The Mirrorverse
Chapter 23

Ellie

The victory seemed hollow. Ellie seemed hollow. She was leaving the university, having been told that she got a distinction in her master’s degree in mental health studies. She should have been happy, jubilant that the hard work had paid off, but there was a vortex where her limbic system should have been.

She hesitated for a moment, before heading in the opposite direction to the flat she shared with three others. She didn’t want to deal with people.

Ellie turned left towards the park, wondering if the green space would clear her head. Unlikely, she thought, nothing can clear my head.

She had given Maya up for dead. Made a pact with herself to go on, to leave that part of her life behind her. She had been applying for doctorate studentships as far away as Australia, to move on, start afresh. Then Maya woke up.

It’s not that she didn’t want her to wake up, she did with all her heart, but she wanted Maya to be at rest, and wanted to get on with her own life. Ellie didn’t want her to go through all that had happened again, Maya had been through enough torment for many lifetimes, not just a few short years worth.

When Maya awoke all the emotions that Ellie had bottled up just came flooding back, along with her love of her best friend. When she got sick, it cut Ellie up inside too, it wasn’t just Maya that suffered. But there was a part of Ellie, however small that resented Maya for bringing it all back up again.

There was no question that Maya believed, truly believed unwaveringly in the monsters that haunted her, the hell her brain had created was completely real. Alas her uncanny knack for escaping from locked rooms meant that no-one could ever keep an eye on her at all times.

Ellie was not proud of the fact that she tried to distance herself from Maya, many times in fact. She just ran out of energy trying to look after someone so far separated from the real world. During her Psychology degree, Ellie got evicted from two shared houses for having Maya showing up suddenly, talking crazy talk, and even attacking a flatmate on one occasion.

A horn blared and Ellie realised she was stood in the middle of Denmark Hill, her hands on the hot bonnet of a car. She just stood there, staring into the car at the two children strapped into the back seat, wondering how she had just walked across a road without looking. It seemed right then like her whole life was just a stroll without looking.

She entered the park, looking at the trees, wondering what Maya’s mind would have created at that moment, in that park. Not all of her creations were dark, she had many creatures that were friendly, and beautiful worlds that she was sad to leave. She told Ellie of the football sized flowers, and the low gravity of one place where you can bounce around, free as a bird.

Ellie looked around at the beauty of the park in autumn, at the leaves in every colour of gold, falling from trees with the light breeze that rustled them. She laughed when she saw a couple hiding underneath their picnic blanket for warmth. The laughter died away as she watched them huddling together, sharing their body heat, their lives. Ellie had no-one. No-one except her crazy best friend, sleeping, probably never to wake up.

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