Mary Sue Will Sleep With You
Mary Sue was seventeen and if she hadn't been then none of this would have ever happened.
The legal age of drinking in the good ol' South was twenty-one and the age of consent was eighteen.
Virginia is a state in Southern America, and runs the latter law alongside an additional addendum. Any sex outside of marriage is classed as illegal, a class four misdemeanour under Virginia Code 1950 subsections 18.1 through 188.
Mary Sue learned of that, and found it particularly interesting.
She understood this, just as she understood that men could be complete and utter jerks, who really need to be knocked down a peg sometimes.
Sometimes entirely off the pegboard.
Matthew Valrhona was only sixteen when he dated Susan Morren in the hot summertime sun where the haybales could be seen stacked as high as houses across the golden county.
Matt was a good boyfriend to Suzy. At least on the surface.
He occassionally bought her gifts like roses and hazelnuts enrobed in chocolate and he even once bought her a piece of lavish jewellery, Mary Sue had heard.
But all men were the same, Mary knew that.
Scratch away the thin veneer of a charmer and you've got only the base animal underneath, staring at you loathsomely and only caring to get under your skirt.
Vile. Repugnant.
And that was sort of where she began. Or, if you want to accurately pinpoint exactly where it began, it would have been Matthew's House Party on the 17th of April in 2003.
She wasn't invited. No doubt Matthew had had some sort of say in that. Before him, she and Suzy had been the best of friends. Mary Sue was sure that Matthew had taken her aside and filled her head with poisonous lies, telling her that she'd done bad things.
I mean, Suzy had told her that she'd been acting weird and that she didn't really want to hang out with her anymore, but it certainly couldn't have been her fault? Could it?
No, of course not.
And clearly Suzy would want her to go, they'd been friends since eighth grade.
And so that's what she did.
Arriving at about nine in the evening, completely drunk from a bottle of wine she'd snatched from her parents, she arrived.
As she sauntered up the crunchy gravel drive in her heels, she stumbled and knocked over two small topiaries. As the soil cascaded out, the event couldn't help but illicit a giggle.
She moved up onto the porch, a soft oak attachment to the front of the house bathed in the soft glow of two small lanterns dangling from thick bronze chains before the arch of the door that she had no plans on using.
Tiptoeing around a metal garden swing covered in lime green plush cushions that sat suspended under the wooden canopy and swayed gently despite the stillness of the cool evening, she slunk round the alley that lay on the side of the house.
They always left the- And there it was.
After she'd jimmied open the side window that the Valrhona family usually left open in the summer to keep air circulating the house with her alcohol-free hand, she hoisted herself up onto the ledge and dropped down into the laundry room, landing in a large pile of gym briefs belonging to Matt's father.
Pulling herself out of it and heaving slightly, she followed the noises coming from behind the door and, still with a sports sock in her hair, pulled the door open.
Continuing to follow the happy chatter and music through to the living room, she walked across the hallway and into the living room.
Music was playing and people were chatting, but it was a far cry from the house party that she imagined.
They were all sitting, spread out across the room, a conversation happening between both the two sofas and another discussion taking place between the people sitting on the carpet and the birthday boy and man of the hour himself who was sitting on a large recliner.
But they all stopped talking as soon as she entered the room.
Suzy was the first to break the silence.
"Why the fuck are you here." she mumbled, her eyes downcast at the floor.
Someone had turned the music off. It was so deathly silent that Mary Sue almost felt uncomfortable. Almost.
After all, this was her friend, right? The one she'd always known who'd be happy to see her on her boyfriend's special day.
"Hey, you left your window open and I got your text."
Mary Sue smiled a smile that wasn't returned.
"The one that said 'Please don't come to Matt's party?'" she said, finally looking up.
Why did she look so unhappy?
"Come on, guys." Cheery, but it wasn't working. She looked around at every face there. There wasn't a single port in this storm. Looking away from Sarah, sad from Tim, awkward from Sam, silent rage from Matt.
