The Smallest Parallel

Chapter 5

Marguerite stood outside of the clinic, unsure of what awaited her beyond the cold and sterile facade. She'd always loathed hospitals and Doctors' offices for their willingness to provide a caring environment for the sick and dying.

She remembered the cold environment that her grandmother had inhabited after her accident. The room was ugly and foreboding, smelling of only death and cleaning supplies. Her grandmother lie beneath a standard hospital blanket, motionless. Tubes entered her body in various places, making her resemble a perfectly wired computer. She meshed perfectly with her environment, a cold and desolate lab in which the experiments were still breathing. Marguerite shivered.

Her mother sat in the chair near the window, her head resting between her hands. She was likely hungover as Gwyneth wasn't well acquainted with the feeling of guilt. Marguerite wondered how her mother slept at night without the cruel visions of her mistakes dancing beneath her eyelids. Marguerite saw her mother as a monster, though she wasn't at all frightening. Cowardice doesn't inspire fear. She glanced over at the bedside table, realizing that only a single vase of flowers stood there, attempting to offer comfort.

  Marguerite had brought in some white carnations because she had read in an encyclopedia that they were representative of love and good luck. At age twelve, she had subscribed to the irrational belief that flowers and other similar objects held powers of luck. She promised herself that she would do anything that she could do secure her grandmother's life. She refused to be left alone with Gwyneth; she would sooner seek out a life of living under bridges and in abandoned train cars, her few belongings confined to a hobo sack.

Later that evening, she decided to practice witchcraft. Coming from a place of desperation, she gathered all of the candles she could find within the confines of her small farmhouse and set them on her bedroom floor in the shape of a pentagram. While she had only been exposed to witchcraft through reruns of old films she would catch on television, she was confident that she could successfully execute a spell. She began chanting at a whisper, eyes closed. You must remember that Marguerite did not consider this a child's game. This was a life and death situation.

She pictured her grandmother, lying beneath the disgusting hospital blankets and losing her grip on life. She couldn't allow her flame to extinguish; she was Maria's lifeline.

She chanted more quickly and at a much louder volume than her initial whisper. She felt a small triumph as the words burned within her and shot off of her tongue like fireworks. The room felt larger as she reached a crescendo and refused to back down. She was speaking loudly and with conviction, her confidence reaching its peak.

Marguerite felt tears sting in her eyes as she screamed the words, focusing all of her energy on healing her grandmother. She dared not open her eyes as she reached out and touched the flickering flame of the nearest candle, attempting to absorb the fire. She was excitement and she was fear, wrapped up in one secure bundle. Her hands ached and small crescents decorated her palms where she had pressed her nails into her skin in an attempt to remain calm.

She began to sweat as the tears came. Her bedroom smelled like a million different places. Her chant was desperate. She screamed those gibberish words at the top of her lungs. Her flame was then extinguished.

Gwyneth came quickly, forcing the door open angrily. She kicked over a candle, spilling white wax onto the wood of Marguerite's bedroom floor. Marguerite felt her mother's hot breath in her ear as she screamed. She could hardly understand her mother beneath the slur of her drunken speech. She felt her mother's hands grab her from behind, dragging her out of the room and then out of the front door.

"You... little... bitch! What the hell d'ya think you're doin in my house? You don own shit little girl!" She spoke in a drunken vernacular.

Gwyneth threw her daughter down on the gravel driveway and flailed her arms, attempting to hit Marguerite. Marguerite closed her eyes and braced herself, trying with all of her strength to disappear. She imagined herself floating in water, surrounded by various creatures with strange names that only she could have invented. She was happier in her underwater kingdom.