Work Text:
Lights Out
She looks straight on, the bright light staring right back down.
She fidgets. Wonders if she’s done something wrong. Wonders why she feels so ill at ease.
Well-- because it feels like an interrogation, doesn’t it?
Isn’t it?
“Name?”
“Mary?”
“Your full name.”
“Mary Evangeline Wardwell.”
“Age?”
“Fifty-three.”
They’re numbingly easy questions.
“Do you remember anything?”
Nevermind.
“No.”
And that was the point, wasn’t it? Why she was here, enduring this line. These lines. She was here because she was hopeless. And, unfortunately, desperate.
Mary didn’t know what she had done. Or why.
It was criminal. Like that was the crime.
“Do you remember October?”
“Hmmm?”
“You’d mentioned October in your intake.”
Oh.
“Oh. Not really…” She says, her voice soft, airy, and sad. “Only the beginning.”
“What about November?”
A nervous twitch. She must sound insane.
“No. Maybe?” No. “No.”
She looks lost for words. Frowns. Frowns a bit at the man asking her.
“I might…. As part of a very… erm… vivid dream?”
That’s just the answer she should give. It sounds incriminating.
She tries to remember…. Remember before waking up…. Waking up and walking into Cerberus Books. Back before she woke up in Spring in Greendale, when she’d last remembered the beautiful New England trees in an Earthly fire.
“I don’t really… remember anything before the beginning of March,” she admits, embarrassed.
She should know better, shouldn’t she? Or at least know?
She picks at a loose thread on her skirt nervously. Nervous. She was always nervous. Perhaps Mary was socially awkward before, but now? She’s socially frightened.
The bright light ceases and she feels the entire room come into focus once more.
Was it her eyesight? It was her eyesight, surely. Her eyesight which made the entire room darker.
Or was it the light? The flashlight? Penlight? That light straight ahead of her. The light that was clouding her judgement--no, her vision. Her perception.
She was nervous.
The light--that beam that looked through her eyes--right through her… it made her nervous. As people asked of her… asked her of answers she didn’t have.
So the light made her skittish, too.
Or maybe it was just her eyesight.
“I remember seeing Night of the Living Dead.”
“That was back in October,” the man says sceptically. And the light is back to the side of her face.
She looks ahead, out the great glass mirror in front of her. Was someone on the other side? That’s what happens in police stations, wasn’t it?
Not that Mary had much reason to go to the police station--until…
There were strange occurrences in her town. Reports of people going missing.
As unofficial town historian, Mary immediately drew ties to witches… But… that isn’t right.
Because…
Mary doesn’t believe in them. Not like… that.
While Mary Wardwell longs to believe in magic, she just can’t bring herself to the truth she doesn’t know about.
And yet.
The strange occurrence of herself was hard to miss. Claiming, after the dust of the town’s chaos seemed to settle, that she didn’t remember the last few months--it was suspect. She was suspect.
She had changed.
The fact of her non-believing may have brought all this into being.
Superstitious.
Mary Wardwell was superstitious. And despite her own name, she was incredibly prone now, it seemed, to bad luck on negative eventualities.
The man looks at her again. In… confusion?
No.
Mary was used to that stare. That glare. That look.
Suspicion.
Mary had always been odd. And suspicious glances were not unknown to her. He turns out his light and lets her up to leave.
“Thank you for your time.”
She asks what can be done and he says nothing.
Some good sleep?
Mary frowns at this answer. They nod to each other… and the confrontation in over.
The visit.
She exits the doctor’s office, prescription for sleeping pills in hand.
She feels defeated.
And sad.
And next week, she’s back on trial.