Do All Paths Lead to One?

Marie always knew freedom would be bitter. What she hadn’t expected was for sand and dried blood to stain her tastebuds salty, instead of sweet. 

Bare feet trudged and scrapped against the sandy excuse of a pavement, flayed and baked by the afternoon sun. The world felt like it had a fever, violently wringing the sweat from Marie’s skin, like what one would do to a slightly damp towel. Overheated, the teenager waddled down the side of the desolate highway. 

The blood that was splattered on Marie’s person had dried and with each languid movement, it cracked off her dark skin and dishevelled clothing. Tracks were left instead of footprints from dragging sore feet, marked by the bleeding from her soles and toes. Dry and barren land absorbed the moisture of her crimson tail, reducing it to mere smudges of red. 

Aside from the endless road, nothing could be spotted for miles. It was just a sheet of yellow sky and rippling air in the distance, as the heat distorted reality. A part of Marie was somewhat grateful for the isolation. No one was present to witness her walk of shame. The only eyes of judgement came from the potential deity above. 

Her mind was weightless, but her head hung heavy from her neck. Both pleaded for water. Her back cried for reprise and her stomach punished her for depriving it of food. Marie was too preoccupied with nothingness to feel concerned about her current state. Every crack she tripped on, every piece of scarce flora poking from the ground that tore at her feet, she refused to acknowledge. A void had enticed her to idle existence. 

 All she could do was pursue this aimless battle of putting one foot after the other.

She would have to stop eventually. She knew this. This path she was on had to end at some point, both literally and metaphorically. It was only for so long her mouth could feed off of its own dry saliva before she collapsed. And there was only so much time she could enjoy meaningless freedom until she would face lawful atonement for her sins. 

Her foot squelched as it planted itself into something soft and slippery. Marie looked down to see a mangle of black feathers and dry organs. 

She had stepped in roadkill. 

She didn’t even have the will to look disgusted. Nor the energy to shiver as the gore evoked the image of a rotund human corpse before her vision. Though it was only there for a second, she could recall every feature of the gruesome scenery; the eyes rolled back into its skull and a face contorted in eternal agony had ingrained itself, like a thumbprint, in her mind.

She looked down at her caked hands. Dried blood broke away from her skin as she flexed her palms. She could see the cylinder-shaped indent on her right hand, where she had held the knife. 

And that was all it took to take her back to the moment. 

Her father wailed an animal’s cry, face disgruntled. The blood was hot as it splashed on skin and seeped through clothes. The knife gouged against flesh and blood, stabbing motions fuelled by adrenaline and the rebound of one’s sanity snapping. Each stab was reimbursement for every slap, every punch, every whip with the metal side of the belt, paid back thrice over. 

The butchering had continued, even after her father’s eyes had stopped moving. However, Marie had still heard an animal wailing. 

It wasn’t until the adrenaline had drained from her pounding eardrums that she realised the wailing was coming from herself.  

She always thought that the loss of a parent would always be a gut-wrenching experience as your mind tried to process grief. She also always thought that the death of a villain would always be a satisfying victory and a righteous display of the universe’s justice. She was wrong about both presumptions. She had felt neither as she stared down at the aftermath of her slaughter. 

Retribution never felt so mortifying. 

She remembered emptying her stomach on the carpeted floor, before fleeing the gas station, which had served as both her home and her father’s place of work. In such a panic state, she had never formulated a plan of how she was going to get away with murder. She questioned whether she still wanted to get away with murder since she still didn’t have a plan. 

So she kept walking. 

It had to be done, said her Lucifer. He deserved it! Think of everything he put you through. Did you want to end up like Mama?

Her head hurt. 

But it was still wrong! What you did was still wrong! Shouted her Peter. 

She stopped walking. The shaking in her legs was no longer from exhaustion. Shame and grief bit at her from the inside out. She wasn’t even hydrated enough to cry at the pain. All she could do was cringe in a silent, tearless sob. 

Look at how much you’re trembling, Said her Peter. You had so few paths to begin with, and yet you wasted your life journey on the dimmest one. What would Mama think?  

What would Mama think? 

She’d probably thank you for doing the world a favour, said her Lucifer. You may have damned yourself to hell, but at least you’ll revel in eternal satisfaction watching that fat bastard burning for the rest of existence alongside you. 

She screamed at nothing.

Though it came out as more of a raspy shriek, it rattled her mind as if her ears were next to a truck’s horn. She collapsed to her knees. She couldn’t continue bearing the weight of her body, or her crime, on her feet any longer. She couldn’t bear the weight of what it meant to be cursed to be born as Marie Sotstilll, daughter and murderer of an alcoholic gas jockey. 

She closed her eyes, neither content nor dissatisfied with being another casualty on the side of a highway. She couldn’t bring herself to figure out if the feeling of emptiness was the becoming of a heat stroke or the absence of the desire to be alive. She couldn’t even bring herself to die lying down and simply slouched her torso against her thighs.  

