Warning: Child abuse themes. Graphic depictions of violence.
Thirty-Six: Maari
Things are NOT Fun and Fancy Free
Pain stung her cheek.
Merry found herself staring out the window. The spotted blackness outside wasn't what she saw.
For a split second, Merry was in her room back in Virginia, nine-years-old, with Fairy Odd Parents and Teen Titans posters on the wall. The weekend had been exciting. Scary, but exciting—Merry and her mother had gone out to purchase her first trainer bra. Without thinking, when Merry went to her father's house for the week, she'd tossed it into the laundry hamper.
Her father had hit her before, but she had always told herself that she deserved it, because she had acted out.
That was the first time he'd beaten her.
He'd stumbled into her room, drunk, shoving the bra into her face. "What the fuck is this?"
She stepped backwards, already shaking in anticipation of the strike. "A—a—a trainer bra, Appa. I—I'm sorry. I promise I'll wash it on my own—"
"Lingerie. Already with the lingerie."
Merry didn't understand. The bra and underwear set had ducklings on it. She and Am'ma thought it was cute.
He slapped her across the face with a bottle of Kingfisher.
The reek of beer from the bottle and his breath was overwhelming.
When the pain spread across her jaw, she said nothing. She learned that protest could earn a second slap.
But, when she felt her lip bust open under the third strike, she covered her head. The bottle switched to a fist as he screamed, "Whore! Just like your mother! Whore like your mother!"
She cried all she could remember how to say, "Mannikkavum! Baba, Nil! Ennai taniyaka vitu! En?! [footnote 1]
But he was too drunk and too far gone to hear Merry or to even think that he was calling his nine-year-old daughter a whore for something she couldn't control.
That was the first time Merry had identified madness and mania, the first time she'd learned how to lie so cheerfully. That was when she vowed never to do that to another, never to make them feel like that, never to hurt someone physically.
But she was going to do much worse than that to Hiro.
Merry embraced the mania, her panic, her fear, her delirium.
A tugging sensation hit her gut. Before she let it overtake her, Merry focused her thoughts.
Stick to the plan. Remember the steps. Still trying things the easy-peasy way. Keep Hiro calm. One last try.
Merry looked down from the window, away from the smattering of store lights, back to Hiro. He still held the pistol, scowling at her. He looked tense, ready to defend himself if she struck back.
She clucked her tongue, feeling blood dribble from a busted lip. Her voice shook. "That was unnecessary, Hiro. We're here to talk. Aunti Merry wants to be your friend. I want to help you—"
Hiro cocked his head to one side. A thought struck him, and his eyes widened with glee. Although her lip-reading was definitely on the rusty to nonexistent side of her skill set, she thought he mouthed, "Pacifist," while spelling something out with his other hand. Then, "won't fight back."
With his empty hand, he slapped her, almost experimentally.
The sensation of panic welled in Merry's stomach, rising to her chest, twisting her gut. She may have been a full foot taller than Hiro, but she suddenly felt very small.
Hiro giggled in curious delight. A toy. A toy that doesn't hit back.
He slapped her again.
And again.
Her mouth tasted like iron.
Easy-peasy way had failed.
And Merry thought what she'd want to say every time to her father, Enough.
She reached out, gently, and touched Hiro's temple. She had never done this before, so needed the proximity to assure it would work. As Merry touched him, she exhaled, feeling the horrific tugging sensation in her gut transfer, feeling the years of panic, paranoia, mania, and terror drain out of her fingertips.
For a moment, nothing seemed to change. Hiro took a step backwards from her, swatting her hand away.
She gave him a sad smile, glancing up at the ceiling, then back down to him.
Hiro stumbled another step backwards, almost knocking over his altar. His breathing accelerated. His eyes dilated.
"A group of pirates once rescued Dionysus in disguise from an island and offered to take him home. However, all but one secretly agreed they should sell him as a slave," Merry said. Her voice had stopped shaking. Instead, her tone felt slow, almost slurred. Her whole body felt warm, despite the cold and her lack of clothing. "Do you know what the oars turned into for those meanie pirates?"
Hiro twitched violently. He swatted himself, like he felt a bug bite. There were no bugs. His eyes wildly searched around the rafters, like he sensed something was up there.
The whirl of cars and noises of the city warped. They raised pitch and seemed to accelerate into a consistent sibilation.
His eyes darted suspiciously to her, but he aimed the gun upward.
From his reactions, Merry could tell he'd completely forgotten about baby Jackson.
"Snakes," she said. "They turned into snakes. Tufted Ears told me that you don't like snakes very much."
The sounds solidified into a chorus of hissing.
Snakes dangled from the rafters like streams for a party. Colorful ones, with red, black, and yellow stripes. Brilliant yellow vipers with prongs jutting out above either eye. Some were brown, with diamond patterns down their backs and a single horn protruding from the ends of their faces. Merry had never seen them before, so didn't have more to work off of than Axel's descriptions. But that didn't matter. Her mind wasn't doing most of the work to create the madness.