"I just want to sit with you guys. I won't get it the way, really." No, that wasn't fair. Why did she have to beg and plead just to stay in a party she should have really had the first invite to, if anything.
"I think you should leave."
Mary Sue felt her face redden as she began to feel out of place. No, not out of place. She had every right to be here but was beginning to feel exasperated about everyone else realising that she was allowed to be here. Supposed to be here, on her friend's special day.
Matt stood up with a finality and offered to show her out, to which Mary Sue interrupted. She'd go, of course she'd go, wasn't stupid, knew when she wasn't wanted but was in dire need of the little girl's room.
"First floor, second door on the left. Then I'm afraid-"
Mary didn't stick around long enough to hear the rest of it, already bounding across the chaise rug and up the plush staircase enthusiastically, the plaster of a smile beginning to unstick, wet with fresh saltwater tears.
In the bathroom, she paced like a woman possessed. She lay down in the tub, then she got up again. She sat on the lavatory. Then she stood up again.
She swung at the mirror, only causing a glancing blow. The mirror fell away as the medicine cabinet swung open.
And there's something about drunk people and pretty coloured bottles.
She looked at the glass bottle in her hand, the thinned contents sloshing away inside, and back at the rows of pill bottles.
If my friends don't want me, then I may as end this tonight, she thought.
See if they don't regret not inviting me to their poncy party after I'm gone.
The small and unassuming brown ones all went in. The large pearl white ones that looked impossible to swallow clattered in and made a tinny splosh. The circular blue ones went in by the handful and she shook up the bottle.
The pills fizzed as she topped the rest of the bottle up with water. She popped the concocted menace up against the bathtub and stared at it for some time. She felt like crying again, but nothing was really coming.
Matthew Valrhona walked in as she tilted the bottle and lifted her neck and he snatched it off of her. He sat down and looked at her dead in the eye. She didn't like it. He was sober and she was very drunk, and sober people have a way of looking at you, right, right in the eye, for more than five seconds without their view sloping away or without bursting into a fit of laughter.
She looked at him through tear-filled eyes and just hated him so much in that moment. His stupid, smug, satisfied face now that she knew he'd won. That he'd stolen her friend, her only friend she'd ever really had.
She pushed past him and back into the living room where discussion seemed to have happily rumbled back only to screech to a grinding halt as Mary Sue staggered back into the living room, swayed on the spot and screamed loudly that she'd been drugged. As everyone looked up, shocked, Matt returned and Mary managed to raise one hand which she managed to shake in Matt's direction before hitting the floor.
When she woke up fourteen hours later, she was lying in a hospital bed. Her stomach hurt, her throat hurt. Everything ached.
A doctor sat beside her. He was a kind, older, gentleman who smiled at her.
"You've had your stomach pumped" he explained. He sat on the foot of the bed, unclipped her medical records stuck to the foot of the bed and examined the records. "You poor thing. You've really been through the wars, haven't you?"
Mary Sue nodded, attentive. "How's Suzy?" she said, in a weak and fragile voice. She coughed twice.
The doctor fervently reached across to a tray to grab a glass of water for her. She drank it, feeling the dryness ease from her throat as she did so.
"Don't you worry about her." the doctor replied, reassuringly. "Matthew Valrhona has been taken into custody for what he did to you."
Mary was confused. "No, you don't understand." she said. "Matt didn't drug me, I took a bunch of pills and overdosed."
The doctor started, fumbling with the medical clipboard in his hands. "You were talking in your sleep. You said he'd abused you whilst you were unconscious."
Mary Sue's eyes were wide. "No, that's not right at all."
The doctor snarled angrily. "You little lying bitch!" he yelled. His placid face had turned violently magenta as he jumped from his seat. "How could you sit idly by whilst an innocent man does time?"
Mary shrunk back into the bedsheets as the doctor loomed over her.
Eventually, he shrank back and seemed to slide down into his seat, his face pale.
"I'll have to call the local authorities." he mumbled. As he stood up to walk away, Mary felt that same spark she'd felt course through her body when Matt stood in front of her. Every iota of her body wanted to stop that man from leaving to contact the police.
