Disclaimer: Doctor Who was created by Sydney Newman, nurtured by Verity Lambert, and is the intellectual property of the BBC. No profit is being made from this story. It is solely about showing my appreciation for a fantastic show that has been a large part of my life. Thanks much.
Notes: Winner of dotmoon.net’s 2007 Autumn Challenge. Please send all comments and criticism to ziggymd24@yahoo.com
Failing the Rorschach Test
By Dave Ziegler
The naked branches and chill days that had ruled Blake Forest Secondary School gave way to flourishing blossoms and rising warmth. It was mid-spring now, and campus mood reflected it. The students fractured their granite doldrums, great chunks falling away with every new stirring of excitement. Year-end was only weeks away.
The resultant lunchtime chatter was a deafening mania of sound. Summer plans were compared, imprecations of exams declared and muttered, and panicked designs for the impending formal exchanged.
Emma Monroe wished she could escape it.
Her desire was neither social reticence nor distaste for frivolity. Emma loved fun, thought pleasure wonderful, and sought it often in the company of friends. She wanted dearly to take part of this happiness, had such aspirations for it, but circumstance sundered her dream.
“Hey, Em. Toss that in the bin, and we’ll go to Hortons. My treat.”
Speak of the devil.
Emma maintained more interest in her food than the arrival of her friend. “I’m not getting rid of my hummus for donuts and coffee, Darryl.” She swiped a corner of bread through the dip, popped it into her mouth, and chewed pointedly.
“I’d buy you a sandwich,” the boy protested. Emma growled. Darryl, defeated, sighed and settled in a free chair, ignoring the sour purse of her lips and baleful glare. Too stubborn to take the hint it seemed. “So Em, what’ve I done? Why are you pissed at me?”
Of all the questions to ask! Emma’s anger blazed, that query one log too many fed to her fire. “Ass! Annie adores you, and you completely dismissed her! She’s been distant ever since.”
Emma did not mistake the twitch of annoyance that turned Darryl’s eyes from hers. “You’re mad cause of that? Give me a break. I don’t want to go to the formal with Anne.”
“You think you can do you better? With your face?”
“What about my face?”
“Honestly, I’d rather see Brain squat.”
“You’re comparing my face to your dog taking a crap?”
During such moments the silence is rarely golden. It’s more the pregnant variety, and the expected bundle-of-joy more the bastard offspring of E.T. and Alien. The quiet lasts only until roiling thought and emotion coalesce and tear bloodily free of the body.
Emma knew that retaliatory hatred was but moments away. She had violated an understood trust. Darryl was sensitive about his face’s misshapen left-side. He’d earned the deformity blocking a game-tying slapshot in the final seconds of the provincial semi-finals. Forever after lauded a school hero, she knew he only felt like Quasimodo stolen into Lancelot’s shining armour.
“Whatever she’s said is a lie.”
Though his response lacked the expected invective, Emma was stunned nonetheless.
Simply put, Annie didn’t lie. She hid or avoided, like she was now. It was hard for her to face up to things, but who could blame her? Annie’s family, her peers, they never failed to be cruel to her, constantly feeling diminished by her fearsome intelligence. Emma was the first person she’d opened up to for years.
“We’ve been friends since grade six. I know how you are.”
“It wasn’t like that!” Darryl struck the table. “I explained properly. I really did. I told her there’s someone I like.” He hesitated. “That there’s someone I want to ask to the formal.”
“Since when?”
”Grade six,” Darryl said, voice hoarse. “I want to take you, Em.”
Jesus. Christ.
“You told her?”
Emma ran.
By the time her tears finally slowed, Emma was sure lunch had finished and the next class begun. How long had it been then? Forty-five minutes? Forty-five minutes huddled on the girls’ washroom floor, hidden at the ass-end of school, frustrated and sick and scared for the shape her life could take.
The door opened then, groaning, and Emma flew to her feet, fisting her tears away and ready to either distract another student with affected chatter or to suffer a teacher’s wrath for her truancy. Neither became necessary, though that little comforted Emma, escapeless and faced with the new arrival.
“Annie.” Habit, more than anything, broke through Emma’s paralytic confusion. She spread her arms, ready to accept and comfort, but the look of Anne’s eyes halted even that familiar ritual. Their usual guarded hesitancy had been replaced by anger and taut accusation. The damage seemed more than done.
“The cafeteria… I saw.”
“Annie, I’m sorry! I had no idea. I thought I understood him. I thought…” Emma threw up her hands, helpless. “I just wanted to help you be happy.”
“But you lied. Your every encouragement was empty,” Anne said. “You had no idea. Happy? I’ve lost my most precious wish!” Anne’s lips trembled. “You made me believe.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I’ve a new friend,” Anne declared suddenly. Her face took on a strange pallor as she approached Emma. “I’d like you to meet her. In fact I introduced her to father just last month. The three of us had a good talk before he died.” She seized Emma’s ponytail and wrenched the hair about her hand like thread on a bobbin.
Emma cried out, pain erasing any question of this new friend, and fell, unable to keep her feet as she was hauled across the washroom. Tiny pinwheels of colour bloomed before her eyes, and the tile, suddenly glacial to touch, reached through her jeans to leaden her legs.
They arrived at a sink, and Anne levered Emma across the porcelain, forcing her face toward the mirror just beyond.
“Mary Worth,” Anne entreated. The cold that had felled Emma’s legs surged up her body. The lights overhead sputtered and died. “Mary Worth.” Beyond the window the sun disappeared. Then once more Anne uttered, “Mary Worth.”
