"Hey hey"

Marion Marley was addicted to possession. Did that make him a horrible person? No. The horrible people were the ones who denounced him in the first place. The horrible people were the ones whose deep, determined mindsets kept adding and adding onto Marley until they became self-fulfilling prophecy. Now, thanks to them, no one can say the name anymore without whispering followed by a gasp of horror. All the while, Marley himself frolics through a field of demonic evil, taking control of innocent bystanders’ spirits, mentally scarring them for life. It wasn’t the addiction that made him a horrible person. It was the horrible people who made him a horrible person.

Despite Marley's efforts to cope, such as puppeteering, learning sign language, and taking up origami, nothing took away from his gluttonous lust. It of course didn’t help that nobody appreciated his folded-up swans. Now they all lay flattened on the floor of his chamber as a reminder of what could have been—and as a jab in the face of what actually was. Time passes, and his drive gets stronger, his puppets' glue gets weaker, and his foldings grow more unraveled. Despite the weathering of time, their creases remain.

And throughout the North American continent, the Marley legacy has left impressions in every small, unsuspecting township, from Florida to British Columbia. No matter where any of his helpless victims lived or travelled, a seeping snail trail of legacy and horrid memories follow.

In most cases, Marley's victims became so scarred they would never even think to leave the confines of their own home. Yet some are more fearless. Whether courageous or foolish, that’s not for me to judge.

Still, any amount of bravery on either side of the spectrum is commendable. It takes massive amounts of fearlessness to escape your comfort zone, and even more massive amounts to escape your discomfort zone. And I would say the one who treks through the frosty peaks of the isolated Monnellian Mountains has the least fear of them all.

A young woman with high resolve and low endurance collapsed by a tree stump next to a fresh, still pond. The face that watched her back from the other side of the water forced her into a sudden trance of reflection. All scribbly jumbles of thoughts bouncing around her skull slowed and flattened thanks to the peaceful swish of the wind and the jarring allure of that stranger in the pond. Wow, she looks so sweet and innocent. I wish I could be safe and secure like her. Natalie Aureole? Never heard of her.

Icy wind breezed through Natalie’s torn gloves, tickling her exposed scars. She lost her balance from the rocks tumbling below and lost her confidence from the birds cackling from above. A gnarled old tree beside her collapsed onto the ground, but Natalie wasn’t going to let herself do the same, especially considering how far she’d gotten already. Yes, at last! After god-knows-how-many days of trekking and traipsing, the first sign of civilization crawled out from the blue horizon.

Welcome to Plainwood.

Gloves required.

The grass grew greener and more trimmed, buildings sprung from the ground, a pleasant shade and light fog coated the floor. Just beyond Natalie stood a tall house marked by its notorious statue: a black, half-opened hand with deep engravings on the palm. Instantly, Natalie perked up. Oh hell yes, finally! She trudged closer and closer to the backyard and sighed with a smile. It was a welcome sight coming out of the woods: a clean deck, a pool covered in leaves, steppingstones and rocktangles on the warm grass. Peace, quiet, and comfort. Why don’t I get this all the time?

Natalie hobbled up to the back sliding glass door. In her pocket sat a small black rock she had been guarding with her life, and soon enough, crash! She shattered the door open and snuck into the shadows, sticking closely to the walls. Sighs of relief turned into chuckles of ecstasy, until grumbles of confusion echoed from the other side of the house. No worries, Nat. It’s your imagination. You’ve been hearing background sounds in the mountains constantly. It’s just some residual ringing; no big deal.

She took one careful step closer, making sure not to step on any creaky wooden planks or crumbly cellophane wrappers. Nothing about the inordinate amount of junk on the floor struck her as odd, since the last thing she wanted to do in her excited fatigue was think and reason. She was about to make it into the kitchen to set her bags down, until her foot got snagged in the waste of a pair of jeans, tripping her off her course.

An abrupt “The hell?” resonated from the end wall. Standing there was a tall woman decked out in all sweats and an unrested bitchface.

Why is my imagination so rude?–Ohcraponastick, this is the wrong house!

The woman crept closer little by little and looked Natalie dead in her unmistakable aqua eyes. The woman said nothing but merely cocked her head and put her hands on her hips, awaiting a response.

Natalie opened her mouth in an attempt to explain herself, but the voice in her mind told her, Run away before she does anything worse. Without saying a word, she clutched her tingling hands over her rushing heart, shut her eyes tight, and, with a blinding purple light shooting off from her body, was gone in a flash.

The woman rubbed her eyes, shook her head, and threw herself on the couch. “God it is too late for stuff like this to be happening,” she said, pulling up a blanket and plugging in some earphones.

Meanwhile, Natalie just barely squeezed out from the fence stokes. Towering up in front of her stood that same house. The statue looked down at her, holding its hand out as if about to grab her by the head and toss her aside. There were no doubts this was the house she was looking for. But it was a jarring roadblock for her that there was someone actually living there.

With all her limbs jiggling and refusing to budge, Natalie tipped her roller bag flat on the sidewalk for a breather. She instinctively reached in her pocket to grab her phone and pass the time until finding an idea, but there was an unsettling patch of nothing anymore. All she had left was her black stone, her bag, and her journal. Her quick breaths in and out grew longer and more collected as Natalie grabbed a pen and scratched down some thoughts:

Chers Burgh, Dan et Moira,

J’ai réussi, je suis là ! J’ai fait… une toute petite bêtise à l’arrivée, mais tout va bien maintenant. Enfin, je l’espère. Il y a une femme qui m’en veut maintenant, mais tant que je lui fais la paix, ma vie ici va être parfaite. . . Même si je penserai à vous à tout moment. She clutched her pen tighter and continued, Non… j’ai peur, je ne veux pas faire ça. Mais… Je veux à la fois rester ici et rentrer chez nous. Je… The rest of her entry was illegible. Her wrist had smudged the ink and a teardrop had deluged everything else.

Throughout the long, vast Riverside Road, there were houses down either direction as far as the eye could see. Yet with so many possible places to crash for the night on Plainwood’s notoriously largest street, Natalie completely gave up on attempting anymore stunts. The risk was much too great to go door-to-door, break-and-enter, and keep playing Russian roulette for a house she could confidently tell was vacant. It’s not my nature to bring up hindsight, but had she taken that risk, her new life could have played out much safer. Out of more than two hundred buildings on Riverside, only four of them were occupied.

But for now, the space underneath a nearby bench would suffice, using a makeshift blanket of sweats and clothes from her suitcase. Once her hips touched the concrete, she got an uncomfortable poke in the thigh from the rock still in her pocket. Taking it out, she smirked, and as soon as the rock showed its first sign of glowing red, she chucked it as far away into the distance as she could. The moment she heard that successful Thud! against a piece of wood in the dark forest did an enormous weight lift off her shoulders. At last, after twenty-something years, she could finally live without the heavy burden of that scarlet letter.

It should have felt good.

But it was just as stressful as the place she had escaped.

Natalie had never lived on her own before, and already the first impression she gave was less than ideal. God, they'll be talking about th—No! Everything'll be fine. One… mishap… one small mishap is nothing. No one's going to be talking about me unless I make a reputation of myself. Everything will be… everythingsgonnabegood. Natalie forced herself a thumbs-up, and plopped back down to sob herself calm. It was late o’clock, and all she wanted to do was end the evening so her first day of the rest of her life could begin. It was hard for her body to tell her mind to shut up and her mind to tell her body to calm down, but maybe once she got some shut-eye, all those worries would flow away like a river into a depressing trashcan. But there still came that scab of worry in the back of her mind—the same scab I had—telling her that everything was inevitably going to collapse on her soon enough.