“Mary”
By Zaida Lysle

As they wheeled Tracy into the room, she began to stir. Her eyes were hazy but the nurse and orderly came into focus. “Where am I?” she asked vaguely. The nurse’s face was soft and compassionate .She was young and she had sparkle in her brown eyes. Tracy could see she was the Florence Nightingale type, accommodating, reassuring. “The doctor will be in shortly to speak with you Mrs. Masters. You’ve had a bad accident and you really should rest now. You’ve been out for a while. We’ve sutured your face, that’s why it’s bandaged, but it looks like your going to be fine. My name is Nina Dobbs.” She gave Tracy a warm smile and lightly stroked her shoulder.

Tracy tried to reach out for her, but soon realized her hands were secured to the railing of the gurney. Long strips of gauze restrained her. “Why am I tied down,” she asked, struggling to free herself. “Relax,” the nurse said softly. “It’s standard procedure. We can’t have you falling off this thing; you’re still disorientated. It’s for your own protection.”

“That makes sense Tracy thought, “but why did she call me Mrs. Masters? Why hadn’t Mark told them who she was? “Mr. Masters,” she said. “Is he outside? Has he been hurt also?” The nurse looked somber. “Mrs. Masters the doctor will speak with you; he will tell you everything you need to know when…” Tracy cut her off. “Oh my God,” she screamed. “Mark is dead; isn’t he? Was it the accident? Oh my God!” She remembered she had been driving. The nurse ran out of the room to get the doctor. Tracy cried uncontrollably. “That’s why Mark didn’t tell them who I really am,” she thought. This must be why they assumed she was his wife. “They think I’m Mary,” she sobbed. “My God, Mark! Mark!”

The nurse returned. This time, a tall man about sixty with silver hair and a mustache was with her. He wore thick black glasses that looked like soda bottles. “He looks so very familiar,” she thought, “where have I seen him before?” He studied her face. “Give her another ten milligrams of tranquilizers,” he commanded. He seemed harsh, controlled. Tracy studied his face. It wasn’t a hard face but it was void of expression. The nurse pricked her arm as instructed. She screamed. “No! I don’t want another shot, not until you’ve told me what’s happened to Mark.” She struggled but it did little good. The restraints on her hands and feet held her fast.

“Please Mrs. Masters,” the doctor pleaded. “I am doctor Beltzer.” He had an accent. European perhaps. Where had she heard his name before? Was it from Mark? She simply could not remember! His voice echoed in and out like an old record played on an even older victrola. Her head throbbed; her body ached, and now the shot had faded everything around her. The room blurred. “I am sorry, Mrs. Masters,” the doctor said. “There was nothing more we could do for Mark. He died instantly. I hope this gives you some kind of comfort.” His eyes were blank. “You must rest now,” he said to her. “We will talk later, when you have been stabilized.” He seemed to leave the room in slow motion, like a cloud just rolling away.

“Mary you bitch!” she slurred. “You should have divorced him like I asked you to.” Then she faded into blackness. When she awoke she was alone in the room. Through the small window, she could see the moon cast its light on a dark corner, splitting it and illuminating it with soft yellow streaks. “How long have I been out?” she wondered. “Bastards! I’m not going to let them paralyze me like that again.” She could hear the wind whistle and shriek outside, howling in the night like a hungry wolf. She struggled again against the restraints but to no avail. Thoughts ran through her mind like phantoms scurrying along the dark walls in the hall.

“Mark!” He had such a handsome face, olive skin, high cheekbones. His eyes were brown, flecked with small specks of yellow that blended into a color more suited for a cat than a
Lawyer. “He can’t be dead,” she thought. Tracy flinched. She had loved him from the first time she’d laid eyes on him. She claimed him as her own. He never hid the fact he was married to Mary. He was honest, always. Mark was a good man. He was not capable of deceit. It was just not in him. Tracy Abbot however, was a woman, who was used to getting what she wanted, and she wanted Mark; she wanted him badly. She used every trick in the book to compete with Mary Masters and it was a piece of cake, or so she thought in the beginning. After all, Mary was no raving beauty. Her eyes were lackluster, dull, the corners webbed with tiny lines that spread out around them like tiny spider webs. Where Mary was old, Tracy was young and vibrant. Mary was lean, but dressed like the frumpy librarian she was. She did little with her hair other than to pull it back into a rather bland looking French knot. She wore no makeup. Tracy on the other hand, was a solid knock out. She might have been a model. Always at the beauty salon, always dressed in the latest fashions. She was sexy, vivacious; she had youth; she had charisma.

“So why was it always Mary? Mary! Mary! Mary!” She hated the very sound of her name. Tracy flinched again. Her eyes rolled back in disgust, remembering her rival’s shortcomings. Mark had loved Mary on any and all terms, no matter how she looked. No matter how pathetic she was. Mary was frail. She was always sick. According to her husband, she always had a headache. She would spend days at a time in her bedroom, wearing the same old chenille bathrobe, the one with the torn hemline. She never cooked, she never cleaned. She was a bundle of nerves, a mass of doom and depression. Even seeing a therapist, once a week had done little to affect the state that Mary was in.

“Last night, the accident.” Tracy could scarcely believe what she had done. As she remembered, she closed her eyes and breathed hard. Mark was far too kind a man to ever leave a woman who was in the condition Mary was in. “It would have to be her,” she had thought, She had to be the one to tip the scales in her favor. Mark was not a strong man. She would have to be strong for the both of them. Mary had to go, plain and simple. Tracy’s head throbbed as she recalled confronting Mary, poor sweet, little Mary. She had invited her in. Mary was a martyr. She stood and listened to Tracy’s words sear her without batting an eyelash. She just stood there, she remembered. Her hands were in the putrid pockets of that ragged robe. She had rolled her eyes back like Joan of Arc, tied to a burning stake. And when Tracy finished telling her all about Mark and her, how they loved one another, how they belonged together, Mary proceeded to make a little speech of her own.