Emma watched, horrified silent, as shadow took form in the mirror. It made a forehead, high and wan, and then crafted pointed cheekbones and the thin, stretched flesh that covered them. The jaw rounded out next, giving structure to a crooked mouth and home to gaunt lips and cracked teeth. Finally the hair, patchy and greying, wisped from the head, and the eyes, empty but for springs of deepest black, readied to drown.
“Show me her heart, Mary Worth,” Anne demanded of the ghoulish face. “I need to know.”
“Oy!” interrupted a stranger’s voice. “A little less drama, eh? I’m trying to track a very dangerous… Just a tick.” A stall door squealed open, and the stranger spoke again. “Never mind. There it is.”
It was a man’s voice, but more than that Emma couldn’t grasp from her position. The mirror had gone black except for the face of Mary Worth, and that abomination only grew. It now stretched to the mirror’s every border and gazed fixedly at her.
Emma felt as if she were to be devoured.
But then she could see him! The man from the stall reflected in the mirror! His long face and wild hair seemed hardly a match for Mary Worth’s monstrous visage, but his eyes, brown and strong, protected her.
“Go on,” he said. “Give her a peek.”
The stranger’s reflection vanished as suddenly as it appeared. His eyes’ warm assurance, which had made Emma feel an infant in the unshakable comfort of mother’s arms, left her. She was alone before the beast.
Emma screamed.
Mary Worth’s eyes were the very pitch of hell; they clung relentlessly, scalding, searing, and scorching. Layer after molten, pulped layer of Emma’s soul peeled away. She couldn’t shield herself. She wasn’t that strong. Everything bared itself to the creature.
Emma’s first cherished memory of Annie was stolen, examined, and paraded. Taken next were little moments held precious from their initial, sporadic outings to their near constant companionship, Darryl in tow. Annie’s smile, small and nervous but happy and wanting to trust, flashed through them all. Then pulled free, dark and heavy, was the night Annie first confided her love.
Mary Worth searched further, faster.
Emma’s memories ran dry and gave way to those dreams and desires hidden deepest within.
They are together, Annie and herself, in lovely gowns, hair up, corsages at their wrists. The soft pink, silk dress flatters Annie’s pale skin and narrow figure. The two of them toast repeatedly, laugh, dance, eat, and snap more photos by far than anyone else in the hall. They are joyous beyond compare.
Emma wanted to scream, beg, pray for her secrets, but there was no help for her. Mary Worth stole again.
Their party dresses lay abandoned, forgotten in the subdued lamp light. Fragrant oil – lavender – burns at the bedside table and fills the room pleasantly. Emma runs her hand through Annie’s baby-soft ringlets; the other clutches her small breast. Their lips meet, gentle and yearning, then again, passionate. They move together and…
Light and sound and thought flashed white hot, obliterating, all-consuming. For the longest time there was nothing else.
The world was different when Emma regained her senses. She was laid neatly on the floor, her sweater folded and placed beneath her head. The mirror was shattered; its hundreds of shards twinkled in the daylight. And to her relief, the black presence of Mary Worth was gone from both her mind and the room.
“What happened?”
“She rejected it.” The strange man again, Emma knew. She stood and blinked to clear her eyes. He was tall, somewhat gawky, and wore his pinstriped suit casually. “Sent it packing back to the world of shadows,” he elaborated. “Once she severed the link there was a tremendous release of psychokinetic energy and POW!” He clapped his hands together and grinned. “Problem solved.”
“But Annie…” Emma panicked. “Where is she? Is she all right? She didn’t…”
“Settle down, eh?” the man scolded her. “She’s fine. Well, certain issues notwithstanding. Well, so long as it all doesn’t go extra-dimensional again. Well, the likelihood of the same person making contact twice is…” The man stopped and searched her face. “She’s fine. The nurse is looking after her.”
“Oh,” Emma stuttered. “Thank you.” She stepped one way, then another, then turned around. What the hell did she do or say? What the hell had just happened?
“Looks as if you could use a rest too. Allow me,” the man said, offering his arm.
Emma gingerly accepted, and followed him from the washroom.
“Why?” she suddenly asked.
“Hmm?”
“Why did she… why did Annie reject the monster?”
The stranger looked sombre. “She couldn’t face the truth.”
“So you’re not freaked out?” Emma shifted uncomfortably. The night was cooler than it should have been and the bench cold as a result. Plus her dress seemed suddenly too fitted at the waist and tight across her butt.
“For the hundredth time, no,” Darryl sighed, pulling her to her feet. “I’ve accepted. I’ve grown. I’ve even better wet dreams.”
Emma took a swing at him, but missed. “Don’t be a prick. I’m serious.”
“So am I. Grade six, remember? I’m not going to ditch you now just cause you think girls are hot.”
“But you…”
“Yeah, I know,” Darryl said. “I’ll get over it or you’ll go bi. You going in or not?”
Emma stared at the entrance to the hotel and hesitated. The other couples passed them by in streams of black, white, and gaudy colour, and she felt, seeing them, as if she could no longer recall even the fantasy of it. Not since Annie had shut her out.
This really was the end: her final chance to reconcile. Darryl had gone through so much to arrange it. Either Annie was in there, waiting for her, waiting to hear her out, or they were done forever. Could she face that?
Emma firmed her shoulders and stepped forward. Yes, she could. She would. For better or worse, what future could she have if she didn’t?
