[i]Mary[/i]

The Abyss kept trying to get her to calm down and talk to it, and she kept ignoring it. If she just kept ignoring it, maybe it would get her message and leave her alone. She didn’t notice Lazarus arriving, and barely noticed being hugged by him. [i]It[/i] was still talking. She had to drown [i]it[/i] out. When she felt a tugging at her mind, she initially panicked and drew herself tighter into a ball. It was trying to draw her into her own mind again, trying to get her to play that stupid game it liked so much. She wouldn’t do it. That would mean it had won and she was willing to feel anything less than hate for it. After a few minutes, however, she realized that whatever was tugging on her mind felt different than the parasite in her head. It only took a hopeful guess to connect the tugging to Lazarus. Cautiously, she allowed her mind to be pulled wherever the tugging wanted. Hopefully this wasn’t just a trap from it to force her to look at it, to talk to it.

Immediately she sighed in relief, [i]it’s[/I] voice nothing more than an ignorable buzz. She relaxed, and registered what Lazarus was saying. At first, she didn’t reply, keeping her eyes shut and gathering her thoughts. When she spoke it was quietly, tentatively. “Imagine driving to visit your parents one minute, and then being dragged kicking and screaming into a world of nightmares and monsters the next. Imagine that because you were chosen for no apparent reason and dragged into this world, and because you didn’t go quietly, your parents were killed. Imagine that you’re so weak that you didn’t draw strength from that, you just broke. Imagine that you’re so weak that other people have to fight your battles for you. Imagine that you don’t have the willpower to resist fake visions of terror. Imagine that you’ve been possessed by [i]something[/i] calling itself the Abyss not once, but twice. Imagine that when you think your safe, you think your getting away from that world, the door to freedom is slammed into your face, all you remember is eyes of madness, and then blackness. Two hundred years pass, and when you wake up, your birth place is nothing more than a pile of ruins, everyone you know is dead, and you still have something inside of you. Now you can stop imagining.” She drew a deep breath, and then looked up at him.

“But I [i]can’t[/i]. I can’t stop imagining because everything that I just told you to imagine is what I am. I am weak.” She could still hear Mairyell’s howled insult. Still be stung by the truth of it. “I am still possessed by something. I was put to sleep with the world of monsters being separate from the normal world. When I wake up, I find that they have merged. I don’t belong in this world. I don’t belong in a world where angels and demons fight, where humans can throw lightning bolts, cause earthquakes and raise the dead. I belong in the old world. The world where everyone I knew is dead. Where everyone who would have survived in this world, everyone who would have wanted to be in this world, more than me is dead. I’m too weak to survive in this world. I should be dead, but I’m still alive.” Mary was aware that she was pretty much babbling at this point, but she kept going. I got my parents killed. I’m probably going to get you killed to! Because whoever put this [i]thing[/i] inside of me isn’t dead. I’m not that lucky. And they’re going come for me again and you should just leave me before I get you killed to!” She closed her eyes again because she could feel the tears coming. She didn’t want to watch this man die. She didn’t want to be the cause of another death, another series of screams.