The Nightmare

Illustrated by Samantha Fulton. 

[MARY, 50.]

There is someone sitting on my chest. 

I know him, of course. We are old friends.

He looks down at me through a curtain of dark hair. His skin is nearly translucent. His eyes are a little yellow; a little decayed. But I smile, because I recognise them.

[pause]

Mara. Do you know what a Mara is? It’s a demon. Mara — mare — nightmare. Nothing to do with horses.

I am good friends with nightmares.

There is one sitting on my chest. I could move him, of course. He is quite small, and I am used to moving small bodies. Children’s bodies, living and dead. I am used to holding tiny bundles in my arms and weeping or laughing or sitting silently watching the sea. So, the Mara, sitting on my chest, is no problem for me. I know them.

We have been here before, my Mara and me. Not here, specifically. Not this place- somewhere further, cleaner and purer. Geneva. But here — yes. The Mara has been here.  

I like to have him here. It’s company. Sometimes he’s been good to me. 

You might even have read our book. 

But sometimes, perhaps more frequently, he brings me names. 

Wollstonecraft. Godwin. Shelley. 

Identities which press down on me more than the dark, translucent, yellow thing. 

He’ll sprinkle names on my breasts: Percy, Percy, Edward, William. Victor.

 Hello, Victor, I say, looking up at him.

 I am not Victor, he replies. 

No, I say, but you are not my creature, my last man, my Percy either, are you? No, he replies, I am not, I am not. What are you, I ask, and stroke his arms, which have the texture of pearls — and the weight, which is crushing my ribs, which is compressing my lungs. He does not reply. Instead, he smiles. His teeth are the colour of the alps.

[beat]

Sometimes I take it out of the desk and hold it. My husband’s heart. It is heavier than you would have thought from how he spoke and laughed and drank. It feels like a rock; like it is still being dragged under the waves. I find it odd to hold it, when I held everything that was around it. I felt his guts. I felt his pancreas. His teeth wrapped around my finger. I squeezed his eyes between my palms. I was there with him, when Byron set him alight, when he went up in flames. I sat on his chest on the funeral pyre and wept and watched his pretty young face melt into ash.

Mara. Mary. Mara. Mother. Mara. 

I fucked him on her grave. 

The thing that is sitting on my chest looks down at me. 

What are you, I ask.

How can I be rid of you?

It does not answer of course. It does not need to. 

We are old friends.

I know her.