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MALLORY
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I wake with a metallic taste in my mouth and no memory as to how I wound up back in this bed. I was talking to people. A doctor, a detective, my mother. Then suddenly I wasn’t. Sitting up in bed, I have a splitting headache. It all comes crashing back.
Madeline was here.
Madeline is not here.
Mallory is dead.
I am Madeline.
I killed my sister, Mallory.
None of this feels remotely real or true. I am me; I am Mallory. Madeline would have never made it through nursing school. She didn’t have the drive or the discipline. I worked for everything I have. Mad just expected stuff to be given to her. We are not the same; never have been and never will be.
Then why do I keep having these visions? Visions of strangling Paul, who is dressed like a dog. Visions of my ex-roommate looking at me with terror in her eyes. There are so many visions of Shawn, but I don’t want to think about those.
Then there is something else. Something more recent. Kent, being soft and gentle when I need him to be, but also ferocious and untamed. He took me like an animal in the wild, yet treated me as if I was wounded and in need of delicate care. No, what? That never happened. Why are these pictures in my mind?
It’s not just the pictures. There are feelings as well. I can feel myself tightening that leash around Paul’s neck. With it comes anger and resentment. With Dr. Pratt, I feel joyful, relaxed, and euphoric at the remembrance of his hands all over my body. But that never happened, right? Or did it?
“Moore, you have a visitor,” Jesus announces. It is probably my dad. Mom hasn’t come back since the therapy session, and I don’t blame her.
She needs her time to cool off and reflect. I get that. What happened was a lot to take in, even for me. I still can’t wrap my head around everything that happened yesterday. The doctor thinks I am Madeline. Do others think that?
“Moore, hands at the bars!” Oh, right. I have a visitor. Backing up to the bars, I place my hands behind my back. Jesus cuffs me with the same care he always does, even though I have gotten on his nerves tonight.
“All set,” he calls out to the powers that be. The ones that oversee everything and allow my cell door to open.
The click sounds, telling me that the lock has been released. Even though I cannot do anything, a relief still settles over me.
Jesus tugs on my restraints and pushes me forward. We walk down several halls. Some I have been down, and a few I have not. Coming to a stop at a plain white door, Jesus has to pass his key card through a slot to let us in.
“Sit,” he demands while pressing me into a chair. My wrists are unlatched, but quickly secured again to the table before me.
“There is no one here,” I state the obvious, as it is just he and I in the room.
Jesus grunts, “They are coming.”
Several minutes later, as I sit, bouncing my knee, the door finally opens. I try to turn and see who it is, but these restraints are just that—restricting. Someone enters, but Jesus’s big frame is in the way.
My neck strains as I try to see around the guard. A young man enters. He eyes me for a second, then takes a seat at the table across from me. I don’t know who this is, but he looks oddly familiar.
It hits me like a slap in the face. “Mason?” I ask.
“That would be me. Surprised you remembered me, since you have been dead for ten years, I should be the one surprised.” It hasn’t been that long since I’ve seen him. More like four years.
His facial expressions show me that this will not be a pleasant visit. “Are you here to give me shit?” I ask.
“And who would I be delivering this shit to? I hear you are still keeping up with the charade. In it for the long haul; I commend you for that. You had a goal and went for it. Probably the first goal you ever almost achieved.”
“What?” I ask. “I don’t get it.”
“Give it up already. I have been on to you from the beginning, Madeline. Mad, the infamous sister. I was there. Or did you forget? I saw it all. Maybe I was young and too scared to say anything,” Mason admits, “but I’m not that little boy anymore.” He stares at me with so much disgust.
“What does that mean?”
“What does it mean in general, or what does it mean for you? Don’t bullshit me, Mad. I know you; I always have. You tried to play yourself as Mal, but you were not her, and never will be. Mom and Dad may have bought it because they were grieving. Something tells me they knew, but refused to admit it. They had just lost a kid. Why would they want to give up another? There you were, playing the part of their perfect daughter. You may have fooled them, but you never fooled me.”
“Mason, it’s me, your sister,” I state, trying to bring him back to my side.
“Yeah, I know. You’re my sister alright. Just not the sister I wanted. You, Mad, are the asshole sister that treated me like shit and killed the only sibling that showed me love. If you think I am going to back you up with this game, then you are wrong.”
He leans in and whispers, “I saw you; I saw it all. You pushed her. You traded phones, then you pushed our perfect sister off that cliff.”
“What? No!” I exclaim. These cuffs are really digging into my skin now.
“Admit it, Mad, you wanted to be Mallory. You stole her life, and you still failed.” He looks down and shakes his head. “She had so much going for her. Mallory could have been a doctor, a savior. She was everything, and you took it all away.
I can’t take it anymore. My palms press down onto the table and my body lifts. Going into a plank just like the class Berkley took me to that one time.
A second after the thought enters my brain, I am in the air, planking like no one has ever planked before. Then my lower half lifts and flips over. My calves wrap around Mason’s neck and hold him there.
He stands, trying to get away, yet giving me the leverage I need to pull forward. Mason’s body falls across the table and he tries to yell something while his hands push at my hips. I can hear him trying to speak, but his voice is muffled as my thighs clench his face.
Pounding sounds come from the two-way mirror, just as the door flies open. My mother screams in the background, but all I hear—on repeat—are Mason’s words: “You stole her life, and you still failed.”
“Get her off of him!” Daddy? My father is in the room.
Two officers take hold of my legs. My feet are back on the ground. I am panting, unsure as to what just happened.
When I look up, Mason is wrapped in my father’s arms. My father stares at me with an expression I have never seen from him before. Disappointment, regret, hatred? His eyes never leave mine while the officers roughly remove my restraints from the table and re-cuffs my hands behind my back. His eyes never move from mine, not even when my mother frantically enters the room.
“You just caused a lot more trouble for yourself,” someone whispers in my ear. I peer over my shoulder and see it is Detective Sloane. His face is devoid of emotion.
“Mom, Dad?” I look back at them for help. For any sign that they still love me at all.
“Get her out of here!” my mother screams and a fresh round of tears pour down her face.
“Come on.” Sloane tugs me out of the room. “Pretty sure you just lost all visiting privileges.