The Smallest Parallel

Chapter 7

The chill of the clinic wrapped itself around Marguerite's frail body. She hadn't realized that she had been losing weight, but she supposed it made since. Her appetite had all but disappeared. She had been to dinner at Adrien's house on three separate occasions, never eating much and creating worry when she refused the third course.

She remembered having an appetite, but she couldn't manage to find it again despite her best efforts. As a child, she remembered going days without eating a real meal. She couldn't help but wonder if the demons of those days were creeping back into her mind. She could still feel her mother's cold hands gripping her shoulders that day in the driveway, and she could still smell the alcohol on her mother's breath when she whispered to her on their last night together.

Marguerite was nineteen, and she had taken a job at the senior center, a place she had frequently visited when Maria was alive. She found comfort among the elderly and often led large games of bingo. She felt that her place was with the Alzheimer's patients because they spoke her language. They made nonsensical comments and frequently forgot where exactly they were. Some of them, like Marguerite, were prone to extreme fantasy. She smiled and laughed at the stories they told.

On the night of July 22nd, Marguerite had stayed late, taking the opportunity to watch the sun set over the horizon from her favorite spot on the back deck. It was a beautiful sight, the colors spreading out as the sun pulled its rays across the sky. Marguerite wished more than ever for the power to freeze time, to forever capture the last moments of daylight. She hated spending her waking hours waiting for the sun to set, for something beautiful to present itself.

Marguerite had no driver's license, so she made the long walk home, her messenger bag weighed down with crosswords and playing cards. Her heavy footsteps made patterns as she walked along the long dirt road back to her mother's house. She shivered as the night's cool wind creeped under her dress. The three mile walk home felt much longer that night.

When she arrived at the front of the house, she noticed her mother's bedroom light on and thought it peculiar. She also noticed the dead silence that seemed to wrap around the house. She carefully crept down the hall to her mother's bedroom, gripping a wooden baseball bat in her left hand. Worst case scenarios played out in her mind. She pictured demons, death, and darkness awaiting her behind the door. She never once considered that her mother might be home. Her mother was never home, and that was the one constant in her life.

She turned the knob to her mother's bedroom, ready to fight any sinister thing that jumped out in the night. In her mind, it was a wendigo. A monster that would devour her whole and leave behind no evidence.

The wendigo would open its mouth and its human features would fade away in favor of its monstrous appearance. Marguerite would gather her strength and fight back, jamming her baseball bat down the monster's throat. The baseball bat would serve only as a temporary distraction, so she would have to think quickly. In the end however, she understood that she was no match for the monster as it would swallow her in seconds. She should never have read that book on native American folklore.

The fear welled up within her as she pushed the door open, bracing herself. Plot twist, there was nobody there. Did you really expect this story to take such a fantastical turn?

Marguerite breathed a sigh of relief, reaching inside to flip off the light switch her mother had probably left on before she had left for the night. Gwyneth could be unbearably forgetful at times, but her forgetfulness was rarely the source of Marguerite's intense paranoia.

Suddenly she heard a shuffle in the corner of the room. She raised her baseball bat, taking five shaky steps toward the other side of the bed. A voice cried out from the floor. Marguerite jumped back, creating a plethora of disturbing sounds as she knocked over her mother's collection of empty bottles.