Yellow sky

The wind moaned and wailed in agony as it pulled and tugged on skeletal trees while carelessly ripping away any leaves that they were clinging on to. Behind those trees, the sky illuminated them in a sickly yellow that grey tattered clouds tried their hardest to cover up. The land around those trees was barren and fruitless. It was as if all life on earth had fled out of fear of something - something Mary was rapidly approaching.

Mary was a girl who demanded little attention but was drowned in it by her parents. As a child, she was her mother's doll. Being small, beautiful and fragile, she'd been a prize to her parents; her wide hazelnut eyes against her umber skin were both enhanced by her neat tight coils in pigtails and her starched puffy dresses had garnered her parents admiration from their peers. They revelled in it and paraded her every chance they got in the market, events, and even church. She secretly lived for it but silently condemned it with her closed off mannerisms and limited comments on any given topic, be it how she was or what she wanted to eat. Her closed off and angelic nature had garnered her contempt from her two older siblings who saw right through her veneer. They were disgusted by how shamelessly she could put on this perfect act and even more so by their parents' gullibility and took it upon themselves to take on the aspects of parenting that their parents could not stomach.

As she grew older, her beauty warped into a burden that she needed to be protected from in order to preserve her innonence. No measures were too ludicrous when it came to achieving this. Homeschooling, limited trips into the outside world, and little to no contact with the opposite sex whom Mary did not share blood with were all rigidly enforced into her adolescent life. She despised every one of them. Her silent condemnation had turned to loathful internalised resistance, which pushed her to thoroughly reject each and every measure her parents put in place. She was powerless to physically reject these measures, which enraged her and festered into envy and contempt for her older sister, who indulged in the freedom granted to her by her parents disregard for their oldest child. She was seen as ugly, unclean, and of the world, but to Mary, she had the best thing anyone could ask for. It was she who gifted Mary her freedom but had cursed into the inescapable hell beyond both of their imaginations.

The third night of Mary's eighteenth year had been one of agony for her. Years of solitude had become torturous and made her restless and reckless. By then, she had done away with the concept of consequences and was willing to do anything for a small taste of liberty.

After she knew that her parents had succumbed to sleep, she silently crawled over to her sister's bedroom where she was exhilarated by the clinks and jingles of her sister's jewellery which reminded her of the weight of her transgression yet to come. Her doubts began to crush her as she prepared to knock on her sister's door but knew that if she did not swallow her fear now she'd be condemned to her parent's will for the rest of her life. She knew that she would never be this brave again and would trap herself into a loop of failed attempts to grasp her freedom. She had to do it now.

Weakly, she tapped at the door still on her hands and knees, and when she received no reply, she considered returning back to her bedroom but steeled herself and knocked once again - stronger now.

"Yes?" Grunted her sister. Mary's throat tightened and silenced her.

"Hm?" Her sister grunted again more annoyed. Now Mary had grown bolder.

"It's me," Mary forced out weakly, "Mary."

"Mary?" Her sister's toned had softned by then, "is everything alright? It's late." This response reinvigorated her fury and forced her to restrain it lest her already wavering freedom would slip through her fingers.

"No." She harshly whispered, "Nothing is alright. Nothing! Please let me in Lilith, or I may lose my mind in this house!" Lilith swung open her door and hauled up her whimpering sister. Holistically, Lilith lay Mary on her bed and sat down on her stool opposite her.

Lilith was dazzling. She was adorned in small golden stars around her neck, waist,  wrists, and ears, which overshone her dark mauve long sleeved dress and Prussian blue waistcoat and complimented her rich and cool dark skin.  Her black coiled hair was tired behind a light red scarf smothered in intricate geometric black patterns, and her face was delicately decorated with purple eye shadow and deep red lipstick. Her beauty was otherworldly to Mary and increased her envy of her.

Lilith's room was clutered and claustrophobic. Piles of clothes and boxes were stacked high against aged browning white walls, for they had nowhere else to go. Her bed was narrow, wooden, and concaved due to being broken years prior. It left barely any room for her wardrobe and stool to the point where Lilith's knees grazed against her bed when she sat down on her small wooden stool.

The two women gazed at each other in anticipated silence; both desperately searching for the right words to say. Lilith spoke first.

"So you fear that you will lose your mind if you stay here?"

"Yes," Mary muttered in embarrassment over her previous outburst. Lilith chuckled to herself over her sister's naivety. "Please," she began to plead, "please, wherever you go, please take me with you."

"No." Lilith barked - serious now.

"Please!"

"I can not let you."

"Why?"

"Because who knows what our parents will do to me if they hear of me letting you out into the night. I will hear no more of it. Leave my room and go back to sleep." Lilith rose from her stool, shuffled to her door, and opened it with the expectation of her sister choosing the rational option. Realising her defeat, Mary reluctantly rose from her sister's bed with the knowledge that her grasp at freedom had been a foolish fantasy. In those moments, Lilith's door had transfigured into a portal of oppressing darkness that was in-between the normalcy that Mary had grown to despise and the world of the unknown. Mary lost the only choice she'd ever had.

