When I arrived at the town my name was Maria. What it was before then does not matter. I did not know any of the faces of the people in the town, and they did not know mine. In fact, none of them even knew anyone who would know my face. To them I existed only when I first set foot in their little world. Beyond the outlying farms of the town was a vast unknown, revealed to them only in stories. I arrived as an innocuous traveller out of this unknown. A blank canvas upon which they would only see whatever I painted. For Maria her past could be whatever she wanted. Which meant so could her future.
For this was France, or at least it would be one day again. For now, who could tell? It was a land of chaos and unrest. Everywhere one went, and I had been to many places since Paris, there were tales. Some you could believe, some you could not believe, and some you did not want to believe. Massacres in Vendee, rivers flowing with corpses, armies coming from every direction to destroy France or save it. There were stories of farmers being killed for their grain, of fields being burned. There were stories of heads piled high along the streets of Paris. Some said the devil had ridden across the country. People said a lot of things. They said things about a lot of people. It was a time of fantasy. The entire country had been stirred up. Mercenaries, armies, displaced people, refugees, the lost, the forgotten all moved across France, carrying with them rumours and stories. It was not so hard to leave a life behind and start a new one.
The town was perfect. Not so big to be noticed by the revolution, not so small that I would be noticed by too many. I walked in with a trickle of other lost, forgotten souls. The sky was grey, and the street was muddy. The air hung cold and damp around. It was still early in the morning, but already I had been walking for hours. My body was stiff with cold and fatigue. There were few people out of doors from the town, and those few there were looked at us waifs as you would look at a dirty beggar that came crawling up to you asking for pity. I did not ask for anything. I needed no pity.
It did not take me long to find the inn. There was a fire ablaze in the hearth and it was warm. That was all I appreciated and noticed when I first entered that inn. The innkeeper looked at me disapprovingly. I had not expected to be welcomed with open arms. But I just needed a moment to warm myself. Before the urge to remove me could become too substantial in him I approached the innkeeper and gave him enough money for room and board for a month. His disposition to me changed entirely. “Mademoiselle,” he boomed warmly, his thick moustache rising with his smile, “it will be a pleasure to have you here. Please can I ask what is your name?”
“Call me Maria,” I said and left my old life behind and started a new one.
That night I dreamt of blood. Visions were all shrouded with red. Paris was covered with it. I was covered with it. Violence, so much violence. The hacking and slashing. The anger and satisfaction as a knife was driven through an abdomen. The scream. Bodies, so many bodies, they were everywhere. The bodies walled me in, preventing my escape. There was a child. There was a man I had loved. A laugh. A terrible, hideous laugh that forced joy from horror. Pleasure was torn from the flesh and organs of the dying and dead. The laugh. That terrible laugh. It came through, it came to me.
I woke up in the room I had paid for in the inn. I was Maria now. That dream, those nightmares, they belonged to a life that no longer existed. Blood, violence, and that hideous laugh did not exist in the life of Maria. But I supposed, Maria had only been born yesterday. All Maria was right now was a woman who had arrived in a town and paid for a room. I needed to become more. I needed to fill this life so that there was no room for any other lives or for that terrible laughter.
When I awoke the next morning, I was resolved to spend the day creating my new life, past, present, and future. I went down to the inn. The innkeeper and his wife were there, as well as numerous other visitors to the inn, and townspeople. From the talk I could tell I was in the right place. They were of course talking about the revolution. What was not about the revolution these days? These were people far from Paris or anywhere else. News came here late if ever, and what came had been twisted far from truth. What struck me also was the naivety. They spoke freely about Robespierre, Hebert, the king, about Britain, and Austria as if they were characters in a book, or from antiquity. They had no idea.
I sat on the edge of the conversation gauging where Maria fit here before I was brought in by the innkeeper. “Mademoiselle Maria, you have been to Paris have you not? Surely you can offer an interesting perspective,” he asked me kindly. The rest of the party turned, noticing me for the first time. A young man who evidently thought himself the most important part of the room, that was draped over a chair scoffed and muttered something apparently hilarious to his friend seated next to him. I smiled meekly. Apparently, Maria also had a Parisian accent. Well a small truth within a lie makes the lie more palatable. “You are correct sir. I grew up in Paris. But I have not been there for many years.” I must not be too interesting, and if Maria had been in Paris recently, she would be most interesting. “This last ten years I have been living in the countryside with my husband,” I continued.
“And where is your husband,” the young man drawled.
“He is dead,” the biggest truth I had yet uttered. The sadness in my voice came through real as the day it had begun. I noticed the young man now took an interest in me. “As for my perspective on anything else, I trust only in God to guide France and her people through all trials that may befall us,” I finished demurely.
