Maria sat in a rocking chair by the side of the road and waited for the world to end.  She looked up at the sky, down at her naked, dusty feet and felt a weight come off her shoulders.  

"It's about God damn time!" She said to nobody in particular.

It was a day at the end of days, when the tapestry of our communion with the universe had gone frozen.  Maria could have been a mocking angel, or a devil with devious intentions, but she was only a lonely little girl stuffed sideways down the gullet of a bitter woman.  From the moment her mother's water broke, things had gone awry.  Still, the little girl existed, but only as a wasted extension of herself.  Her spirit was long, but the little girl's bones rested there beneath Maria's feet in a sharp, ocher hued pile.

"Now that you've gone an left me," she said . . . but she'd been saying it since the beginning.  "And now it's time to get him back."

It was difficult to remember him, though; the man who broke her heart, among other things.  He'd been tall and old and scrawny.  She liked to think of him as a granddaddy who came crawling out of the desert, spoutin' words and poison.

"The world's gotta pay for that," said Maria, kicking the pile of bones with her hardened toes.

"Now, why'd you go and do that." Her voice had changed and it was remarkable.  She sounded just like a little girl. "Why'd you go and touch me there." She kicked the bones a little harder and the world trembled."It's my world, you know?"

Between Maria's legs lied a raggedy doll covered in dust and filth.  She picked it up and wagged it before her eyes.  The dolls candy smile never changed, but it wasn't any big thing . . . at least it had remembered that part.  All Maria could think about was the pain that she'd suffered.

"I'm an old lady because of you," she said, her voice cracking and wheezing and drifting out of her throat and mouth like leaves.

Sternly, she stuffed the doll back between her legs and began to cry. "I know something you don't," she said.

And then he was there; right there where the road forked . . . his lean silhouette teetering in the breeze like a sapling.  And there wasn't a house in sight.  Nor a kingdom, the little girl in her decided.  He had made everything of importance vanish with his very presence.  Maria knew he could do the same to her.

"Wake up, damn you!" Screeched the old woman.

"Please, no!" cried the little girl.

Still, it had never been that kind of nightmare. Maria felt big tears rolling down her sun burnt cheeks.  He was here, just like she'd expected, but it was something else when she could actually see him.

She looked up at the sky again, but this time prayed to God that he would take it all away.  The world was such a desolate place when you couldn't breathe, couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, couldn't live.

If there is a God, thought Maria, than he's surely the devil.

"Now!" She screamed at the sky. "Now, God damn it!"

And he just stood there, at the fork, the lank of his withered body contained.  Besides, there was nothing he could do, really.  He was enfeebled now; an old man and a ghost.  But he'd always been the haunting kind, and he knew just how to scare the wits out of her.

Maria kicked the bones and her cursed her life. "Go away!  Go away!"

The fork in the road was the only path to anywhere, and Maria had been here for a very long time.  She thought of going the other way, but that was the past, and the past was as about as useless as a pile of old bones.  There was no changing the past.  What's done is done.

"Say something!" Her voice carried down the road, past the old man, through the world, and into another's life.

And he had never cared much for her, even as a little girl.  She'd always been so timid and cold.  Even when he tried to touch her.  Especially when he tried to touch her.

Maria bent down and picked a bone off the pile.  Weakly, she stood up and threw it toward him as hard as she could.  A plume of dust rose from the street where it landed, and before the world could properly end he was gone. Maria landed on her knees and wept into the bone-pile at her feet.  The tiny doll fell from between her legs and into the dust of her life.  There was a spot of blood where the doll had been, and Maria felt like she was five again.

More than anything she wanted to run away.  Soon, she thought: when I'm older, stronger.

And then, from far away, she could hear her mother calling.