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Cotton candy clouds floated in the air as Mary Lisbon looked up into the great blue sky. Her dirty blond hair wisped around her face, partially obscuring the dreamy view. Standing in a large field and taking in the lush and fertile surroundings, she tipped her head back and sniffed the fresh citrus smelling air. Mary felt as if everything was saturated in color from the pink hues of the sky to the pink nail polish color on her nails.
They were chipped.
She would never let that happen.
The sounds of distant giggles suddenly filled the air. The distracting origin of the sound came from somewhere behind Mary. She swiftly turned around, dropping her chipped nail polished hands to her sides in the process.
It was her sisters.
They were all prancing around an elm tree as if they were woodland nymphs, their blond hair trailing around them. The elm tree appeared to be the exact same one that used to reside in her front yard, before it was brutally executed by maintenance workers due to it having some disease. It wasn’t just any tree, it was Cecilia’s tree.
Mary hitched up her dress so she could make her way to her sister quicker. She noticed that she was wearing a pair of bronze colored Mary-Jane, much like the pair of baby shoes that her mother kept near the entrance of her house. She shook her head and proceeded to see what exactly her sisters were doing at the elm tree.
Cecilia appeared above her, lazily resting on one of the branches of the tree with a close lipped smile. She was barefoot, only wearing the familiar stained vintage wedding gown which was shorn at the knees. There were no bracelets taped to her arms as a way to conceal the bloody bandages. It was just Cecilia with her familiar detached aura.
The rest of Mary’s sisters took a break from their angelic field frolic. They all sat down below the branch where Cecilia was laying. Bonnie sat on the side of the trio, fiddling with the rosary that she took out of her pocket. Lux sat in the middle, mischievously whispering into Therese’s ear as Therese was examining a tangerine with a leaf attached to the stem.
Mary approached the tree even closer. It seemed as if her four other sisters barely even noticed her. It wasn’t exactly different to how it was when all the girls were living together, Mary being the middle child and all. Too old to fit with the younger ones, and too vain to accompany the studious older Therese.
Cecilia haphazardly descended down the tree, and landed with a less than graceful thump on her feet. She bent down to make eye contact with her older sister Bonnie. Cecilia gestured to Bonnie that she could climb up the sturdy elm tree. Bonnie nodded and took Cecilia's hand as they both climbed up the tree.
Mary watched on as they proceeded to giggle to each other once they got to the destined branch.
“Well are you just going to stand there or are you going to sit down with us?” Lux said with an annoyed expression on her face, looking up from her cross legged position.
“Oh yeah of course, duh.” Mary said, trying to brush off her awkward presence to her younger sister. She sat on her knees as she got comfortable on the carpet like grass. Mary noticed how enamored the other two girls were at the softness of the grass.
They sat in silence for a minute. Mary took a deep breath as she tried to take everything in at once. The gentle breeze rolled over the sisters as Mary took note of her seemingly gleeful sisters. She noticed Lux was now absent-mindedly running her hands through the grass as Therese was messing with something behind her.
Breaking the silence, Mary spoke up. “I just...I just can’t believe that we are all here. Together.” Mary emphasized the vastness with an arm gesture.
“Don’t bother trying to think about it, Mary. Therese already has the answers for you.” Lux said with a roguish smile on her face. In turn Therese reached behind her back to hold.
“What is it?”
Without saying a word, therese opened up her hand to reveal the contents on her palm.
Mary inched forward to examine this newfound discovery. In Therese’s hand were the tangerine seeds that she picked out of the fruit earlier.
“Do...do you want me to eat those?”
“Of course! I already had a few when I saw you coming over here.”
Mary’s hand hesitated as she reached forward.
Lux rolled her eyes at the sight of it.
“Don’t be such a baby. Take it and see how you feel.”
Mary shook her head and swiped the seeds from Therese’s palm. Without further examination she quickly swallowed the seeds. Almost immediately, Mary grabbed her throat as she felt a burning sensation surging through her body.
The sunshine began to disappear as Mary felt her head spinning. She stood up in shock as she felt an ominous rumble coming from below the ground. The gentle breeze became a harsh wind.
Turning her head to the side, a wrought iron spike began to emerge to emerge from the ground.
Against her better judgment, Mary approached the newly grown spike. It looked like it was a part of the same fence that used to be in the front of her house. It was there her entire life until a certain incident permanently changed the fate of the fence and the fate of the Lisbon family. It wasn’t until Cecilia’s fall, no wait jump, did their neighbors take away the fence.
She softly pressed her finger on the tip of the spike, just to get a feel for it. Out of the corner of Mary’s eye did a small object flutter down to the ground, most likely from the branch where Cecilia and Bonnie were above.
Shaking her head, Mary walked away from the spike in order to bend down and see what mysterious small card was. She picked it up and grazed over it with her fingers. It was a laminated card with a depiction of the Virgin Mary on it. Twisting the card in her hands, the other side was blank, except for a message hastily scrawled in a black marker:
TURN AROUND!
Dumbfounded, Mary heard a sudden squelching noise from where the pike was erect. Mary cringed at the sound as she hesitantly turned around to face her worst suspicions.
There was Cecilia with a fence spike impaled right through her gut. Mary was speechless at first, reliving the traumatising night her youngest sister took her life in the midst of a party for her. Mary instinctively covered her mouth with her hands, tears beginning to swell in her eyes. There was little 13 year old Cecilia, her eyes wide open, mouth agape, limbs dangling and her worn wedding dress billowing in the wind. Blood was slowly starting to seep from Cecilia’s abdomen and drip down the spike.
