End of the World

The doors creaked loudly as Mary opened them, entering the orphanage. Many people looked at her as she walked in, and only a few didn't look away. One of these people wasn't unfamiliar to her and he smiled evilly, walking over to Mary.

"Look who it is," he began, "the kid with the insanity problems."

"Zip it, Scott," snapped Mary, "and I don't have 'insanity problems'. Besides, I'm older than you, don't call me kid." It was true; although Mary was two years older than Scott, he seemed to be abnormally tall, towering over pretty much everybody in the orphanage, including the owners.

"Oh, somebody's cranky."

"I said zip it." Scott just laughed.

"Who says 'zip it' anymore, anyway?"

"I mean it, or else."

"Or else what?" Mary really wanted to finish the comeback, but she couldn't; she knew she wasn't brave enough to go through with a threat. Instead, she just turned away, her black her whipping through the air, and continued on to the room that she shared with a few other girls about her age.

Nobody was in the room when she got there, which was good; she could be all by herself, alone with her thoughts of the day. The girls were hardly ever in the room, as they were either outside enjoying the sun or, as the oldest in the orphanage, trying to help the owners with their daily tasks.

Mary lay on her bed, wanting the day to end so she could go to sleep so she could forget all of her waking troubles. It didn't stop there, though; in her dreams, the horrible night would play over and over in her head. But it didn't just end at everybody dying, no; it continued on to her therapist, telling her that suicide wasn't the right thing to do, telling her that he'd keep trying to talk her out of it, even if it killed him, and then the children from school and the orphanage teasing her of the problems she had.

This is why I'd rather be dead.

Before she went to sleep each night, she created a world in her head where she had plenty of family and friends surrounding her. Right before she plunged into the lonely darkness of sleep, though, she would always remember that she didn't have any family or friends anymore, and the world would be ruined; everybody ripped apart at the seams, the world bursting into flames before her very eyes. There was no safe zone for Mary, even the things most people called dreams were twisted images of Hell, being replayed in her mind until she awoke, just for the cycle to begin all over again the next morning.

She heard footsteps and laughing coming her way. Mary knew it was just best to lay motionless and pretend she wasn't even there.

"Yeah, that was great," she heard one laugh as she opened the door, before looking over at Mary and scowling, "oh. It's you."

"Hello, Emma," sighed Mary, sinking back into her pillow even more.

"Did I give you permission to speak?"

"No," she mumbled. Everybody, even the people sharing the same room as her, liked to take advantage of her mental condition; they all knew she was more likely to be quiet and reserved than wanting to speak to everybody and make some new friends.

Emma, to Mary, was like the classic bad guy; she was mean without even trying and had her two best friends, who were like minions to her. But, then again, everybody seemed to want to be the bad guys in Mary's life.

The three girls continued talking about their day, trying to make it sound even better than it was, just to tease Mary. Soon enough, Emma turned to Mary.

"And what did you do?

"You don't wanna know."

"Sure I do," Emma tried to lie convincingly, although Mary knew enough about people lying now to know if somebody, especially somebody like Emma, was lying. Mary knew that she wouldn't be left alone until she told them what she did, though, so she gave up.

"If you really must know, I went to the therapist."

"Oh, right!" Emma acted surprised, even though she knew very well of Mary going to the therapist every few days, "you have that mental problem, don't you? The one where you want to just kill yourself, so you have to get professional help for it."

"It's called depression," Mary informed her, anger building up slowly; she had had enough of being teased for one day.

"Well, Ms. Depressed," began Emma, "if you want to kill yourself so much, why don't you just do it right here, right now?"

"Because I can't."

"Why, because you're too afraid?" Mary shook her head, "then why not?"

"Does it look like there's anything around that I can do it with?"

"That's where you're wrong," Emma smiled, looking around to one of her friends, "Allie, go reach under my bed. You know what you're looking for." The girl named Allie nodded as she stood from where she was sitting and went over to one of the beds. She reached underneath and, after finding what she was looking for, pulled her arm back out.

"Where'd you get that?" gasped Mary in surprise.

"I stole it while Jen wasn't looking," Mary was even more surprised now; Jen, one of the owners of the orphanage, hardly turned an eye away from things like that, "so go on, Mary. I dare you." Emma handed Mary the gun as she sat up.

Mary checked to see if the gun was loaded. She didn't even see why Jen needed a gun; sure, it wasn't the safest neighborhood, but it wasn't dangerous enough to have the need to keep a gun around. Seeing the bullets in the gun, she put it back to the way she found it and put it to her head.

She was afraid. Was she really about to end her own life just because somebody told her to? Emma had just voiced what Mary had been thinking ever since the day after her life had been crushed into thousands of tiny pieces, and somebody actually agreeing with her just proved that he life was meaningless.

Mary was shivering now. It shouldn't be this hard, she thought, it should be easier than this.

"What are you waiting for?" Emma asked with an evil smile upon her face. Mary looked over at the other girls; Allie looked confused and the other, Alex, looked kind of scared that Mary was actually going to pull the trigger.

Mary could hear something outside the room.

"Y'know what," Mary said as she handed back the gun, "today has actually given me a lot to think about. Maybe tomorrow," Emma was confused, staring blankly at Mary, the gun laid flat in her hand.

The doorknob turned, revealing the person that Emma and her friend least wanted to see at that moment.

"Emma!" exclaimed Jen, "how did you get that in your possession? Come with me," she looked over to Emma's friends, "both of you, too." Emma shot an evil glance to Mary, who fake smiled as best she could.

"Have fun."

"Once the four had left, Mary lay back down and sighed; why hadn't she just pulled the trigger when the gun was in her hands? Was it because she wanted Emma to be disappointed, or was she incapable of taking her own life? She liked to believe that it was to see Emma not have what she wanted; of course she was capable of killing herself. After all, it's what she had wanted for a while now.

She had been stupid; she should have done it there and then. It probably would have been quite a scare to the three girls, but it would have been perfect.