Hiro's was.
He screamed, his voice coming out hoarse, like a record player forced to play for the first time in years.
The twelve-year-old dropped the gun.
Merry winced, waiting for the revolver to fire. Instead, it clattered onto the floor, harmless other than creating a cacophony with Hiro's shriek. It was loud enough to make baby Jackson cry.
At least Hiro put the safety lock on before he beat someone with his gun.
He scrambled backwards, smashing into the mirror. The glass shattered, exploding all over his back. As he glanced back at what he hit, the mirror shards morphed to thin-legged black spiders with red blotches, fuzzy, massive, fat ones, furry flies with stingers the size of their bodies, and long, creeping scorpions.
Violently, Hiro swatted at his back, his fingers returning bloody from their "stings." Really, from the glass.
Merry's breath was ragged. Step three: corral Hiro to a corner of the room. Use his own fears, paranoia, and terror to make him create one of his fancy talisman bubbles. Trap him with his own mind.
Merry felt the tug in her stomach increase. Her body tingled like it was on fire. The madness was flaring and she struggled to restrain a nauseating sense of euphoria. She understood now—why her real father, her biological father, always laughed when he retold the tales of how he punished people.
Hiro tore off his dart suspenders and shoulder holster, ripping his burgundy shirt away to stomp on it. The spiders and scorpions crunched with the same tune of glass.
By now, baby Jackson was sobbing and squealing too.
"Hiro, little honey cakes, you can be safe if you just go in that corner," Merry said. She took a careful step towards him, her body feeling light and wobbly. "It's like that lava game. All you have to do is step in that corner."
She tried to clear a small segment of his mind, to lull him there, but the hiss of the snakes grew louder. A rattler dropped from the ceiling and fell onto Hiro's arm.
He sobbed and slapped the viper off, retreating beyond his tumbled altar table, closer to the outer wall.
Merry couldn't sort through it. She couldn't understand Hiro's mind, only see his madness.
Vital addendum to step three: don't lose control.
Merry was quickly losing control of the situation.
Rapid creation of step four: catch this little, crazy shit and sit on him until the cops—that her most Epic of Bystanders must have called-showed up. Then figure out how to explain how Merry was the victim, when she was mostly undressed, crushing a sobbing, apparently helpless, crazed twelve-year-old.
Merry took another step closer to Hiro, reaching towards him. "Hey, Hiro honey—"
Hiro saw something else above her. His screaming abruptly halted, despite another snake dropping down to rest across his shoulders. His jaw dropped open.
Merry didn't dare look up at the rafters to see what scared him so much, what horror his mind had manufactured. She needed him to look at her. She needed him to focus. She needed to focus, so she didn't get lost in his madness, so she didn't begin to believe these creepy crawlies were real, so she could gain back control or at least give him a bear hug that he couldn't escape.
But Hiro's eyes had gone wide and blank. He took two more absent steps backwards, straight towards the drafty breeze from the broken window.
Then it was Merry's turn to scream.
As Hiro slipped on the shattered, stained glass—
-and she reached to catch him—
And missed.
The hissing disappeared.
Spiders and scorpions flickered back into glass shards.
The blare of a cop siren whirred outside as the city panicked in the sudden blackness. Baby Jackson shrieked and screamed.
Merry's limbs no longer felt on fire. She felt cold and numb.
Trying to keep her breathing even, Merry glanced around the room. The communication mirror was shattered, so she couldn't tell Percy his little sister was safe. If she had to guess, the others wouldn't have time to pick up a phone call from her or check a text, Unit Poseidon, cleared for action.
Weakness and queasiness sapped the hum out of her. With the industrial din of the city, she did the one thing that she felt like she shouldn't: she stumbled to the window to look down.
In the glow of the headlights and flickered-on street lamps, she could see Hiro's broken body mangled around one of the pinnacles a dozen feet down.
He made sputtering, horrifying noises.
Merry took a step backwards.
The whole time she robotically dressed, picked up the sobbing Jackson, used a mix of Mist-work, lying, and Dionysus-play to direct the EMTs and cops that Sam Datta called up to save Hiro's life, she wondered how else that could have ended.
The thought stole the song from her until she was in Sam Datta's taxi van, and he gently put a hand over hers—still gripping a crying baby Jackson—and said, "Hey. I don't know what it was, but you did what you had to do to save this baby." He swallowed and continued, "Let's get her home safely, and let's get you back to camp."
Merry didn't realize she was crying until she blinked away tears. Her cheek burned and felt four times larger than it should have. She probably looked half-chipmunk. "Yea," she croaked, clicking the music on her parka on. "We have another party we need to crash."
Written to/inspired by Arai Tasuku's Alice (Full EP) with the majority coming from Speak Roughly To your Little Boy and Jackal, Don't Come Near Me; I am a Monster.
Thank you for reading! Don't worry. Merry gets a much better resolution in the epilogue. I would not leave out bodacious girl hanging. 3
Footnote: I'm sorry! Wait—stop! Leave me alone! Why?!