front of her to look at the holes in her ankles. She had matching ones on her wrists as well. She could remember when that day where she waited to die and begged God to be released from the pain. Her wounds had been flooded with blood that she almost surprised she didn’t bleed out right there and then. But now they had scarred over and while you could see the bone they were no longer red. They had turned browner than the mud she saw outside in the pond near her house.

She slumped on to the car seat feeling the weight that had been lift off her shoulders.  She and her guardians had done their duties and now it was time to take their place among the stars.

The car made turns across many roads but there were no cities nearby. Only the trees surrounded the travelers. The moon was hidden behind the clouds. The night was eerily silent with no frogs croaking or crickets chirping. Yet the three women found this almost soothing to their fatigued souls.

They drove on further into the night it became darker and darker. Suddenly a giant source of pure light lay ahead of them. The car stayed at the same moderate speed as they went into the light.
Once they went in they disappeared from the place with no trace of them to be found.

Many Years before…

Mary moved from her sleep and turned off the alarm. She brushed her long, messy and dark hair, away from her face as she pulled herself out of the bed. She grumbled to herself about waking up so early and wondering why schools thought it was good for their students to do this. The closet door opened and she grabbed whatever clothing was available for a passable outfit.

The door to her bedroom shut immediately as she didn’t want her father try to come in and disturb her.  She threw on her clothes and turned to fixing her bed. The red as blood sheets were spread out gently covering the front of the bed. She checks for the stain she had made last night when her mother burst in without notice causing her to drop her Hot cocoa. To her dismay the soap she had so desperately rubbed into it hadn’t completely erased the traces. But she simply eased it way and promised herself to finish it after school.

When she opened the door let herself out discovered there was a little bit of dust covering the floor of her room. Her feet almost flew off the floor in disgust. Now this she wouldn’t stand for.  She grabbed the vacuum, turned it on and swiped up the dust.

Her father immediately appeared at her door staring at her angrily.

Mary refused to look at him. She didn’t want any company today and she hoping her father would stay sound asleep. She told her parents several times that she didn’t want a monitor in morning. For the reason wasn’t because she wanted to show off how independent she was. No, the real reason was that she didn’t want to see their dark sides in the morning nor discover anything new about her parents through visions. But they always managed to ignore her and continue to intervene no matter how uncomfortable it made her.

“Mary, I thought I told you not to use the vacuum early in the morning. It disturbs your mother and I. I am sick and tired of having to hear the vacuum at different times in the night. You are getting too obsessed with cleaning. It’s affecting your sleeping and eating habits. I’m worried about you. Your mother and I are going to have a serious talk about this”, he barked.

Mary wished her father would go away. She knew he was waiting for her to make eye contact and respond to what he was saying. However she was terrified of what the visions would show her. Even now she began to see dark smoke and shadows forming around her father’s feet. Once this happen, no matter how hard she tried to stop them, the images would appear.

She hurried out of her room in a huff and pushed her father aside. The door of the cupboard opened as she pulled out a cereal box.  She jerked open one of the other cupboards and grabbed a bowl. The bowl was pale white with the exception of Mickey Mouse in center. Any other day, Mary, would have been more cautious and placed the bowl further from the edge. But thanks to the blanket of drowsiness and anger the minute she poured the cereal in the bowl it fell and shattered like time the glass vase did when her aunt’s dog knocked over the table.

“MARY! Look at the mess you made. I know you haven’t been sleeping well. I know you’re better than this. If you had been more awake you could have avoided this and…” her father went on as she grabbed the broom and swept up the shambles of her would-have-been breakfast. She tossed them in the kitchen trash before going back to try and make another breakfast. 

On her way back to the counter she felt a hand on her shoulder. She jumped around startled before getting annoyed at the angry eyes of her father. An image of him fighting with someone she couldn’t recognized came into her sight as Mary quickly turned to looking at the floor, insuring this time that she didn’t catch one bit of her father.

“Mary I’m tired of your disregard of for anyone but yourself. I know you get mad when I say this but you’re selfish. When someone like your mother or even Jesse needs help, you’re off in your own little world ignoring everyone else’s problems except yours,” her father scolded her. “You need to change otherwise people won’t want to be around you”.

