It happened on an otherwise and before-then merry day and ruined it. And furthermore from that event spawned dark moods and the depressed gray pall that falls like sudden winter snow upon a heart now piteous and wailing.

For a twelve solid hours of a bright day in warm spring, the young woman Maria was joyous in the hour and contented with her life. She and her pup, a fuzzy spitz-type sort of mutt by the name of Tristan, ran errands made fun. There was fun in the long ride for in the drive she had time to listen to the radio. And after that there was fun in the setting up of all her newly-bought goods. She tacked the glimmering green streamers to the walls of her apartment and laid out sporty tablecloths and concluded the decorations with a spastic dozen tosses of confetti. It was her brother's birthday and she had invited him over for a party that would be no surprise.

And for merely the sake of enjoyment she set out again with Tristan for a jaunty jog in the nearby woods. Light skittering shadows danced across her face and the air smelled so green, so brown, so blue, so yellow; every inch of air rang with whistles and coos and somewhere far-off hummed a tireless hive of bees. Deciduous boughs arced high above and sometimes split and made way for pines who chomped the high-east white sun as it crossed above the path, their jagged brackish branches making lines of teeth where they did not meet above the road. Their scent was frosty for they carried all year-round the unbroken fresh mint of Christmas in their unfailing and persistent foliage. And then again into the maples who waved an audience of emerald hands and sent her tiny capsules whirring as she went by, and cherry trees with zebra trunks, and a rare sweet tree with flowers like tiny frozen pink explosions of Fourth of July sky set against the wing-branches of ferns. She touched one such tree and was shocked to see it pull away and fold its leaves together, but the flowers, pale and fragile, felt like down-feathers on her face and smelled of all fruits but none in particular.

And she went on and then saw her watch and promptly turned around, Tristan ever by her side, and they carried on homeward until at half the journey back she was seized by six strong hands.

Her screams flew up and scattered doves and robins but no humans were around to hear. Yet still she made them, first by will, in fear, in plea, for someone anyone to come by and take her from their sixty-fingered grasp; and then in minutes they were not wilful, not thrown but drawn and taken, as other things were in the following half-hour. She kicked and there went her shoes, taken and tossed someplace. She clawed and off was her watch, a treasure, maybe to be pawned, or would it be a trophy? Was it what this one always kept to remind himself of his own deeds, a little black book composed entirely of timekeepers? Her fingernails caught skin and then a palm met her hard across the face and she sent out another yelp and hated herself quite suddenly for letting herself react. She found she could not remember what it was she was supposed to do -- for weren't they always educated on this exact situation, wasn't she supposed to know? Was she not strong?

And more questions piled in her and some spilled from her lips and poured over the blood that one lip leaked. Perhaps it was a mistake to buy such a small dog for now a Labrador she realized would be more useful, or a shepherd, a wolfhound, anything but poor Tristan who for all it was worth yelled murderously at the men but at a swift boot in the face he fell against a tree and lay silent in its roots.

And it seemed as if Maria's own writhing disembarked her clothing from her body and though this was illogical she found herself lying still for great long minutes at a time and closing her eyes and playing dead, because did not predators leave dead prey behind? Did they only go for fresh blood and draw revolted away from a carcass? She was a corpse now and wished it sometimes so, and wished she hadn't wished that because it may soon become reality. Perhaps she too would be tossed at the hearth of a tall oak and whither around its acorns until some other jogger found her left behind. Perhaps she would be thrown into the trash where sometimes in this long half-hour she honestly believed she should belong.

Soon the moving, the screaming, the yelling, the jeering, the one-after-another ended and they departed, and one of them spat some cruel words at her and she dissolved and became six-years-old again freshly sprouted from the kindergarten. So fragile, no, not fragile -- the flowers were fragile, the flowers were beautiful and meaningful, they were placed with a purpose by God for he loved them and their tree, the flowers had a community, high and safe, visited oft by butterfly friends. But Maria was no longer beautiful and she had no meaning anymore. God, she thought, now hated her, and her purpose was akin to a tennis shoe. The sport had roughed and ruined her. And no community of lepidopterae would play upon her nose and tell her sweet quiet things in comfort. No Tristan would ever whine sympathetically when she cried. She cried now and felt an aching depth in her gut at the stunning absence of that friendly puppy whine.

