madness of two 1963, 2008, 1933, 1993
by Mary Thorson
Sister, it is the night before your wedding and I know what this means. But there are things I still have to tell you. And I have to tell you in the way only you understand. In the language only we speak after all the teasing and after we turned in and made the world just our own. I want to tell you about the scars on my legs, how they’re hurting, like before a storm. There is something coming.
Sister, I dreamed about a dead rat, and I know no one wants to hear about dreams but listen because this is so important. When I saw the dead rat, it was on its side so I could see both the lighter side of the belly and the dark gray of its back. It was on the sidewalk that was also gray so you could miss it. It might be hard for someone to see something like that, and then they’ll run straight over like that truck on the interstate that flattened me and even though my legs were crushed you stayed with me. You kept the others away as long as you could. So in my dream, because I remembered my own legs, I walked around it so as not to step on it. But I was still looking because it was going to show me something. Then it did.
A long pink string, like yarn, was tugged from its back and it looped. Do you remember? The little girl’s strings that came from her face, that tied her together, and we started to untie her? Pulling at her eyes. I knew just how easy it would be to break these strings because we had done it once before, but unlike those strings from the girl that had ends that dangled and dripped from your hand, there were no ends here. You see, it started and ended inside of the rat. Somewhere I could not see and here is why I wanted to tell you because as I passed the dead rat I knew it was you. You know, how in dreams, when you go to your old school but you’re sitting in a different school, or a person turns from a lover to a parent or a sibling and you wake with a feeling of disgust and shame because there was also desire and that’s how I knew that the rat was you. Because it became so familiar and then, and then, and then you started to talk.
It’s important for you to understand that you talked to me and you sounded like you, of course, because it was you, but you talked from the hole in the dead rat’s back, or your back. I know this is confusing but it all made sense in the dream. At first, they were words in no particular order and I stood where I was, far from your dead rat body on the sidewalk that was now an interstate, racing with cars. “Out” you said, “the,” “it,” “mine,” “walking,” and “sister.” None of it made sense. It felt like when my dog barks at me and sniffs at my belly or my chest or my back and it’s trying to tell me that something is wrong, something smells bad, something is unraveling inside me and it’s a warning.
Yes, that’s exactly right. You were trying to warn me through the hole in your back that some other animal had made with such precision and unraveled you onto the sidewalk—the sidewalk that was now the interstate that was also now our school and then also our bedroom. In your warning, you told me the thing I was beginning to understand.
“I’m your sister,” you said, “you are mine. Pull pull pull the string out of me. Please. Take it and walk with it or you will come all undone.”
And when I felt the tug from my back to the middle of me, I woke up, and there I was, next to you one the sidewalk, the interstate, the school, our bedroom. Our strings were tangled, but here you are, untying them. When you are done, so will I be.
Photo of Mary Thorson
BIO: Mary Thorson lives and writes in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her short story, "Book of Ruth," was included in Best American Mystery & Suspense, '24, edited by Steph Cha and S.A. Cosby. Her short story, "Casadastraphobia," was included in Best American Mystery & Suspense, '25, edited by Steph Cha and Don Winslow. Her work has been nominated for Best American Short Stories, A Derringer, and a Pushcart Prize. She hangs out with her two feisty daughters, the best husband, and a dog named Pam when she isn’t teaching high school English, reading, or writing ghost stories. She is represented by Lori Galvin at Aevitas Creative Management. Her debut short story collection A Woman's Guide to True Crime is coming out with Rock and a Hard Place Press in 2026. She is currently working on a novel.