Three Paragraph Stories: Mary, Broken

We haven't yet hosted a three paragraph horror (unless you count the story of Job as one) so here is a very dark three paragraph story.

It took a lot to set Mary off. So when she woke up in her boyfriend's cramp bed and threw off the scratchy covers to check the time just to find out she was late for work, she was overall quite collected despite a mild headache. She tugged on her pants and pet her boyfriend's cat which purred in her hands. Then she pulled on her shoes and jostled downstairs to her car. At work her boss griped at her for arriving twenty minutes late. There was nothing Mary could do but nurse her temples and hope her headache would go away. She spent the day answering telephones as consumers called in to complain about their computer software until they realized their computers weren't plugged in to begin with. And she kept answering phones, tapping away at her sticky keyboard.The lights flickered and cast a disgusting light upon her wilting salad, but Mary maintained, holding the cold dressing against her forehead. And then a piece of paper arrived on her desk which would change everything. The paper was a completely normal report, normal font, normal size page, nothing was outside the ordinary except when Mary lifted the post-it that read "Read Me" on it, there was another, a completely unnecessary and wasted, post-it. And inexplicably, for reasons that will forever be unknown, Mary's headache went away. And she snapped.


She walked out of the office building with a keyboard drenched in red. The office guard followed the trail of crimson while screaming into his walkie talkie until he spotted Mary about to enter her car. He grabbed her shoulder and she spun around, digging her heel deep into this thigh. She dragged him down near the bottom of her car and before he could relieve his shock, she slammed the car door against his neck with such force that his entire body went limp. She climbed in and drove off without any destination in mind. After about three minutes of speeding down a street, she stopped and entered a liquor store, grabbing a bottle of wine and bludgeoning the cashier until she couldn't block the door anymore. Mary then tried uncorking the wine with her teeth and that didn't work, she smashed it against a brick wall and continued to sip at the jagged neck until she got back to her boyfriend's place. She sat down on his couch waiting for him to return and occupied her time thinking about how she was starving. Then she heard a purring sound from beneath the sofa.


When the trail of blood ended, splashes of wine lead police to Mary's boyfriend's apartment. They kicked down his door to find Mary chewing at a leg. She hissed at them and threw both the leg and the now empty bottle of wine at the police. They dodged the attack and followed Mary into the kitchen where she grabbed a knife and raced at the police who were forced to defend themselves. Mary fell to the floor with a sick grin on her face and she spent her last breath hissing at the officers. Her eyes went dark, darker than before at least, and Mary's arms stretched out across the floor. It took a lot to set Mary off, and no one will ever understand what made her break that day.