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Of all the strange things that Mary had to explain to Mrs Meeks her first day back teaching, her sudden change of hairstyle was one of the most difficult to get out. Mrs Meeks was thrilled to see her friend back, but after the sudden change, and sudden change back... she was a bit concerned that something... traumatic may have happened.
While Mary could not explain the amnesia, the change in style she did not remember, or even her own promotion, Mary was able to explain her sudden hairstyle. And was quite embarrassed about it in fact.
But seeing as it’s the one things she can remember, she does try.
The night after the supposed apocalypse, not that Mary knew about any of that, Dr Cerberus had seen Mary Wardwell in his bookstore, a little dazed, and quite confused. He’d offered to call her a ride home, and though Mary was embarrassed, to say the least, she had accepted.
Home... she had decided, had gotten a bit of a makeover. Looking around her small cottage in the woods, it seemed that the furniture had moved since she’d been here last. But... she’d just gone to the movies. Not nearly enough time for anyone to have come and staged an elaborate remodel.
She began to try to sort things out in the cottage, from the furniture to the things on her table. But she found it more and more difficult, and she was already tired to begin with. Mary was going to call it a night. She had to. And maybe tomorrow, she’d remember? She turned sharply, trying to control her breathing, and trying to keep all her rationalizations inside until her eyes met her cross above the mental, and she couldn’t help but yelp as she stumbled backwards in shock, accidentally shoving over and upturning her knitting basket.
It took a moment for her eyes to focus—she’d lost her glasses in that fall. She had reached around in front of her, feeling around the floor and the scraps of quilting and a few clippings of yarn, trying desperately to find her glasses so she can just... go to bed.
Her hand caught cold metal. Against her anxiety, she went to hold it.
Instead of the confidence and safety her glasses provide her, she instead felt her blood turn to ice in her veins. Her hand tensed around her sewing scissors, and not even a moment later, she pulled her hand away sharply, as if they’d burned her.
It doesn’t take her glasses to tell her there was an eerie feeling on her hand. And the scissors looked... not like she remembers them. Darker on the metal. A coating of darker substance. She closes her eyes tight and then renews her efforts for her glasses. Everything is a blurrier version of what they were.
She scrambled for her glasses then, coming across them only a few inches from where the silver of her sewing scissors caught the light. Putting them on her face, she couldn’t help but let a started gasp escape her again.
Mary had been right. The faintest metallic shine through a coat of what looked to be blood. Blood? H-How?
She took them in her hands, holding them exactly how she always cautioned against—with the blade out. She was not going to will herself to touch that blood. In a quick few movements, she’d hurried herself to the bathroom, with the hope to wash the scissors clean. Instead, she nearly found herself unable to move in the doorway.
More. Blood.
There was more blood stained in the grout, more blood on the tiles. Even some stained on the side of her bath. She was trying to stay steady. Trying not to... to shriek. To be too dramatic in her own secluded cottage in the woods She reached behind her, finding the wall, then using it to guide her way around the bathroom, to the sink lodged in the corner.
Even standing at the basin, she felt unable to turn away from the horrific sight. But then, once she does, she’s met with another one. Herself.
Herself, in the mirror, her anxiety clearly having caught up with her. Even if she woke up from a vivid dream, even if her sleep was restful, she was staring into tired eyes. Nearly bloodshot. Her face was pink from her fright. And she couldn’t stand the sight.
She pulled hastily at the pins from her hair in an attempt to hide at least some of her view—an advantage to having long hair, she admitted to herself. But once she’s done it and her hair, which is so much longer than she remembered it being even that morning, rests around her shoulders, a flash of a memory of something horrible, more fearful, appears through her eyes. And before she can piece it together, she once again only saw the sad mess she perceived herself to be.
Her eyes locked on herself, she reached forward clumsily to turn the water on, running water through the scissors. A ghostly, haunting feeling overcame her as the blood, blood she does not even remember, ran down her hands and then down the drain.
The feeling of cold fear rose in her throat, trying to hold back any further outbursts. Any reason that she could possibly cry. Her heart raced quickly. Her eyes dart up to look at herself, and it’s not like she expected. The sight of her with the watered-down blood on her hands- and the- the look of herself... in a way she doesn’t remember. Her blood was ice but her face was hot. And her heart was beating too fast, and her hand was trembling with the half-bloodied scissors and her mind went absolutely blank and then—
And then she’s on the ground. And the scissors have been thrown from her across to the bloodied tiles. And what’s more, there’s a clump of dark hair in her hand.
She froze, realizing, with the strands of dark brown and light chestnut, that she had probably just gone a little more mad than normal. She hoisted herself up using the sink and caught her own reflection in the mirror.
Gods, she’d cut her hair. She hadn’t dared anything of the sort in nearly three years. She tried to examine herself in the mirror, to see if it was just her hair and nothing else. And after a moment of searching, she thinks she... seems fine— ...
“Burnt my hair on a candle.”
“Mary, you didn’t.”
Mrs Meeks is looking at her, eyes wide. Mary gives her a polite, nervous shrug. “It just happened.”
“But Mary, you’re always so careful!” She protests.
“My mind was... elsewhere.” She takes a sip of tea to avoid further elaboration.
Mrs Meeks, instead, gives her a chiding laugh. “Oh, Mary. Probably thinking about your work more than your own safety! That’s so like you.”
Mary, in return, could only give a nervous smile.
In this case, it’s one less friend that may think I’ve gone mad, she tells herself, before joining the joke again.