It did not take long for her to recompose because she thought in a panic she heard someone coming near. She didn't fear the men; there was nothing left to lose. But others, God, please don't send me any other people, to see me, God, I'm so hideous! She tried to find her clothes but only found a shirt and pants. The rest were souvenirs and one sock had been flung into a tree branch. Its novel escape gave her one brief second of triumph in her heart, to know that this scrap of undergarment had gotten away from the nefarious scheming clutches of the three strangers. She left the sock on its branch and left; five minutes later a child wandered by and created mythologies around the sock and wondered how it climbed so high. And then the child continued on and never need know what had transpired on the dirt his bare feet touched.

Maria made it home, dogless, soulless, joyless, impure, broken, bruised, ugly, loathsome, loathing, gray. The air tasted empty white, the confetti glared gruesome black, and all 'round her the rainbow streamers and unfolded paper lanterns and star bursts dripped out color as if an inverse prism ate them and spat them out as nothing but gray in her eyes.

The doorbell rang and she ignored it. She let her brother call the police and she ignored them too. Her arms embraced her legs, her hands held her sides, her nose was to her knees. By the time the police broke down the door another twelve hours later, her pants were stained where her tears had ceaselessly but silently fallen, where she sat in the corner of her room, hating her furniture for no reason she could name.

They collected her and she spoke in broken sentences. They healed her superficially and she ached worse at the needing it. She told them tales out of a shattered memory. Odd strange things were crisp and clear to her; she recalled every ounce of grand Earth and plant her eyes had savored, each scent, the sweet tree now fearsome, the winter mint pine despised. She recalled each bird and squirrel, each cloud of gnats she'd swatted at and every snake that fled her feet, and pronounced in full color she could remember Tristan in his final pose between the still brown feet of the tree. She recalled, freshly, the pain and fear and hate and shame. But she could not recall their faces.

With shaking heads and one angry frazzled old man who'd been in this job too long who muttered about how "they could never remember seeing the important details", she was sent away feeling even worse. Wasn't talking about a trouble supposed to alleviate the pain? But at their mixed but unfailingly negative reactions she could not help but wonder what was wrong with her beside the obvious. How could she have forgotten?

She hated walking the street. She hated the corner-of-the-eyes furtive stares the passersby gave at the black splotch on one once-proud cheekbone. She hated the muttering moments after she passed. She hated too the car. She hated the grocer's and didn't go there again; she used the internet to buy her goods. She hated her job and the questions as if each person was the last one's parrot, repeating each stupid phrase into infinity.

She sat on the edge of her bed at night, the room moon-blue-gray, a tree shivering in spring breezes outside the window blind, and she requested of the walls advice, and they stayed silent in their constant vigil. She noticed a gaping space between her and all things. Even the bed beneath her was spread so wide and she could not be tender with each yard of sheet at once. She went into a chair and pretended its arms were her mother's, or perhaps her father's, or even God's, and she was being cradled such as she had cradled Tristan, as a child. She cried into the cloth and clung at it, grasping, hoping if she shut her eyes it would really be a chest and her fingers would find the shirt collar of an angel who would say his magic words and cure her of her own mood.

And she drew away from friends by day, hating them too, hating the men especially for sometimes she thought she saw a flicker of fearsome familiarity. But none of them were them.

And she hated herself, too, for being so weak. So vulnerable. So stupid. Alone, in the forest! Daytime, pshaw! It was still moronic. And for getting such a stupid little dog! And for bringing him, too, because it was her bringing him that killed him. He'd have been home waiting to please and appease her had she just let him stay behind. She hated how she changed, how now she noticed she was angry and it wouldn't go away, how she showered twice a day and never felt clean, how she couldn't meet her own eyes in a mirror. She hated her clothes. Somehow, her wardrobe had attracted them. Her pants became long and heavy, her shirts long-sleeved, high-necked, and all colors drab. No make-up, no jewelry. If only she could disappear, if she looked as gray as her mind painted the world, this would never happen again. She knew that this bore no logic but she needed to craft her superstitions so she could then in turn craft their cures and make antidotes and counterspells and ways to ward away the evil that fiercely dominated her own world.

