Masquerade

A 🐢 micro fiction

The Unraveling of Mary Sue

The thread caught on the hotel door handle as Aunt Patricia launched into her third critique of the morning. "Mary Sue, dear, you really should consider settling down. At your age, options become... limited."

Cousin Jessica looked up from her phone. "Maybe try one of those apps? I mean, you're still pretty enough." The qualifier hung in the desert air like a heat shimmer.

Uncle Bob chimed in from the kitchenette. "And that job of yours, teaching art to kids? When are you going to get serious about your career?"

Mary Sue opened her mouth to apologize, to explain, to smooth over their discomfort with her choices…

Snag.

The cream cardigan she wore as armor pulled loose at the cuff. Mary Sue touched the wayward strand. Its rebellious softness between her fingers was a comfort. Outside, Scottsdale baked at 110 degrees. Inside this suffocating hotel room, she wore her good-family armor ~ conservative sweater, apologetic smile, shoulders rounded in perpetual genuflection.

The attacks had started before breakfast. "You've gained weight, sweetie," her mother observed over steel-cut oats. "Maybe portion control?"

By lunch, it was her apartment. "So cramped," Patricia had sniffed during FaceTime tours. "A woman your age should own property."

Now they circled like buzzards. They pecked at her life choices with surgical precision, each comment designed to draw blood while maintaining plausible deniability.

"We just want what's best for you," Jessica added, not looking up from her perfect manicure holding her mobile.

"I'm driving to Sedona," she announced mid-lecture. "For photos."

Tug.

The yarn lengthened as she pulled away from Patricia's startled face. It trailed behind her through the lobby like a breadcrumb she'd never follow back.

Highway 179 unwound north through desert that understood erosion. Mary Sue drove with windows down. She watched cream-colored thread flutter in her peripheral vision. Each mile stretched the strand thinner, longer, until her right cuff gaped open to swallow desert air.

Her phone buzzed.

A group text:

Mary Sue always runs away when things get real.

Another buzz:

So dramatic. We're just trying to help.

She turned the phone face-down and pressed harder on the accelerator.

At Bell Rock, she pulled over.

The red sandstone rose before her like ancient testimony. Layers carved by wind, worn into beauty by the very forces that might have destroyed softer stone. Mary Sue sat on the tailgate and began to pull deliberately now.

Loop by loop.

First the sleeve unraveled completely, baring her shoulder to afternoon sun. Then the other. The yarn pooled at her feet like shed skin. Morning frost against red earth.

With each thread that came loose, something else tightened into place. Her breathing. Her spine. The shape of her own name in her mouth was no longer an apology.

She climbed Cathedral Rock wearing just the collar and a few strategic threads, cream yarn scattered behind her across crimson stone.

Her phone buzzed with more family texts

Where are you? We're worried.

Then:

This is exactly what we mean about your judgment.

And finally:

You're being selfish, as usual.

But Mary Sue's fingers were busy with the final seam along her ribs, and their words felt as insubstantial as the threads she was releasing.

At the summit, Mary Sue pulled the last thread free.

Below her, Sedona glowed in perfect ruin. Canyons carved by their own willingness to fall apart. Sculpted into something more beautiful than wholeness had ever been. She understood now what the rocks had always known. Coming undone was just another way of coming together.

The desert wind lifted the collar from her shoulders.

Mary Sue breathed deep and let it fly.