Finding Mary (Part 3)

11 DEC 2016
Prague, CZ

Part 3: That God Damn Dog

They had all died that night, so the email from Kyle regarding Mary’s suicide had come as no real surprise. It was something he had expected and had been expecting for many years. In some ways, Mathos was impressed that Mary's after-life had lasted as long as it did. Mathos also had to admit, that he was mildly impressed that he too had lasted that long as well.

Mary had been living on borrowed time; of course, they had all been living on borrowed time and the person they had borrowed it from was not someone known for charity. They had borrowed it from God and he was a fastidious record keeper with the same penchant for forgiveness of late payments as the Italian mafia.
 

That Damn Dog

 

It's possible that Mary wouldn’t have lived a day longer, but then again, maybe she would have, if it hadn’t been for that dog, that God damned dog. They had always blamed that dog, and why not? Whoever heard of human trash, like those living in that squalid dump that doubled as a house, keeping an indoor dog? They had spent two agonizing days watching that house and not one sign of a dog, in two days they hadn’t seen a single sign of  a dog. Who lets a dog shit and piss in a house? Perhaps it would have gone differently had they known about that dog – or perhaps not. There was no way of really knowing for sure, but even after all the years and all the houses, Mathos could still remember every single night he had sat alone in the dark, thinking – "that damned dog, what am I and what might I have been, if not for that God damned dog?"

Then Abishai, son of Zeruiah, said to the king, "Why should this dead dog curse my lord the king? Let me go over and cut off his head."; 2 Samuel 16:9

For Mathos, coming to terms with Mary’s suicide would involve reconciling it with her prior death, which would make understanding her suicide, or at least explaining her suicide, a bit more difficult than most; although, oddly enough, it would also make it more sensible and reasonable than most suicides. It would be during, or perhaps because of, his efforts to understand Mary’s death that Mathos would discover that the old train station he had chosen to sit and quickly ponder Mary's death, was more than just a train station; it was a train station with a secret.