Portrait of a Smiling Invasion
The first time she sets her feet onto white marble floors, not the matte black of slate or the polished gleam of gloomy granite, she gasps and nearly succumbs to the overwhelming feeling of existence. She feels real.
Not lifelike, or realistic, or human. She feels her own presence; she is nothing more or less than herself.
The absolute weight—and indescribable joy—of this feeling nearly carries her fragmented thought process into a fit of self-satisfied, girlish giggles. Instead, she grounds herself and thinks there is a bit of work to be done, especially before her new baby sister comes home through the painting. The stitched smiles follow her past the other mundane people bustling about, sewing memories and thoughts, patching ideas and feelings, and cutting away dissent and unwanted judgments, into their feeble minds, unseen and an unnoticed except for in Mary's piercing gaze.
They chuckle, eyes aglow, listening to her every whim, as Guertena's greatest work skips down the halls of the living. Her shoes leave behind less and less paint with every step, and her smile gets wider and wider, until it nearly splits her face.
And then she happens upon the—foolish, inferior, useless—parents. They are chatting amiably, looking at the mannequins and the white porcelain heads, smiling for once, as gleeful as the blonde girl behind them, edging closer.
"Honey? What is that thing? I don't see an exhibit on it, and the smile is creeping me out…"
And in one dreadful moment, Ib's parents see the truth behind Guertena's great works. Hung dolls, with lolling necks and grinning red eyes, baring sewn smiles as the headless bodies limp and claw at them. The paintings fall; crazed women with grotesque faces crawl and scrape at the floor as the world drowns in red acidic smoke.
The little girl with sun-blonde hair was never a little girl, but rather an abomination made of paint and canvas and absolute loneliness. Shredded and only held together by the strings of red lies and blue insanity and yellow, deafening desire.
The painter's knife rises and scrapes true memory from their mind, and she digs and digs and digs and digs until she is so deep in their fragile minds that one more little, simple, caress would send them careening into the depths of absolute madness.
Only then does she gently sew the fractured minds together, painting a few fresh memories in (playing in the park with a blonde baby, another resting in the distended abdomen of the mud-haired lady) and binding the new world—Mary's world—with tight sutures of red twine.
By then, Ib is walking around the corner, already gently touched by her little allies hanging from the rafters, and it is time to play pretend again. The only difference this time is the small fact that Mary is not playing alone.
"Hey, mommy! What's for dinner tonight?"
And secretly, through the meaningless conversation about eating at a café (Yay! Café! Café!), she smiles at holding Ib's hand, clutching the appendage like a lifeline, to make sure it's all real. And that she isn't playing pretend again, where she dreams so well she convinces herself she has someone—anyone—else with her.
And she blinks, smiles, pinches herself, and smiles even wider as they get into the car, and she slides into the seat (the middle seat, as close as she can be) next to Ib.
For a moment her plan seems to falter, as Ib—her Ib, and no one else's, and never his—pulls a damned yellow candy from her pocket. For a moment, rage blinds her, fury pulls at her strings and the little knots of blue, kept away and always lurking just under her surface, burst forth and bleed into her tailored pretend face.
It amazed her that no one saw the bitter hatred plastered all over her face, as she stole the candy and viciously crunched and crushed and ground the nasty, vile, repulsive thing with her teeth. It was nothing more than powder, a wicked smirk lighting her face, when she remembered to play "home" with Ib again.
Giving the crumpled, twisted wrapper back to her sister again was difficult, but she managed at the last moment to hand it back, once again wearing a mask and stitching her smile a little happier and a tad more innocent than it was when they first met.
She had known Ib was clumsy, and a little naïve, but it endears her to Mary. It almost endears her to Mary as much as failing to recognize the candy, instead seeming to wonder where the little wrapper came from as she reaches out to take it back.
And as Ib cuts her finger on the little candy wrapper and Mary devours the last of the delicate sweet, she smiles, watching, as the blood doesn't drip like it's supposed to. It doesn't drip at all, actually, and instead clumps into a blob of something far to vivid to be human plasma, but rather looks something remarkably like freshly mixed red paint. The dolls laugh silently, still eluding common sight, but slowly appearing to the blood-red eyes of the little girl.
Nobody thinks anything is out of the ordinary, Ib included, despite hearing the honest relief of Mary's horrible laugh, tinkling like tiny broken bells, full of absolute madness and unrestrained joy.
Mary laughs so hard she starts crying and happily notes that her colors don't mix with the beautiful clear blue dye as it runs down her face.
Mary laughs because she finally has Ib, all to herself soon, forever and ever and ever…