Liar

The life of Cynthia Brandon Smith involved a lot of lies. Upon a closer one could say her life was made of them. One such lie was that she had been happily married. She had even managed to delude herself with that one.

The biggest one would have been her family, if it could safely be called that. Her Dad and Step-Mom had been full of them. But the worst case had been Alice. Alice had seen the truth. Alice had tried to represent the truth. The result had taught Cynthia an important lesson about telling the truth, that lying was smarter.

The truth was staring her in the eyes. A bit young to be having these sort of problems, Alice had been older when they started, but Cynthia had seen the look to often to easily forget it. Mary's eyes were focused in a vision. Not Anne's wide innocent eyes, but Mary's. Perhaps it was coincidence, perhaps it came from the namesake, Cynthia was more worried about how to hide it, if she could. At her young age it could be passed off as imagination, but for how long?

Her husband was running for Mayor, and visions could attract a lot of negative attention. And speak of the devil he was home.

"Papa!" Anne shouted hugging him as tightly as she could. With Anne in a piggyback he came into the living room, looking questionably at Mary.

"What's wrong with her?"

Cynthia was at a loss of what to tell him. Seeing the future and schizophrenia were both stupidly bad ideas, but those were the only explanations that came to mind.

"She's… imagining what it will be like with Daddy as mayor, right sweetie" Cynthia tried.

Fortunately the vision had let go of Mary "Yes Daddy. The parade will have a giant ice cream cone float, and the carnival will have real acrobats!'

He frowned. "How did you know that? Daddy hasn't told anyone about that ,clever girl. The parade and carnival planed , but that's supposed to be a surprise."

She had just smiled innocently, and the incident had been overlooked. The election and festivities had gone fine and she had almost managed to forget about the incident when she visited her parents. And Mary had had another vision.

It wasn't in a location where it could be hand waved. Screaming nonstop in the middle of a dinner party eyes staring into space, wasn't something that could be ignored , especially not by her dad.

He had dragged her husband into a private room, while she had excused herself and the spectacle that was Mary.

"I DON'T WANNA! I DON'T WANTA! SAVE ME MOMMIE! PLEASE! ILL BE GOOD! I SWEAR!"

Cynthia had smiled and told her not to swear, that everything would be ok. She was positive Mary had seen through the lie, she hadn't even believed herself as she told it.

Eventually she fell asleep.

When she woke Mary was gone.

Her husband and father preferred politics over family. In the morning Mary was gone. The townspeople were told that Mary had gotten ill in the night, was at a foreign hospital for proper treatment. A few months later informed she died.

Cynthia went through the motions of being a depraved mother, received "deepest regrets " for the loss of her daughter. She was like a robot, her mind back to Alice all those years ago.

At first she had screamed "WHY! WHY ARE YOU LEAVING ME"

Then the needle slipped into her arm, and a calm , blank, uncaring look replaced the terror. To sleepy and dazed to do anything. A dead look.

Alice's entire personality gone.

Cynthia seemed like the perfect wife and mother. That's all anyone saw.

In her head , her daughter screamed, and her sister stared at her with dead eyes.