Her life ended before it even started.
Standing there in shock Mary heard a soft moan. Cecilia’s body was still twitching, even though the spike went straight through her spinal cord.
“M-Mary…”
She ran towards her sister's seemingly dead body.
“Help me...”Cecilia’s voice was weak. Miraculously enough, Cecilia turned her head and meekly reached out her arm in an attempt to reach Mary.
Mary shrieked at the nightmarish sight and began to back away until she made contact with the trunk of the elm tree.
Or so she thought.
Mary spun around to see the tree, but she was just eye level with bare feet. Mary immediately fell to the ground in fear of the sight. Mary timidly brought her hand to her face as she began to timidly look up from the ground. It was none other than Bonnie, hanging from the tree. Her neck was bent at a grotesque angle and her legs were just swaying due to the wind picking up.
Covering her eyes, Mary could see Therese still resting against the tree. Still on the ground, Mary crawled her way to Therese’s side. The short path was made difficult due to the tears clouding Mary’s vision. Mary sat up and began to urgently shake Therese’s cold shoulders as she tried to get her attention.
“Therese please get up! Cecilia and Bonnie are gone and I don’t know where Lux wen-”
Through voice cracks the grim realization began to appear to Mary. Looking down to Therese’s
Still chest, Mary realized that her older sister was never going to wake up.
Mary slowly retracted her hands from her sister’s shoulders. Her glassy eyes began to become more erratic as she was slipping from consciousness.
Regardless, Mary managed to lean against the tree trunk as a support to get up. She pushed herself so she was standing freely now. Her legs began to feel like jelly as she managed to make her way through the field.
Stumbling away from the field she saw a lone figure standing in the field. As Mary approached the figure, she saw it was none other than the last surviving sister.
Lux.
“Lux! Get over here please! What were in those seeds?”
Lux tossed her head over her shoulder with a smirk on her face. Mary continued to plod towards her until she was just a few feet away from her. Her cheeks looked sallow and the rest of her body looked emaciated, appearing how she did a few hours before The Day.
“What’s going on!? Why aren’t you telling me anything? What’s going to happen to us?”
Losing strength, Mary collapsed on her knees. She sighed in pain at the contact and began to plead as if she was in a Sunday Sermon. With tears in her eyes she continued to beg and wail.
Lux said nothing as a smile scrawled across her face. She began to giggle at first and then laugh. She doubled over as her laugh began stronger. A sharp contrast to her feeble body.
Suddenly, black smoke began to seep out of Lux’s mouth like a poison. Her tears of laughter became tears of pain as she began to claw at her throat. She slowly descended to the ground as her laughs began to sound like the moans of a wounded animal in pain.
Mary laid on the ground motionless as she couldn’t gather the strength to get up once more to aid her sister. She simply heard Lux’s screams fall into a decrescendo of moans, then into sniffles.
There was silence.
Although Mary attempted to scream the loudest she possibly could, nothing could be heard as the coldness enveloped her. The only thing she felt were tears rolling down her face and the now scratchy grass itching at her bare arms.
Mary awoke to continuing a shriek from her nightmare. She gasped for air as she alarmingly looked around the bare room to get a feel of her surroundings. A muted pastoral painting of a field, a whitewashed wall, a door leading to the hallway where people with white coats were walking back and forth. Clenching the starchy blankets of the bed and listening to the steadfast humming of the tube that was pumping her stomach, she recalled where she was for the past few days.
The hospital.
She remembered why she was here, why her sisters weren’t with her. The list rang continuously through her head in her waking hours.
Therese Lisbon, 17-Suicide by overdose
Bonnie Lisbon, 15- Suicide by hanging
Lux Lisbon, 14-Suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning
Cecilia Lisbon, 13-Suicide by impalement a year prior to the mass suicide of her sisters
Then there was 16 year old Mary. She too planned to take her own life on that fateful night with her three other surviving sisters, but failed to have a successful overdose.
There was nothing she could do about it as she was now under around the clock care. Her mother only visited her once this entire hospital stay. Mary laid back down on the soft pillow. She weakly raised her hands back up to see her chipped nails. She wasn’t able to maintain them at all. According to the nurses, when people were in the hospital family were allowed to visit to cheer them up and maybe apply makeup or paint their nails. Condition depending, of course.
Mary’s own mother only visited once during the few days she has been situated. Her mother stoically sat in a chair in a distant part of the room for exactly 30 minutes. Minimal conversation took place.
Mrs. Lisbon would never paint her daughter's nails. Even if they didn't try to take their own lives and needed parental care.
Mary blankly stared at the paneled ceiling. She ran her fingers through her hair. She began to weep, for real this time as the hard reality of the situation began to clear. Her sisters were never coming back, her life would most likely never have the luxury of returning to normalcy, and her fate was truly unknown.
No amount of lip gloss or nail polish was going to convince the world that 16 year old Mary Lisbon was going to turn out alright after being stuck in the confines of an overbearing mother and feeble father, being stuck in a decaying space called a “home” for several months and surviving a suicide pact.
Crying herself back to sleep, Mary imagined that she was stuck in the warm, safe embrace of her sisters as they played with each other’s hair. Their favorite soft rock song lulling them to sleep in the safety of one of their bedrooms.
Pretending was the only thing a girl like Mary could do, after all.