HER world! This was HER life, how could she not be allowed control of it?! Why had they not given her a choice?! Why had God turned deaf ears to her screams?! She called out to God and demanded that He answer, that He tell her the things her walls could not say, that He provide the answers for the questions her friends asked, that He give her back the memory of her attackers for the sake of the police, that He at least, please, at least, just let her know you're there! Just pat her on the back and coo some secret in her ear and that at least if she knew Heaven still awaited her tainted walking corpse of a body, she might one night stop crying.

And He too was quiet in the sky. Curse the sky! she thought, Curse all!

How could she be let to lose so much?! How, why?! Who?!

One day she was finally forced out of her indoors seclusion and made it to the bank to put in the money to cover the checks she would be writing to cover the cost of ordering her food on-line, and this taking place a full twelve months after the trauma, and this twelve minutes into the queue, a bullet went into her.

For twelve seconds she wondered curiously about the pain and looked down and saw blood on her stomach and a hole in it. She hadn't even noticed the gunshot. It was one of the details she just forgot.

She didn't want to fall because she wasn't DONE yet, dammit! One hand on the wound and another flailing vainly at things and people by her side but her fingers were cold and she fell limp, finally, sitting up as long as she could which was for five seconds and then she lay flat on the floor. This isn't a tree, she thought suddenly, and wondered about that. This isn't where I planned to die. I wasn't EVEN planning to die. She wanted to get over the year and its shadows, she wanted to forge into the next, as new snows froze pleasant memories in time and then melted to take the old ones away. She wanted to see new springs where new fragile flowers bloomed, not the same ones as the last, and not the same old butterflies but the caterpillars of yesteryear take their open gifts of nectar and spread life to the neighbor trees. She wanted to see summer come, blast, and go, perhaps a party on the beach, perhaps a drive into the mountains, perhaps to the top of a volcano where she would pretend she was a virgin again and sacrifice herself to ancient gods in game and crawl out of the ancient ash like phoenix, laughing at the camera face. She hoped it would happen, too, cameras on her again where she could not pull away, would not cringe to think of her visage being seen forever on someone's wall or website. She hoped her friends would stop fearing her now, stop hating her as she hated herself, that they could lock together again like grand perfect feathers on a closed wing. She wasn't done yet.

Oh, where had this year gone, and every opportunity to know these pleasures she once cherished and then, rapidly, suddenly, in one day, stopped cherishing? Her time with them was over and she despaired to know that SHE had wasted it -- SHE had been at fault for this. For everything. If only she had never existed! Then there would have been no time for her to waste, and no her for her to waste it!

And now, she thought, I can let go of it. I don't love this time and this world doesn't love me. My life isn't worth keeping, so take it, burglars, take it!

Something plugged the wound.

A face tense with worry but oddly very calm amongst the shooting and shouting hovered over her own face. And for sitting up, as all customers had been commanded to lay face-down, this person was punished with a bullet too. His shoulder bled onto her breast. His hand remained on the cloth, his own sleeve, torn away and rolled up and stuffed firmly into Maria's wound. He did not make such a plug for himself, he could not, for any new movement on his part would speed the bleeding and sent him falling and dying like her.

I'm not worth it, her eyes said to his. Her mouth moved, her hand fluttered. I am done. I really am.

"Please," he said, so softly, so calmly, so comfortingly. "You shouldn't die."

"Why not?"

He smiled. "It...this...not your..." His eyes were rolling. "Not your fault...I go...I go the right...willing..."

She watched him with many emotions and grieved as he slumped across her body to form a cross of flesh and cloth there on the marble floor. The weight of him kept the plug firm. She did not die and lasted long enough for the police and paramedics. And this time, someone else saw the faces of the thieves, and the jury convicted them. Her own faulty facial memory did not serve the world injustice.

It took a while but finally eleven months and twenty-nine days passed and she was healed and whole again.

"I think," she said one night to the wall. "I think I can wake up tomorrow. I think I really want to this time."

No, she thought, I shouldn't talk to the inanimate any longer. Hopefully her brother wouldn't mind a phone call so late.

"Hi. ... Nothing. I just wanted to... ... It's nothing, I'm fine. ... I just remembered something. ... Happy birthday. ... Yeah, I think I can this year. Just come over, any time. I don't need to decorate. Bring everyone. Yeah. Okay, goodnight. ... You too."