Mary wasn’t quite as helpless as she would have everyone believe. “Bitch,” Tracy snapped. She had known about Tracy all along. She had her feeble suspicions. “It would peter out,” she had said. And when it did, “she would keep her husband to herself, thank you very much.” Tracy laid there looking around the room, her forehead scrunched up in a deep frown. She would have never let him go, not Mary. “She’d had to kill her! She’d had to!”

She remembered the violent struggle. Mary hadn’t been as stupid as she had looked and she hadn’t been as frail either. She fought valiantly for her life, her arms flapping about in mid air. Her eyes widened as though she had just seen a ghost. “Poor Mary,” Tracy hissed, “We both tumbled down onto the oriental carpet, but only one of us came up.”

“Tracy Abbot watched as the doctor passed the room. It was the doctor who had spoken to her earlier, the one with the cold eyes. He seemed to study her as he went by. He made her uneasy. There was something about him! She squirmed and shuddered. Did he know about Mary? Was that it? They couldn’t prove a thing she chuckled to herself. She’d cleaned all the prints away. No one saw her. No one. Had they found Mary by now? Poor Mark was dead. He’d never tell, and he had as good a motive for wanting her gone as anyone else.

Tracy followed Mark like a viper, getting him to go along with her in her car for a ride, to talk. “We need to talk about our situation,” she had said. That was when she confessed to him, that she killed Mary. “I did it for us, “she told him, “to free you of that wretched woman, once and for all! You deserve better Mark, you deserve more.” His face darkened. His words cut through her like a knife hitting soft tissue. “You’re sick,” he shrieked, “Do you not know that? You really need help and I’m going to see to it that you get it. I can’t deal with this anymore,” he cried. Then he held his head in his hands and wept, “Mary, Mary, my poor Mary!”

Tracy hadn’t been watching the road well enough. His words were more than she could endure. By the time she saw she going off the road, she hadn’t bothered with the brakes. She turned to look Mark in the eye and screamed, “If I can’t have you then no one else ever will!” She let go of the wheel and threw her foot down hard on the accelerator. The car rolled over twice as it plummeted down the steep embankment. She could hear Mark’s voice just before they hit the ground. He screamed out that blasted name, “Maryyyyyyyyyy!”

Tracy Abbot opened her eyes and looked around the room. Light streamed in through a small window on the far side of the wall. The window had bars on it. She also knew that she was in a bed now, but her hands and feet were still restrained. She was tied firmly in place. She began to yell as loud as she could; the language that came out of her mouth was like that of a long shore man. A nurse entered the room holding a syringe, as Tracy spat out foul words and shook her head from side to side, trying to kick her pinned feet. The nurse managed to penetrate her arm with the sharp needle. Tracy groaned. “Why am I still tied?” she shrieked, “and don’t tell me it’s for my own protection. I want to see the person in charge, and I want to see him now!”


“It’s all right,” the nurse said. “I’ll get Doctor Beltzer right now.” She scurried from the room like a hyper little mouse. Tracy was beginning to feel the ill effects of the injection. Her eyes narrowed, her tongue took on weight. Then, she saw the doctor enter the room. “I don’t know exactly what it is that you think I’ve done,” she said. “But you have absolutely no right to keep me here, tied up like an animal. What kind of hospital is this?” Her eyes strayed to the bars on the windows. “This is an asylum,” Dr. Beltzer blurted out, “for the criminally insane Mrs. Masters.”

Tracy’s eyes opened wide. She looked at him with disbelief and then a little clarity came to her.
“So that’s it,” she said. “You still think I’m Mary Masters? “Listen,” she whimpered. “There’s been some ridiculous mistake in identity. If you take these hideous bandages off of my face, I can prove to you who I am. My name is Tracy Abbot. I was with Mark when, when…” The doctor interrupted her. “I know exactly who you are,” he said. “Mark and I discussed your case for some time before the accident. It was my opinion that you would be better off treated here at the asylum, but of course Mark would not hear of it. He refused to commit you. And as a result of that, I fear the worst has happened. You have had a complete split. It often happens in rare cases of multiple personality disorder. The police brought you here after the accident. The absence of the skid marks on the road where the car went over the embankment was the thing. You see, they suspected something more deliberate had occurred.” 

Tracy’s features contorted, her color turned pale, her lips quivered, but she did not speak. Dr. Beltzer ran his hand over his thinning silver hair. He stood silently by for a moment, then, he continued. “When a person has a definite split in personality Mary,” he said, “with intense therapy, in a year or maybe two, who knows what we can do for you? Split personalities though rare, can sometimes be integrated. We will work together towards this goal. Now get some rest. I will look in on you later.” 

The door slammed behind him and she heard the loud click of the lock. “Mary, Mary” she whispered to herself, “Why is it always Mary!” The nurse returned with scissors and a hand mirror. “Doctor Beltzer wants your bandages removed. When they were all cut off, she held the mirror up to Tracy’s face. Mary’s face smirked backed at her in the reflection of the glass. She looked old and worn and malevolent. She gave Tracy a triumphant wink of a dead cold eye, just as Tracy began to scream.

Z.B. Lysle is a female Fiction Novelist, who as of yet, has not completed either of two Horror/fantasy novels. She also writes Short Stories, Poetry, Haiku and Tanka.Stephen King and Edgar Allen Poe are Her favorite authors. She's a book worm who loves to read the classics and a middle aged mother/student at work on a degree in the humanities. She hope to one day teach English or work with the minorities.