SWNOVELS Chapter 58
It was two years ago and it was that moment. Past and present co-existed in the place of darkness, fire and rubble. The building had collapsed on them, she had lost all her sensation and she knew she was dying and the world was ending.
The roof had caved in, the basement they were in, the pub they were in, was collapsed on them. She called out for her companion in the dark.
“Mark!”
“Mary!”
Her voice choked with smoke from nearby spontaneous fires. The air was thick with it, heavy with the burden and she couldn’t see. She grabbed a fistful of ground, feeling only chunks of dirt and rock and timber. The only sound she could hear was the crackling of the fire and the slow shifting of the weight above her.
She crawled.
Her legs were not there though she felt them dragging uselessly behind her. She knew immediately what had happened to her, that the damage would likely be permanent. That life was never going to right itself the same way. She was damaged, broken but she was not done for.
“Mark, Mary, can you hear me?!” she screamed out into the dark. There is no reply, only sobs.
Someone is out there, crying, waiting for her to get to them. A grim determination sweeps into her being. She will not die like this, she will not die alone under the broken remains of her company’s building. She will crawl across the pub, across the basement, across the ends of the earth so that she can die with another. And so she could do the same.
She pulled with all her might, both hands grasping amongst the rubble and the dirt and the stone. It pulls out her nails but she barely feels it. It slashes at her palms with broken glass and the blood makes it harder but it doesn’t matter.
Her expensive suit skirt rips, tearing on something. It doesn’t matter.
It is a maze, a collapsed pillow fort with rocks instead of pillows. She pulls herself over things, under things, around things, all the while her legs behind her dragging her back, dragging her down. She is in the dark now, the fires did not reach this far. Do tears stream her face already? She can’t remember, she doesn’t know. Certainly, her own blood and dust must make her grimace.
“Mark…” she calls out again, her voice raw. “Can you hear me?”
Mary answers, not in words but a soft sob. She reaches her, a hand stretched out a crushed pile of she doesn’t know what. She can’t see and that is a blessing, she can only feel the hand in hers.
“Miss Sellers, I’m so sorry, I couldn’t stop it…mum, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”
They trail off into endless sobs. She soothes, slowly stroking the hand of her employee, her daughter. They’re not the same but they are one at that moment, the moment which exists in two times – two years ago and that night. There were tears by this point as she told the greatest lie of all.
“It’s okay, it’s all going to be okay.”
She soothes them into sleep, both of them, a sleep from which they will never wake up. Her last job done as a boss, a mother, she rolls onto her back, preferring to face towards heaven than hell and waits for her life to end in the dark. Alone save for the newly born ghosts.