This elicited approving murmurs from the crowd, and the conversation went on without me. These backwater people were evidently unlearned in much of the finer points of the revolution. They liked to talk about it, and found some of the idea’s novel. But they were a simple people further from Paris politically than they were geographically. They could perhaps stomach the execution of a king but not of God. Maria needed to be a good Christian woman if she was to be anything.
I did not fail to notice that the young man continued to look at me with a hungry look in his eye. The conversation of the townspeople continued and he interjected with snide, and what he thought were witty remarks, but always he turned back to me. Another woman who no longer existed would have said something about this, might even have done something about it. However, Maria continued to sit and smile pleasantly and blended into her new life.
That night I suffered no dreams or nightmares. I allowed myself to think that perhaps they and the reasons for them really were part of another life, someone else’s life, and not Maria’s.
It transpired that the inn was a hub of the town. People who lived in the town came their regularly, not just those few who were passing through to somewhere more interesting. I quickly became acquainted with many of the townspeople. I was interesting enough without people being curious about me. Of course, they wanted to know where I had been, and why I was here, and where would I go next? Maria had been born in Paris as I had already established. Before my tenth birthday I had gone to live with my grandparents in the countryside. During my years there I had met my future husband, the son of a wealthy farmer. We had been married and happy. We had a child. Then the revolution came. Our farm had been attacked and my husband killed. Me and my child had to fend for ourselves. The child had sickened, and died. With the last of my husband’s wealth I had travelled as far as I could to search for a new life. I hoped I had found it here. I hoped I would spend my life here.
The tragedy of my past made the people sympathetic to me, without wishing to pry too much into that dark period. My hope for a better future, and my intention to stay here also meant that people accepted me as a permanent fixture and also looked towards the future of Maria as well. I was what I should be: a simple woman.
Everyone in the town was so nice to me, it became easy to wear the skin of Maria. The harshness of another life was forgotten and replaced by something so different. I was safe. The only threat to this was the arrogant young man. His name was Charles. He was the son of a wealthy merchant, and was now also forging his own success and wealth. He was of that breed of men that are not used to being told no, that expect what they want to come to them. A wretched beast that would be dead already if this were Paris. But of course, I did not know about Paris. When he made comments about me as I passed him in the street, I put my head down and hurried on. When he stumbled drunkenly towards me in the inn, I made sure to dart to my room and hide. There were no more dreams. No more nightmares.
As the good Christian woman I was I had come to spend much of my time in the church of the town. The nuns were my companions. I read with them, prayed with them, it was my intention to join them. Maria would not love another man, and did not want the nightmares to come back. Where better for me then?
One day I stayed at the church very late. The sun had long since set before I realised that I should get back to the inn. I bade farewell to the nuns with the promise I would return tomorrow. I walked the dark roads of the town alone, yet unafraid. Close to the inn I was grabbed. A hand was across my face preventing me from screaming. At my breast was a hand holding a knife. I struggled for a moment before the knife pressed into me hard, drawing blood. “Come now Maria. Not like this,” the man who grabbed me breathed into my ear. It was Charles. I could feel his hot breath waft past my face, thick with the smell of brandy. I relaxed to ease the press of the knife. Instead I felt him press up against me from behind. The hand holding the knife now also groped at my breast. “No,” I thought, “this can’t happen. No. I am Maria!” He lifted up my skirt. Fear fell away. Maria fell away. There was red.
I bit down on his hand. Hard. There was blood. Charles was so drunk and surprised he could not react. In an instant the knife was out of his hand and in mine. An instant after that I had buried the knife to the hilt in his chest. He looked down as the red blood spread through his clothes. I smiled terribly. I pulled the knife out and put it back in, again, and again, and again. I ruined his torso, neck, and face. Red, so much red. It was exhilarating.
I do not know how long I was stabbing Charles for. When I finished I looked down at the mess for a long time more. There was nothing left of the man Charles. Slowly Maria came back. What had I done? Maria did not kill people. I did not kill people. There could be no more nightmares.
I ran. What else could I do? If I was found there with the body it would be over for me. I needed time. I could control this. I could control myself. This was a new life. I flew through the night like smoke on the wind. It was late and everyone was sleeping…I hoped. I shot through the inn like a flash. There was no one there but the innkeeper asleep at his desk. I slammed the door to my room shut behind me and fell down against it. A feeling of safety began to return. With it came anger at Charles. He had to die of course. I had no remorse for that. But how dare he make me kill him after I had tried so hard to avoid that. How dare he risk my new life. That stupid, arrogant…I saw the blood again. The wreck of his body. I felt my hands clench on the knife and slam it through him, felt the power, the joy. I was laughing. I had to stop. I put my hand in my mouth to try and stifle the laughter that poured out of me. This was not me. This was not Maria. Under no circumstance could I let myself sleep. I had to stay awake.
