Pristine and white, the walls stretched endless ahead of Mark. His hard black boots hit the floor with a rude thud, echoing in the silent white. Self-conscious, eager to leave the facility, Mark hurried along the hall.
Visits to the mental treatment facility were always depressing. His aunt’s violent rages were getting worse and worse, and he was starting to feel his visits were hurting rather than helping.
At least he was trying, he thought bitterly. His disgust at his other family members always rose to the surface after these encounters.
Lost in his own thoughts, it took him several seconds to notice the long, white arm reaching from a doorway ahead.
The arm was slender, with unpainted but closely trimmed fingernails. It reached out and waved at Mark as he made his way down the hallway. As Mark got closer, the figure in the doorway attached to the arm became apparent. She was pale, skinny, and enveloped in a cloud of wild, black hair. Strands hung down, cascading over her features and striking a sharp contrast with her paperwhite skin.
“Hello Mark,” she smiled a broken smile, her mouth turned up at one corner and her eyes filled with shards.
Mark hesitated again, then smiled vaguely and nodded in her direction. For all he knew, she overheard an attendant say his name during a visit. He quickened his pace. Jeremy would need him back at the office and the afternoon was already slipping by.
“Marguerite Ann sends her love.” The mystery woman smiled, dipping her head and moving hair out of her eyes as she did so. Her movements were languid, confident, and knowing.
Mark stopped short at the mention of the woman’s name. He’d never talked about or even alluded to his mother in this dreadful place. He was angry her name had even been mentioned.
“I’m sorry,” he asked, forcing himself to be polite. “Do I know you?”
She shook her head slowly, the smile never leaving her face. “Wouldn’t you remember me?”
She’s not wrong, he thought. She was striking, if small, and a conversation about his mother with such a person wouldn’t have faded from mind so easily.
“How do you know about my mother?” He asked, more forcefully than he intended.
She played with a tendril, in no hurry. “Oh, she tells me about you, Mark,” she said, as she started to leave her doorway. “About your favorite way to eat oreos and how you used to like rain, but don’t anymore.” The woman stepped closer to the man.
Mark swallowed and stared, unsure how to respond. No one but his mother knew those things. No one but his mother, whom he hadn’t spoken to in the 15 years since her death.
The dark-haired woman, clad in a thin gown, inched closer to Mark until she was right in front of him, and he could feel her hot breath on his neck. She reached out with her thin fingers.
An attendant shouted from down the hallway. Mark stepped backward, but too late.
He felt a shock as her cold fingers made contact with the skin on his arm. He looked at her face and saw her dark eyes for one instant before he felt himself ripped away from the blindingly white hallway. The images around him swirled, cascading all around him in a confusion of time and space. He couldn’t breath. He tried to focus, but a pain swirled through his eyes that he couldn’t quite explain.
Gasping, Mark opened his eyes.
He glanced feverishly at his surroundings, not processing what he was seeing. His thoughts were tumultuous, his breathing heavy. His brain felt like Italian salad dressing that had just been shaken, unsettled and chaotic. The kind of dressing his wife liked.
His wife.
Without thinking, Mark turned his head to his left. There she was, sprawled in their bed, snoring softly in the dawn light. Mark turned back and stared around at the walls of their bedroom. A trickle of sweat carved its way down his forehead and he became suddenly aware of his body. It was sticking to the sheets, sweaty and tense. He forced himself to relax and control his breathing.
It was a dream. Just a weird dream. Mark closed and opened his eyes. He was awake now.
He turned to his wife and touched her arm. She moved slightly, her head turning in his direction. Black ringlets danced across her pillow. The woman moved her tiny hand to her face to push the hair away as he watched her, heart filling with relief.
It was nothing like any dream he’d ever had – visceral and real and haunting – but it was just a dream. He was home, safe, with his beautiful wife. And so what if the haunting woman resembled his wife? That was the nature of dreams.
“Hi lovely,” Mark said to his wife. The woman sleepily opened her eyes, smiling.
Mark looked into her dark eyes and something moved in his stomach. A dark rumbling, bubbling to the surface. He forced himself to put it away. It was just a dream, he reminded himself.
Still, he couldn’t help asking half-jokingly, “You’ve never been in a mental hospital, right?”
The smile slid from his wife’s face. He could see blood rush to her face, now, instead of her sleepy hand. She licked her lips. “How did you know that?” She asked, voice small and eyes wide.
Mark’s heart beat hard in his chest. It was a joke. “What? You’ve been in a mental hospital?”
She worked her mouth, not sure what to say, and began to sit up in bed.
Mark began to shake his head, unbelieving, when his phone rang loud beside him. He took two long breaths before turning and answering the vibrating cell. It was his cousin. The dark feeling bubbled up again and he answered.
“Hey man,” the rough voice on the other end was familiar yet pained. “There’s been an accident.”
Mark closed his eyes again, letting the dark wash over him. “Is it Aunt Tracy? Did she hurt her head?”
There was silence. Mark could hear the quiet sound of a man breathing heavy.
“How did you know that, dude?”
Mark hung up the phone. He lay back down on his bed, his eyes finding the white, blank ceiling above him. The whiteness was vast and silent, and all consuming. He fell into it.