Within her bedroom, Mary twisted and turned restlessly in her bed; tortured by her irrepressible urge for her sister's world. She knew she couldn't stay in this prison lest she would lose her mind. It was here that she planned her liberation.

Mary listened closely for her sister to leave. After she was certain her sister had travelled far enough to not notice Mary following her, Mary hastily dressed herself in her church dress since it was the only dress she had worn outside, wrapped herself in her mother's shawl and departed into the new world ignorant of her older brother's keen eye.

Everything about the outside world was frightening. The harsh wind bit into her skin, and the ghoulish cold lamps turned the cobble stone streets into a ghastly ghost town. The grimy grey homes lining the street were mashed and squashed together and sneered at Mary with their glowing angular yellow eyes. The owners either glowered at her or yelled obscenties and promised at her that were foreign to her. Even the spirits of the streets judged her for her foolishness. Her only comfort was her sister's silhouette and the constant jingling of her jewellery.

Mary's panic truly set in when Lilith disappeared into a bar and made Mary truly feel alone for the first time. Defying her plan, she ran into the bar after her sister in the hopes of being close to her, but that was a foolish endeavour.

The bar was overflowing with drunks that competed with each other over who deserved to be heard more. The tiny stuffy bar was cluttered with greasy round wooden tables that all made way for a high intimidating stage that was draped in faded orange curtains.The air was sweltering, heavy, and reeked of alcohol. Mary began to stagger as the atmosphere of the bar overwhelmed her and made her drunk by proxy. Desperately, she grabbed the seat closest to her to centre herself. An error she'd greatly rue.

"A beauty like you should not be in such an awful place."

Mary looked around her fear until she met the owner of those words.

He was a rugged, handsome man of 35 in an old loose - fitting shirt and jacket. His trousers were held up by a worn dirty string, and covering his straw - like hair was a brown cap, a shade darker than the rest of his clothes.

She was petrified of him and gazed at him like a frightened deer. Worrying that he had frightened her, he offered to comfort her. "Would you like a drink?"

"Oh, that would be wonderful, thank you," Mary sighed gratefully.

Expecting a glass of water, she was instead greeted with a mysterious, dark, and frothy liquid. Afraid to insult this kind stranger, she graciously accepted this gift and gulped down the arcane drink. Its taste was sharp and burned her nose and throat. She fought to swallow down the liquid as her head swam and swirled in a bid to absorb this foreign substance. It was after she had somehow finished this glass that she noticed thathe man was  gazing upon her in her awe, but by then, the liquid had given her enough courage to pay him no mind. Sluggishly, she rose from her seat in a renewed ambition to find her sister. She was halted by the sight of her sister upon the stage. 

Before her sister could open her mouth to sing,a piercing shriek silenced the rowdiness of the bar. The shrieks returned in a more desperate tone as they cried out a "where is she?" In a mangled but audible tone. After hearing this, the patrons spoke among themselves in a panicked bid to rid themselves of this madness. Mary stumbled around only to be greeted by the horrific sight of her wailing panicked mother. When her mother laid eyes upon her, she scrambled to her, clasped her arm, and was greeted by the sharp scent of alchohol on Mary's breath. Mary's mother composed herself and dragged her daughter out of the sinful building as she pleaded and excused her presence in such a dirty place.

Rabidly, Mary's mother emptied her wardrobe into the closest suitcase she could find while madly cursing at both her wordly daughter and her own incompetence at failing to keep her daughter pure all the while Mary pleaded and lied about how she ended up in such an unbecoming place.

"Mother, please, I became lost!" Pleaded Mary.

"You can not stay here." Mary's mother muttered while ignoring her daughter's pleas.

"Mother, please!"

"You must go lest you become like your sister,"

"Mother!"

"I will hear no more of it! I should have done this earlier."

"Done what, mother?"

Her mother paused her rabid packing and turned to her blubbering daughter.

"I am sending you to an all girl's boarding school - one I went to. They will make you a proper woman. She then returned to her packing.

Fearing defeat once more, she clasped onto her mother's dark green and yellow skirt while on her knees and begged once more, but her mother's anger was impenetrable. She'd lost any last bit of freedom she had left. On her knees, she lay defeated as her mother finished confirming her future imprisonment.

Just then, Lilith rushed into her sister's room to rid her mother of any confusion she may have had, but before she could clear her name, her mother screamed,

"Leave this house! You have done nothing but corrupt this home with your filth. Leave before I kill you with my own hands!"

Reeling, Lilith retreated into the darkness of her world and never spoke to her sister again.

The next morning, Mary was loaded into a rented carriage with all of her belongings and her mother. Ignorant of her brother's rueful eye. The unnatural yellow of the morning sky seemed to foretell her ill - fate as she bid farewell to her prison, the one which she so desperately wished to return to now that she had presented with a new unknown one.