A/N: After getting the endings that you don't want about a million times in a row, one starts to really hope for Mary to make a comeback. After finally turning to cheats for help, one decides that they're too tired to care, even though they know that their writing is shit, and posts stuff like this.
I also forgot Garry was supposed to be in this. Whoops.
It had just been part of her routinely visit to the gallery.
She's standing perfectly still, trapped between a wall of concrete and a painting. She foolishly wonders if there's an Olympic event for staying still. She's trembling. Her breath is caught in her throat and her eyes are wide, her gaze fixed to the wall in front of her, her eyes darting to the side, daring her to turn around and look.
She had just wanted to check out the new exhibit.
She makes a sound that's halfway between a squeak and a sob. She tells herself that she's dreaming, that this can't be happening, but even as she does, the grip on her wrist tightens.
She's vaguely aware of a stabbing pain in her wrist.
The sound of glass grinding against metal disrupts the perfect silence, and the glass case of the painting falls to the ground and shatters. She hears scrabbling, like long fingernails trying to find purchase on the smooth, brass frame of a painting.
Why was this happening, couldn't be happening, just a routine visit-
Her knees begin to shake and she nearly falls. She swallows, tells herself that everything will be fine, and slowly turns around.
She had just been walking around, and something had grabbed her-
Time slows down. Her body twists itself around in slow motion, and when she sees what's grabbed her, she stumbles backwards in horror, her free arm flailing like a fish out of water, searching for something to hold on to, to steady herself with.
No. No. It was her fault. She was doomed, from the moment her gaze had locked onto those perfect blue eyes. She knew that, but-
The girl's face is barely a face anymore, instead a horrific mass of burn scar tissue and barely-healed cuts. The parts of her face that aren't scarred are porcelain white and so flawless that she seems to be made of plastic, beautifully so if she was healed. Her hair is mermaid blonde and singed black in places, cut to just above her shoulders in jagged, crude waves so messy that they look as if they were cut with a blunt knife. A twisted grin plays across her face, and her hands are bloody and scabbed with long, hard fingernails.
The hand that's grabbing Ib's wrist is also holding a palette knife, and Ib realises that that is where the stabbing pain is coming from. She remembers how she had smashed her head into the glass case when that nightmarish face had pressed itself up against the glass, and now the bruise that had formed above her brow was stinging. Now that she has acknowledged it, the pain intensifies in full force, spreading up her arm and making tears well up in her eyes. Blood runs down her wrist and drips onto the floor.
The girl's other hand is grabbing onto the frame of the painting, keeping herself from falling. She's grinning that horrible grin, and her clothes are old and tattered, maybe once green cotton, and there's what looks like the head of a doll poking out of a pocket in the skirt of her dress-
But it's her eyes that make Ib remember.
Her eyes are wide, shining orbs of ocean blue. Her eyes sparkle, with something triumphant and most definitely malicious, and Ib feels fear well up in her chest and cloud her mind. But beneath the fear is a much warmer feeling, paralysing her and keeping her from running away.
"I promise we'll leave together!"
The girl, no, Mary, leans forward and whispers sweetly in a broken rasp of a voice.
"Didn't I say we'd be together forever?"