Dream of Escape
Date Thursday, March 28, 2024 - 02:36 PM PST
Topic Entertainment


The girl walks down the street. She doesn't look left or right. She keeps her eyes on her feet, on the ground, on the street underneath her toes.
Her feet are bare, and the street is hot. Blacktop in the summer sun, burning and blistering her toes, but she doesn't seem to notice. That's always they way of it, think the people watching, she hurts herself and doesn't notice.

Small towns are the most awful places to live. People crowded in on all sides, never really taking in anything that happens. Everything is gossip, and tales and lives more fascinating then ones own. The problem is everyone's life is equally dull and stagnant and without meaning. And then there is the girl. She doesn't seem to care. She'd been living in the sleepy little town all her life. Her name was Mary, and she had just turned fifteen. She walked in the street, and her feet were burnt on the road, and the town’s people watched from shop windows, and front porches. A dog barked as she walked by, but Mary didn't look up.

The people in the town thought she was crazy, or maybe on drugs. They'd witnessed this particular ritual enough times to know that it was not horribly unusual, but it still fascinated them. They didn't stop her, or tell her to get out of the road. There was rarely any traffic and they knew she was in no danger. If she were, well, they would sit and watch, but what could they do really? This is the mentality of the small town, you don't get involved, you don't want to be involved, you don't want everyone speaking about you on the phone, or in the bar, or over coffee at the lone cafe. So you watch, but you don't get involved, and there goes Mary down the street and it's not really that much to worry about anyway.

They wondered why, as they watched. They smacked and licked their lips as they watched her walk down the street. They snapped their hands, and hitched fingers in belts as they watched her move down the road. They thought of the words they would use later to describe the scene "Yah, you should ha seen her, half crazy again walking on the road in the sun. I tell you that girl ain't right in the head" mmmmm, yes it already thought good to think about telling it, to think about talking about it, and there that half-wit Mary goes down the street, feet burning.

She was breathing hard today. She knew that, her feet were sore, and the heat almost made her give up, but she couldn't stop, this was the only thing that was real to her. The pain on the street she understood that, the pain in her toes was familiar and even pleasant after a certain space. She could feel the eyes of people on her as she walked down the street, and she almost smiled. They think I'm stupid, she'd murmur, and she would keep walking.

Mary, only fifteen, was suffering from so many things. Most recently she suffered from being a teenager, which complicated all the other things in her life. She was tired of living in the home, her home, she wanted out, and so she had started to walk, this daily pilgrimage down the road in the summer heat. Her first time out she'd forgotten her shoes. It had burned her feet and she'd though of turning around to get them, but decided against it, worried if she gave up her road she might miss her chance, her opportunity. Did she know what that was, no, she would have told you if you'd asked her. I don't know why I walk the way I do, but I do, and I know it when it happens. Meandering that way in the middle of the street, Mary knew there was something out there, and she didn't mind the watchers from their little holes, or the pain in her feet. It was part of the ritual now.

After the first time, she'd gone home and prayed, and she had made a pact with God that she would walk if he would show her the way. So now she knew that she must walk, even though the pain might undo her eventually. It was only early June, the sun had not really learned to burn, and her feet were being spared the worst. Could she do this in July, could she do it in August, she didn't know.

In her head she thought about the things that made her want to walk. The old people with their sick ghostly smacking, spitting lips that made her want to walk. He father with his pumpkin shaped head, and thick hands, and course beard, white hair, long dragging, nosy, that made her want to walk. Her mother with her crooked teeth and yellow smile, and beady eyes, hateful stare, unforgiving nature, those made her want to walk. The dogs and cats that bit, and nipped, and scratched and clawed, and the more she thought the more she wanted to run, but she had made a pact and she meant to keep it.

The walk wore on, she didn't know how far she would get today, and sometimes she made it four miles down to the bridge. Cross the bridge and she'd be out of town, but somehow she could never cross the bridge. Sometimes she only made it down to the rusty park swing, just a mile or so before the creek. If she made it to the swing she would sit and stop and stare, and take it all in.

The swing was rusty, old, had been put up some time when people still went to the park, and picnicked and were full of life and happy and content. The mine was running then and many people still had jobs, everyone was friendly. It was a friendlier town then, some fifty years past, when people didn't need the gossip to make their lives more interesting. Before the town forgot to live, before Mary was born.

She liked the swing, even though the rust had a way of creeping into her clothes. There were always little shards, flakes of metal seeking passage to her skin. Sometime she would feel the bite of the rust as it made it to her flesh, and she would smell the stale iron smell as she sat and drifted back and forth of the bare ground beneath her feet. When she moved she would be coated with the red rust stain, all over her sides and bottom, and she would walk back to her home through the woods so the people in the town wouldn't see her.

When she got home she would rush up the stairs and strip of her clothes and stand naked in front of the mirror. She would look at her breasts and nipples and the furry cleft between her legs, and she would look at her arms and legs, and finally examine her bottom for the flakes of rust that had managed to penetrate her. She would carefully pull out the shards and hold them in her palm. She would stand there that way, sometimes for hours, sometimes just minutes.

When she was finished she would take the shards and put them in the jar on her drawer. It had several such shards, she didn't know why she kept them, but it was part of the pact, she felt. When she left something would have to stay behind. She would leave the shards that had once been a part of her. Then leaving would be less difficult. God would understand. If she didn't leave something behind he might not let her leave.

She felt cool air on her cheek. She was past the swing without stopping today. She was near the creek. She walked up and stopped when she saw the bridge under her toes, letting her feet stop on just the tip of the bridge. She stood there watching her feet. Then slowly raised her head and looked about. Her neck was sore from walking so long with her head down. She looked at the water and the sky. Then she turned, and found her way through the forest back to her home.

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