Mary flinched. He’s overreacting. I don’t that all the time. Just because I didn’t feel like going to that stupid charity auction doesn’t make me selfish she reassured herself. Though deep inside she knew her father was right. She preferred to be alone than having to face people with flaws and horrid desires and fears. Those people acted as if they were above things they frowned upon even though they anything but. If these were the people she would have to put up with in the world, why should she try to change for them? They were all in the same boat and they just didn’t want to admit it.

With this in mind she shoved herself out of the way of her father and marched to back to her bedroom. The door forced open as she stomped in. She ran into her closet to get her socks and shoes. Quite a few balls of socks flew out of the drawer as she pulled out a random ball and forced it open. Her fingers burned a little after she did it but she didn’t care. Next she turned to the rope shelf where all of her shoes hung. Without care for damage she might cause she grabbed the nearest pair of shoes that easy to put on. Just like with the socks many of the shoes fell out of their designated spots where they joined the socks.

She put on her shoes and walked out of her closet. Her leg crashed against her bed as she went to get her backpack. She let out a shriek in pain and held her leg for a little bit, cursing in pain. But she then heard the footsteps of her father and quickly ran toward her backpack, which was near the door. She forced her backpack on her back and walked out of her bedroom.

She stomped out the door in a huff, not bothering to even comb her hair. The street was still dark with sun having not risen. No one was there to greet or walk with her. Most of the kids in her neighborhood were too young to go to her school, but even if they were they wouldn’t have wanted to accompany Mary.

Mary finally reached the school and saw her Science teacher Mr. Greer standing at the front door.

“Good morning, Mary”, he said with a smile.

Mary reluctantly said, “Hello”, back.

She tried her best not to look at him.

“I hoped you are prepared for the test today. You are a great student to have in my class so I’m sure you’ll pass it”, Mr. Greer said in that cheerful tone he always had.

Mary said “Thanks”, while continuing to look down.

While she was never fond of socializing with people, she especially avoided it when she was scared, depressed or angry.  That’s when her ability activated. Her ability was to see the worst of people. Whenever she looked at a person in a vulnerable state, visions of unwanted desires and horrible acts they had done came to her.  She could not pinpoint the first time she had been able to do this. Her parents told her once that, as a baby, she hated to be picked up. The nuns at Church where she was abandoned at often felt nervous handling her.

One of earliest her memories was seeing a man staring at the kids at her preschool. Her parents had told her that she had, had a fit over not getting the right cup for her juice. During her time on the playground she sat in time out while the rest of her classmates played. That’s when she saw the man.

He was tall and had shaggy red hair. His eyes were dark but oddly enough they were full of hurt. He stared at one of her classmates with his trench coat blowing in the wind. Her classmate, who she didn’t know their name, had her blonde hair flowing in the wind as she climbed around on the monkey bars.

Soon after she saw him a vision came to her. She saw the man grabbing her classmate and shoving her into his car while a woman cried and wailed. He took pleasure in that and began to spoil her classmate with gifts and having her tell him that she loved him more than her mother.

When the vision came to her she screamed and yelled for the teacher. The teacher tried to calm her down telling her it was just her imagination. But she didn’t stop thinking about the vision and refused to do anything the teacher said until it was time for her parents to come pick her up.

The next day when she arrived at school she soon found out what happen. The classmate, the man had been watching, was kidnapped. She felt something twitch inside of her upon hearing the news. When she had gone home that day she tried to convince herself that it was all in her mind and nothing bad was going to happen. For the rest of the day she cuddled herself in a little ball and didn’t speak a word to anyone.

Ever since that day she has remained terrified of her visions. Most of times they showed her nothing major such as visions of people shoplifting or going out to smoke. But there were times in which they brought her images of horrific car crashes and disturbing sexual behavior. While they didn’t happen very often she still could never be sure when something like that was going to pop up.

In fact her visions were one of the reason she was reluctant to make friends. Well that and she simply felt uncomfortable around people. Just knowing that people could have done something awful, something they didn’t want anyone to know about terrified her. They could be normal well meaning people one moment and then the next be someone that took pleasure in things that harmed others.

Mary suppressed those thoughts, said goodbye to Mr. Greer and left to the hallway of her first period classroom.

When the kids in the hallway saw her, they quickly turned their backs and started talking discreetly to their friends.

Mary barely any attention to them and walked into her first period class without a second thought. Unknown to her there were a few people watching her with more interest than gossip.