Alyssa Godwin

The fire popped so loudly that it awoke Mary from her sleep. She sat up, realizing with a start that she was not physically alone, although mentally was another story. Percy, her husband of many years, lay beside her, seemingly woken up by the fire as well. His voice was as raspy as the leaves below them as he spoke, “Quite a disturbing fire we have there.”

Mary stared at the flames before her, her brown eyes mirroring the orange urgency of the bunch. There was something, she figured, about this fire that would not allow her to turn away despite her husband’s resumed snoring beside her. It was cold, and she shivered, instinctively shifting toward the fire. The warmth she was expecting, the comfort from the flames, was not what she was greeted with. “How odd..” she murmured to herself, careful to not wake up the sleeping figure next to her. The closer she got to the spur of brightness in front of her, the colder the night seemed to get.

I must be tired. I will return to my rest and be at Lord Byron’s home come tomorrow.

But the flames, it didn’t make sense. They are supposed to be warm, not this chilling pile of red lights mocking me. The thoughts did not settle, even as Mary returned to her place on the floor of the forest, a destination all too familiar for the traveling couple.

Eyes closed, arms by her side, nothing could distract the woman from the returning thoughts orbiting around the peculiarity she experienced. A cold fire, she thought quickly. I wonder, will you still burn me? She drifted off to a fitful sleep, constantly coasting between consciousness and the tormenting thoughts of the fire.

When the second pop startled Mary awake, Percy did not shift. The empty spot that lay next to her seemingly dropped something heavy in her stomach. She waited a moment, slowly looking around her but hearing nothing. Her husband, the one who coaxed her into sleep mere hours before, was not there. “...Percy?” She called into the forest.

The forest mocked her with its silence.

She sat awake, too bothered to move. She figured he must have wandered a few steps into the greenery around them to go to the restroom, that he would return to her once more. While the

thought of Percy wandering off and Mary going to find him was not unfamiliar (as something that has happened in the past), she could not imagine moving, couldn’t imagine looking away from the light before her.

A good time passed her, alone and unmoving before a pile of flames. By this point, Mary had stayed awake, waiting for her love to return to her, to tell her that these cold flames are nothing more than her imagination, something of a nightmare.

Percy returned some ten minutes later. There was something about him that made Mary shift away from him as he sat beside her. Possibly the look in his eye, the urgent, animalistic look that shook her to the core. Perhaps the way his clothes were torn and how he never seemed to settle down, shifting and constantly fidgeting beside her. Even as she forced herself to tear her eyes from the light presented to her, Percy was not a comforting presence.

She lay, unmoving, next to her husband, whom she was beginning to doubt. I have been married to him for long years, I know and trust my ability to recognize him. But this being, laying beside me and muttering hurried, incoherent words, is not the man I betrothed.

She had thought about his presence long and hard, not bothering to sleep her worries away, not when this thing impersonating her husband sat so close. It began to make sense, the flames, the monster beside her. The forest grew impatient with them, she figured. It wanted them out. And who was Mary, this shell of a woman sitting before a cold flame, to sit and question the forces working against them?

Her eyes opened, shifting back and forth with an extremity so urgent that any onlooker would label her mad. She had to abandon this monster next to her, to find her husband and leave this cursed place.

She arose slowly and quietly, not allowing any nearby stick or leaf to give away her intentions. After she was up, she ran. As fast and as far as she could, she ran screaming Percy’s name.

“Percy!” Her echo followed her, “Percy!”

She continued to run until she could not anymore, slowing steadily. It had grown too far into the night to continue moving, she figured. She had to rest, lay and have enough energy for a search tomorrow. Laying on an empty spot she found off into the forest, she closed her eyes, and sleep quickly took her away.

When she woke up in the morning, however, it was not the eyes of Percy she met. When she woke up in the morning, it was not the hard surface of the forest she was lying on.

A ceiling cramped her, her hands and feet bound to a bed that was not her own. “...What..” She began but could not finish.

“Good morning, Mrs. Shelley.” A female voice spoke to her left. Mary did not see the white coat of the voice, the badge that labeled her a doctor of medicine, the profession she belonged to at the Asylum of London.