There was a time when Marie used to be able to dream. 

Back when she was small enough to sit on her mother’s lap as she listened to her favourite fairy tales of beautiful princesses being swooped away by their Prince Charming in shiny heels and perky dresses. Back when her mother was still around to complain about the endings of those kinds of stories. But, she had always forfeited her discomfort for her one and only child. Not without, of course, grumbling that it would be nicer if these tales portrayed a happy ending that was shaped by the actions of the heroine, instead of a Prince Charming. She had always said that life was a web of your own weaving. 

Such memories were often a comforting thought. Reliving her childhood fantasies of being a pretty princess who had their own Prince Charming coming to take her away from her scary and isolated life. They were really comforting… until Marie reached the part of the memory where her father would finish his shift for the day, in the gas station, below their flat.  

How incredible it was that a slow pattern of creaks and heavy footsteps up a staircase could evoke such erratic heartbeats in their chests. How miraculous, even, that the setting of the sun could convert a peaceful day to contained chaos of yelling, banging and muffled violence from beyond young Marie’s bedroom walls. They were always so noisy. Marie would wrap her pillows around her braided scalp to shield her ears, but it was never enough to block out the sound of her mother shrieking. 

Would prayer have been appropriate in those moments when young Marie was patiently waiting for her Prince Charming to arrive? 

Would prayer save her now?

It’s always at the part where the heroine is at her lowest that someone appears on the next page to save her…

Her mother’s face brightens into focus. Her coily hair, her rich dark skin, and her voice. A raspy alto, from years of smoking, derides the ending of that story; Why don’t they ever create their own happy ending? Life is a web of your own weaving and they really should promote it as such. Why are they always just waiting for something to happen for them? 

Whether it was by Prince Charming or Death himself, why wait for something to happen for you? 

Marie opened her eyes, blinking away the sand littering her lids. 

A new desire pushed her to sit on her heels, hunched over her thighs. Her arms wobbled to plant her hands on either side of her knees as she coughed up dust. Too weary to doubt herself, she looked ahead of her path, preparing to do the impossible. 

She was surrounded by lifeless desert. The main road had disappeared. Marie had wandered away from the main road. 

The universe spun as she made her way to her feet. The moon and stars twinkled on her eyeballs and bits of debris rolled down her shins. She dragged her body to twirl on the spot, to get a better picture of where she had ended up. 

She was on a clear path; A lighter shade of naked earth and boulder rubble formed a meandering line. There were two more trails to her left and two more to her right, all simmering to the far beyond in their respective directions, dipping below the horizon. All five paths converged into a wider one that shimmered under the mirage in the distance, leading straight ahead…

Marie scoffed, which turned into a choking cough. Were these paths put here purely to mock her? Five paths coming together to merge into one; she couldn’t help but see it as a sign that no matter which choice she made, she would have ended up where she was now, regardless: alone, miserable, on the verge of giving up before she had even met adulthood, meagre remains of an already-empty shell. 

Life is a web of your own weaving. Yet, she never even got a chance to get the sewing basket out. 

The back of her mind acknowledged that she was most likely delirious. Finding meaning in simple geography wasn’t reasonable. Or maybe the heat stroke was finally in effect, and everything she saw was a fragment of her imagination. 

An eagle flew above her head, cawing into still air. 

It had been hours since she last heard a real voice that felt natural and it felt jarring to be reminded that she wasn’t the only one left alive in the world. Had she imagined that too? It was gone as quickly as it came. Perhaps, she didn’t look dead enough for the bird to want to stay. 

From an eagle’s-eye-view, she must have looked like a foreign creature, risen from the Earth itself, from the amount of sand and dust that coated her figure. From an eagle’s-eye-view, the paths probably just looked like paths and not some spiritual deeper representation of her life. 

The trails might have looked like a hand-shaped intersection of winding footpaths, a hand reaching out beyond where she stood, towards the crime scene she left behind… Or a hand beckoning her to the space beyond…

She dragged her feet towards the intersection, where five became one. Each step threatened to incapacitate her. One bare foot after the other bare foot, to the intersection, beyond the intersection, down a wider path, onwards from there. 

Wavering in the faraway mirage, she spotted a green sign. She couldn’t make out the letters from where she was walking. Could it be a ‘Welcome’ sign for the next city over? 

Did she dare hope it was? What would happen if she got to a city? Would she be arrested? Would anyone ever find out about her crime? 

Or could she get a fresh start in life? 

She walked with her back as straight as she could manage and her head held as high as her aching neck would allow and she kept walking. 

Uncertainty was scary. 

Murder was heavy. 

Despite that… Hope was thriving.

Her life wasn’t anyone else’s to determine any more. She could die once she had used up the life her mother had given her. Her web could actually be weaved to her liking. 

The thing was, she had to keep moving forward.