Author: Mary

Things and such.

Week 10 Post 2: Soulmate

On By MaryIn 2025, WritingLeave a comment

(Making a post yesterday completely slipped my mind, so in a way I’ve already lost the writing challenge! We’re still going to try to keep the posting schedule up though, so after this I will try to do a second post for tonight or tomorrow and have two in one day to make up for the miss)

          Agatha wasn’t initially inclined to go to the police. If she was having her Calling, could she be implicated somehow in what she saw? For not reporting it sooner? What was the societal impact of being linked to someone who could do such awful things? She realized she had never heard of anyone being linked to a serial killer. And even as she thought the words “serial killer” there was a part of her that knew it was true. She had only seen one body, but something about it was practiced. She could remember the feeling of fascination and lust that had swirled through her – him – in the dream. She was certain there were others.

          She decided to do some searching online first, checking to see if anyone had ever been linked to a serial killer. One of the first things she learned was that serial killers never had soulmates. In fact, most governments kept a watchlist on people that hadn’t been paired. Agatha quickly cleared her browser history, as well as digging deep into the settings to remove the most recent searches saved on her profile’s history. She wasn’t sure if it was enough, and she wondered vaguely if she had triggered her name on someone’s watchlist.

          I’m going to have to download a VPN or dark web browser, she realized. It made her feel deeply unsettled. She reassured herself with the fact that the same website said that men were often more heavily scrutinized for their lack of attachments. Still, she waited a few weeks before researching the best way to remain truly anonymous in her online activities. During that time, more symptoms of the Calling began to exhibit. One morning, she closed her bathroom cabinet to come face to face with the reflection of a man.

          He was, strangely, almost her type. He had smoothed back black hair – it looked slick, as though he had just showered or applied some sort of product. Although he had a healthy looking face, his cheeks were slightly gaunt, giving him a shadowy look. His brows were heavy and low, almost frowning, but the upward quirk of his lips and the crinkle at the corner of his eyes balanced it enough to make him look almost friendly. His steely grey eyes were wide with shock – he had seen her too in that instant. She could feel a thrill of surprise and a skip of a heartbeat that didn’t belong to her.

          It was almost exhilarating, except it was followed by the immediate thought that now he knew her face. He knew what she looked like. And he had certainly felt the terror that had palpated her heart in that glimpse.

          She wondered if he would realize she knew about his darker proclivities. She wondered what dreams he had of her, and what visions of her life had exposed her to him. She swallowed hard as she wiped off the mirror, no longer comfortable looking at her own reflection now that the vision had passed.

Week 10 Post 1: year of the snake

On By MaryIn 2025, Poetry, WritingLeave a comment

your life being
a finite instance within
an infinite circle

How long can the ouroboros devour itself?
before it chokes and dies
being a divine snake
the choke is never-ending

within immortality it learns repetition
inescapable
it watches in horror
for it can know no end
beyond twisting tighter
and letting the jaw unhinge
to eat more
and more
of its own immortal flesh

for why would we want for nirvana
when the suffering that is life
is so delicious

Week 9 Post 3: Dear 100-year-old Me

On By MaryIn 2025, Prompts, WritingLeave a comment
Daily writing prompt
Write a letter to your 100-year-old self.
View all responses

I turned 40 last year. I never really felt old at 30, although it was the age that most young people resented approaching, viewing it as “old.” It helped to some degree that my mom had me in her late 30s. I was still a kid when she hit 50, and that was the decade she spent my teen years in. So it was 50 that I viewed as old when I was a kid, and 30 didn’t really bother me at all. In fact, I quite enjoyed my 30s. I didn’t feel rushed or left behind. 30 still seemed quite comfortably capable of brewing and turning into something.

I’m starting to feel a little old at 40 – or at least, too old for things to begin. It feels like I should be in a stage of life where what I have has already been built firm under my feet and certain. In truth, I’ve made very few big strides in my life up until now. It seems I’ve spent the past two decades coasting, and I’m not certain how much will actually change in the next decade, because time seems to slip by, faster now, uncontrollable grains of sand running their course. It seems just as likely that the following decades can be full of the same empty hope as the previous decades.

When you’re young, you think about being the youngest to accomplish a thing. And then you hear about someone young (or your age) who did the thing, and you think you’ll be just on their heals (Eragon released when I was a teenager). And then you think you’re accomplishing things at a normal rate, other people have done the thing by your age. And then you reach an age where you reassure yourself with the tales of people that didn’t accomplish the thing until later in life (Tolkien didn’t write LoTR until he was in his 40s!). I seem to be hitting that age now. Reminding myself that things can still be done.

So I sometimes morosely feel like 40 is old. But there is also a part of me that feels like it’s not quite yet. Especially when I contemplate it from another angle. How much more life would I have to live to reach 100? 60 more years. That’s an entire life! It’s more than I’ve lived to date. My mom had me at 38, and my brother at 40, and she has been around to watch us grow into adults. There is yet a full life to live, even if I only build it starting today.

And if I build it today… 60 years down the line, when I’m 100, what has it become?

There could still be an entire life in that time. A full life.

I wonder what you do with it?

(although writing a letter to your 100 year old self seems silly, most of us won’t live that long, could get hit by a car tomorrow, which is usually my go to example but maybe a bit dark considering my boyfriend got hit by a car last year. he’s fine though.)