The nightmares started again. Red and bloody. Murder and joy. There were so many bodies piled all around me, the empty husks that had had the life torn from them. I reached out to them with bloody hands. I should cover my eyes but I did not want to. Blood ran along the streets of Paris into hidden alcoves where hideous creatures performed their terrible work. More bodies came spinning out of them becoming bricks that built a city of death. Mausoleums rose up like cathedrals as the bodies were stacked so high they became lost in the red sky. The laughter came cracking through the air like lightning, shrill and insidious, a twisted, reflection in the dark of joy. I followed the poison trail of laughter back to its source. Back to myself.
The picture became clearer and coalesced from nightmare into memory. The city of death became the Paris I had known and lived in. The laughter faded under the buzz of the crowd. The bodies became people, alive, but angry. I was there caught in the middle of it all, with my beloved Henri, and dear little Pascal, his hand clinging to mine so tightly. We just wanted to get through the crowd to get home. There was shouting all around. I looked into the faces of so many angry people. Henri was forging a path for us. We would be safe soon. There was a crackle that passed through the noise of the crowd somewhere unseen ahead of us: gunfire. The crowd surged. Pascal’s hand slipped away from mine. I turned but could not see him; only the angry faces. They swirled around me. The crush of bodies was too much.
Later on, too late, the crowd had cleared. There were bodies everywhere. I found him lying in the street. My poor little Pascal broken. I clung to his body, and I laughed hideously as the person I had been died with my son.
Henri took me back to our home. Nothing made sense for a long time. Weeks passed and I did not leave my room. Paris changed around me. By the time I went out again I barely recognised the city. But I did recognise the faces. I recognised those angry faces from the crowd that had killed my son. That was when the nightmares had started. The red had filled my head. I killed them. I killed so many of them. Bodies filled the streets. There were less and less faces I recognised from the crowd, it no longer mattered. The crowd had been huge. I could only have seen a small number of them. They would all die. The red filled even my waking eyes now. I had seen so much blood, surely the streets would flow with it soon. Each time I killed one of them I laughed with the memory of Pascal ever present. That laughter which had been the broken mourning for my son became the broken joy I felt in killing. It filled my memories, my nightmares, my waking hours.
Henri could have lived. I had retained enough of my old self to not shed his blood. He had become afraid of me. He knew what I was doing of course. I was not even really trying to hide it. Henri urged me to stop, said it could all be ok, nobody knew what had happened, it wasn’t too late. I told him it was too late by far. He followed me that night and watched me, saw what I did. When I slit the girl’s throat Henri yelled. I was upon him in an instant, and then he was dead. The laughter died in my throat as I looked into his dead eyes, the same eyes as Pascal. My Henri. Lights came on and I heard footsteps coming. I ran. My life here really was over now. I burst back into our house and grabbed the money we had saved and ran again. I did not stop running for hours, until I was far from the city. My feet took me along a road I did not recognise for days. During this time, I killed my old self as I had killed so many others. I would find a new life. Maria was born.
The sun had come up. I realised I had slept, and then woken. How long had I been sitting there staring back into that other life that had ended not so long ago. But it hadn’t ended really had it? Here I was sat in bloody clothes once more. Did it really matter if I called myself Maria or something else? If my soul was damned it would not matter what the name for it was. Did it even matter any longer if I was to be damned? The two people I had cared the most about were gone, one taken from me, the other killed by my own hand, and there was a hole where they had been. Instead of filling that hole something dark and twisted had crawled out. A madness had risen out of some hidden depth within me, something that was not meant for this world, something I could not control or expel. Perhaps the worst part was that I did not want to be rid of this monstrous affliction. I understood I should fear and hate it. That I should reject it absolutely and put all my strength into returning to the light. But, how could I? I began to think that maybe the good in me, the part of me that could delight in the light and living, that truly human part of me, had really died with Pascal that day in the streets of Paris. For was it not true that the only joy I had taken since that day had been in death and violence. I felt warmed to admit it. Death was my life now as living had been denied to me.
There was a knock on the door behind me. “Maria are you in there,” it was the innkeeper. I rose up off of the floor slowly. I smiled the smile of a creature bathed in death. I stood there draped in blood like it was armour. I opened the door. The innkeeper paled at the sight of me. He was silent, unable to comprehend the world in which Maria had been born from. I was still smiling as I looked down to see that the knife was still in my hand. Of course it was. A musician would not drop its instrument. I stabbed the innkeeper and laughed. I made music only I could hear.
Several days later I was approaching another town. There were more soldiers on the road this time. I had managed to kill one a few days back. It was beautiful. This town was larger than the last. This pleased me. There was much more music to be made. I found an inn and was accepted when I paid for my room. “What may I ask shall I call you mademoiselle?” the innkeeper asked.
“Call me Maria,” I said, smiling.
storiesbyadam 