She felt her pained body rising from the bed as she felt herself screaming at the man to stop, but it came out of her mouth as a single sentence that didn't sound any louder than average speaking volume.
"No."
The doctor looked stunned for a moment, as if he'd been clubbed around the head with a baton.
"Why?" he said, rubbing his eyes with his palms. He looked as if he was about to fall over and clutched a hospital bedpost for support.
"Because I didn't do that, did I?" said Mary. She had some idea of what was going on.
The doctor's eyes flickered open as if he'd been disturbed from some sort of almost imperceptible doze.
"No, you didn't. Of course you didn't.... What were we talking about again?"
From there, Mary Sue started what can only be described as the oddest trail of petty larceny and theft that the American midwest had ever seen.
She didn't stick around Virginia long and was soon blazing around leaving only confusion in her wake. In a small jewellery store in Kansas, a shop clerk was left exasperatedly explaining to her manager that the lady in sunglasses had picked up the necklace behind the glass counter, sure, but it had been hers. No, she hadn't paid for it, but it was hers. She'd said so just so... confidently?
Three hours later the clerk was in tears, calling herself stupid and finally realising she'd been duped. But the worst part was that she didn't even understand how.
An owner of a small shop in Missouri that sold fine art suddenly noticed that all the painting on all the walls were missing, leaving only white imprints on the wall. He vaguely remembered somebody coming in and telling him that she was going to move all the art to somewhere else and it had seemed like the most obvious and simple thing in the world. But he couldn't remember quite why she'd needed to take them all.
When police investigated the scene, they checked the store cameras and found the store owner helping to take the art of off the wall, loading it into the back of a Chevy hatchback. And then he'd happily waved her off as she sped away. All smiles.
Most interesting was a police report from Milwaukee, where an unnamed woman had entered a bakery and demanded a free cake. When the cake was handed over, a female customer in the shop complained to which the unnamed woman told the customer to smush the iced bun in her hand across her blouse which she then did.
The policeman filing the report was asked why he didn't intervene to which he replied very simply, she told me not to. He was dismissed.
It was around a month later when Mary Sue was sitting in a very nice apartment, filled with paintings and furnishings she didn't really own with entire corners of rooms filled with hoarded gold jewellery she'd just thrown and the floor strewn with ten dollar bills, pizza boxes and designer clothing and handbags. It was then she had the idea.
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The Louvre was busy as usual with The Mona Lisa stuck between concrete and layered bulletproof sheet glass. Getting through customs, convincing two airport attendants that a slice of processed cheese was her passport was fun but it was time for the real challenge to begin.
She took the loudspeaker out of her bag and shouted at the top of her lungs.
"They've trapped my painting! Won't somebody please get it for me?"
Immediately the crowd of a hundred sixteen fell upon the plate glass like savage cavemen, trying to pull it off. The guardsmen didn't stop him, because they were also trying to pry the glass off.
Two armed men took their SMG's to it and the glass frosted over. Just as people were beginning to pull fragments of broken glass off of the ruined pane when an entire SWAT team wearing soundproof helmets tore their way through the ancient corridors and rappelled down from hidden corners of the room.
Some began pulling people away from the artwork which several others cuffed Mary Sue, her shouting falling upon deaf ears. It happened so fast it was almost over as soon as it had begun. But of course, it had been planned.
She was surrounded and pinned to one of the far walls as security soon got a hold of the situation. A man in a felt suit who stood out from the rest of the security detail, wearing two blue earplugs, approached her with something held in his hand.
She felt something slip deep into her neck.
When she awoke, she met a man who claimed to be an old, but nonetheless influential singer called Monty Carlos who talked to her before the two of them set off to find a young woman who was tipped to be experiencing some exceptional superpower.
Some time later, her hands were tied behind her back and a large strip of electrical tape had been affixed to her mouth. She looked across at Gideon Carletan, Monty Carlos and Natasha Polanski and waited for The Director to speak.