Maya didn't like losing four days of summer for odd reasons. School was about to begin in just a couple of days, and even though she was doing nothing but simmering in her own depression the entire summer, she thought it could only worsen after school began.
She had gradually distanced herself from her friends and felt increasingly isolated. Despite her growing loneliness, no one seemed to notice her emotional withdrawal. The loss of her mother in a car accident five years ago was a wound that never healed. While her father was severely injured in the crash, Maya escaped unscathed, a fact she could not forgive herself for.
Less than two years later, her father remarried, which Maya regarded as an attempt to replace her mother. She resented her father for moving on so quickly.
"She's good with kids and understands a young teenage girl better than I can. I think you two can become great friends," her father would often say.
'If you needed a nanny for me, you didn't have to marry her!' Maya would retort in her mind.
Outwardly, she would simply retreat, spending hours in her room reading her mother's books.
Before Maya could adjust to her stepmother her father's health declined. A foreign object from the car accident was lodged deep in his tissue. Due to its proximity to his vital organs, doctors decided not removing it would be less harmful.
The foreign object didn't bother him except for setting off metal detectors. However, it ended up causing serious harm after Maya convinced him to try pistachio ice cream. They both discovered they were allergic, and the resulting swelling caused the object to shift, leading to an infection. The infection spread to his heart, causing complications that ultimately led to a drug-induced coma. One from which he never woke.
He remained in a coma for a year and a half before passing away in late spring. Even before his death, Maya felt that her life was over. She neglected school, friends, and her own life, spending her days visiting him in the hospital.
Now, she was in a weird period of her life; hating her life and herself, but not willing to change anything about it. Pretty much giving up. Just mindlessly drifting through days, letting herself go to waste.
Maya liked being home alone, where she didn't have to put on a mask to pretend things weren't as dire and hopeless as she felt them being. It was a place where she was once happy.
Her mother always kept the house pristine, but Anna couldn't seem to keep up with the dust. Now, every speck of dirt reminded Maya that her mom was no longer there. However, Anna wasn't to blame, as she was working all the time. Now, it was Maya's failure.
Anna continued working at her old hairdressing job, choosing not to rely on the wealth that Maya's parents had left her. Maya was grateful for this. Or, Anna might have been avoiding dealing with a depressed teenage girl and couldn't use any money from selling her father's profitable company due to his will's stipulations.
Maya had a hard time imagining Anna as virtuous. In her mind, Anna is still just a 'fake mom', a 'gold-digger', someone who considers her as a nuisance for being the only thing separating her from fortune.
She hated when her thoughts would get this mean. After all, Anna was the only person she had left, and yet she felt like a stranger.
Typically, Maya would loiter aimlessly around the house, reading—or rather pretending to, as it had become burdensome—all while counting down the minutes until her next dose of antidepressant. But today was different. It felt as though there was something more to her, a hidden layer just beyond the blinds she couldn't lift.
Was it from the accident? Has it left her feeling different?
A sudden doorbell threw her straight into a panic attack. Visitors have always been rare in their household, but now, it was even less expected. Childishly, she hid herself, avoiding front lawn windows, pretending no one's home, and hugging her knees on the floor of her room, hoping that whoever it was at the door would leave as soon as possible.
Over the years, Maya has developed an unsettling paranoia. She began to imagine a faceless woman dressed in black, bringing misfortune. It feels as if in every memory of terrible events, this woman is always lurking in the corner of her eye.
In the hospital after the car accident, at the ice-cream shop where they tried a new flavour, at the hospital around the time of her father's death… And now, the doorbell somehow jolted her memory and she realized she might've seen the same woman again, just before the lightning strike.
Maya's heart was racing as she began to put the pieces together. Had she been outside to face her phantom, to prove to herself that it wasn't just a delusion?
Rational thought suggested that such a vague figure could easily be imagined in any crowd. Yet, her desperation to confront the apparition was understandable. If it was real, then she wouldn't have to shoulder the blame for her tragedies. Or so her therapist would suggest, accusing her of deflecting her guilt onto an imaginary culprit.
Had she had anyone close to her, they would have pointed out that such behaviour was far from normal. However, Maya avoided forming close relationships out of fear that losing someone else would confirm her belief in her curse.
For now, she sought refuge in books and fiction, immersing herself in tales far removed from her own reality.
After the visitor at the door had given up and departed, Maya slowly emerged from her state of panic, the crushing pressure in her head subsiding. With little else to occupy her time, she decided to venture outside, to bask in the last of the summer sunshine before autumn's chill set in.
She slid open the large glass doors leading to the backyard, allowing the outdoor air to fill the home. The moment her bare feet touched the soft grass, an odd sensation seized her.
'Thinking about it, this is where Anna said I was hit by the lightning.'
Prompted by the thought, she decided to examine the 'scene of the crime' in an attempt to jog her memory, to make the surreal experience feel more real.
She scanned her surroundings. The backyard was spacious, with a plush carpet of well-tended grass stretching out before her. It felt too large, too undefined, as though the planned pool that should have broken up the space was noticeably absent. The tall walls that bordered this secluded garden were shrouded in a cloak of greenery and bushes.
The only accent was a young but already fairly big maple tree that was planted when Maya was born. This already secluded and inaccessible back garden begged the question: did she really see someone out here back then?
Other than the familiar back garden, there was nothing to see that would suggest an extraordinary lightning strike happened here. No scorched grass, no damage to the tree. Maya didn't know what to expect, but there was nothing that could confirm it even happened.
However, what fascinated her more during this investigation, was the feeling of walking barefoot on the ground. Of course, she walked without her shoes on here before. She spent her entire childhood running and playing on this lawn. But it never felt like this. Like it was, somehow, alive. Soft and firm at the same time, almost as if squirming under her feet, or… breathing.
'Would an ant feel like this, walking on your skin?'
Maya began making strange comparisons to this unknown sensation. She was unable to determine if it was comforting or terrifying.
'Did getting struck by lightning seriously mess me up?'
Shaking off her apprehensions, she advanced towards the towering tree. Suddenly, her steps found an unusual firmness beneath the soft grass. Looking down, she noted no change in the landscape, yet the ground beneath her feet felt more solid as if something was concealed there.
It was so vivid she imagined it was something that would make a 'thud' sound if it were stepped on.
A sudden realization made her recoil.
'C-could it be?'
A long-lost memory resurfaced. This was the spot where she had buried a time capsule with Leo, her childhood best friend, a decade ago.
Overwhelmed by nostalgia, she impulsively grabbed a shovel. As she dug up the remnants of her past, she felt a warmth ignite within her, a spark of excitement that she hadn't felt in years. This long-lost piece of her childhood reignited a flame that had been extinguished for far too long.